charlene davis — 11:21AM on Aug 23rd 2007

1. I do not understand why the people who lost their homes and have
the devastation don;t begin rebuilding themselves and doing their
own clean up??? Why are they waiting for the government to do it
for them? in other parts of the country, the people do thier own
clean up and begin rebuilding on thier own using their own resources
and helping each other....why cannot these people do the same???
thank you....

hector berky — 3:50PM on Oct 8th 2007

2. I can't believe that there are people this ignorant till they open up their mouths...thank you for reminding me that we need a press that has the initiative to cover the whole story...and more importantly people who care to GET it.Start with the fact that there are approxiamately 270 square miles of devistation. It took all sorts distruction,like nothing being left at all from the beach front waves that hit Biloxi ,Gulfport and Bay St Louis , (so that you just wander miles looking for any shred of your belongings), or the flooding caused by our government building crappy levees(now rebuilding new crappy unsafe levees) all over the country, but tested by the Catagory 2 storm that hit New Orleans, clearly with less wind force than even say Slidell to the east. I for one am amazed that it took so long any media to seemingly get out of downtown New Orleans, to really cover the the community except that covering miles and miles of flood in boats probably was daunting.Anytime in Florida that I witnessed a hurricane(I grew up in Miami)it usually was disaster for less than ten square miles. When I evacuated to Little Rock I was told by people that the government had helped with a tornado or hailstorm and that it would be all right. But the truth is that normally the press will go out and shoot what looks worse, and make it look like all of it looked like that. Here people in St Bernard, a parish downriver in New Orleans had to fight their way out of their flooded parish upriver to the ninth ward(flooded) and Orleans parish to even escape.It is not surprising that some have no interest in a country that did not rescue them, as there was nowhere near enough people or equipment to remember them,and or help them.Very little of the whole story of Katrina is out there for the nation to understand because it makes fools of all of us. At best it tells you that You Are On Your Own.Don't get me wrong, thank goodness for all the People and Churches and Organizations that stepped in for the first year to get things done for most of us. Yes we had the tourist parts of the city to rebuild and downtown as we are a working city,and it is important to have revenue,roads traffic lights and government. That is where the government started and spent billions.Still I did not get electricity until Febuary of the next year where I live. Also when I returned the government was deporting people from less bad parts of the city because they did not want people there(or thought perhaps they might die without cable)Water and supplies would have made more sense. I was lucky my area of the city was flooded with seven feet of water so they fiqured that no one would bother to be there so they they didn't threaten me with their guns.Still the water had been gone for weeks by then. And frankly I can make my house livable because I broke the law and returned early enough to gut enough that my house could be saved.Still I expect to be working on rebuilding for quite a while.Still not everyone could work a job and rebuild at the same time. Mind you it is just now that many are starting to get the funds to rebuild. Frankly I sort of resent the ninth ward because it was so poor and so destroyed that I figured that if it ever could be restored it would be at the expense of the rest of us. I am fortunate to live in a neighborhood that has at least 50 percent of its population back. But that does not mean that even that number of people live here. Only half of that are back in trailers and the rest need to come and go to do things in their spare time as they can since they live elsewhere. I am lucky that we are rich enough to deal with the challenges,but poor enough that we have too as our homes are our major assets. Many richer areas near here are not rebuilding as quickly as with insurance and better professions it is more profitable to take the money and get employed elsewhere.It may take us forever but who are you to judge us.