[berdie]

Sorry, my FRiend, but I can’t agree with your assessmnent. There is no doubt in my mind that some of La took care of their own. But there is still a very large population of displaced Katrina refugees (how many years ago?) living in Texas.

I do think La and Miss and Tx can be compared..do you not believe every state affected by Katrina did not have disaster?

The people in New Orleans didn’t evacuate. The leadership in the state was weak. The media had a field day.

[loucon]

Most of the refugees evacuees that never returned were from New Orleans proper. New Orleans suffered the worst of it (within Louisiana) in terms of dollar damage and loss of life due to the levee failures. The most southern parishes did have significant wind and tidal caused damages. While not completely rebuilt since 2005, the southern rural areas are rebuilding strong. A lot of New Orleans will take much longer to re-establish, and probably not by the displaced citizens, but by new citizens. A lot of the original evacuees will never return because they have nothing worth returning to, nor do they have the resources to facilitate any reclamation of their lost properties.

Approximately 90% of S.E. Louisiana evacuated and 80% of NOLA evacuated. This left about 100,000 people in the New Orleans area. I agree that leadership in the city was weak and the evacuation of far more people who did not choose to stay in New Orleans should have been accomplished. Of the 100,000 that remained in the city and surrounds, I would guess that upwards of 10% were self sufficient and required minimal assistance ie. information. Of the remaining 90,000 people, around 80,000 were evacuated and/or assisted by the government agencies during the days after. At the same time that these were being evacuated, self sufficient residents were returning to the less damaged areas by the thousands.

Coastal Mississippi was devastated by the full force of Katrina, but if you look at the demography of Southern Mississippi as compared to that of the city of New Orleans you'll see why no comparison can be made. A comparison between southern Louisiana, excluding New Orleans, and southern Mississippi would be fair concerning permanent evacuees and temporary evacuees, and I'm certain they would be very similar. This of course would not include the areas of Mississippi that were completely destroyed.

With a total evacuation of 80%+ prior to Katrina and 10%+ after, I understand that Texas, Northern Louisiana and Mississippi, and Alabama were stressed to capacity. I haven't seen the current numbers of evacuees displaced that have not returned since Katrina, but I know they are significant.

Not to downplay the disastrous effects of Katrina, the media did overplay the event, as I'm sure they will Irene.