Dawnsinger

It's official: hurricane season 2006 is upon us. It was less than two weeks old when Tropical Storm Alberto meandered into the Gulf of Mexico.

Time has run out, and there is little sense in any quarter that New Orleans is any more prepared - any more "fixed" - to deal with a major storm than it was a year ago. 

In the record-breaking season of 2005, the first two hurricanes stormed ashore near New Orleans within one week.  he Independence Day holiday weekend saw a direct hit by Tropical Storm Cindy - later officially upgraded to Hurricane Cindy.  This storm produced record levels of utility outages in the Crescent City.  Before the next weekend, Hurricane Dennis curved east from a track that had threatened New Orleans, and landed in the Mobile area, its western storm bands bringing hurricane-strength gusts, storm surge and some wind damage in the eastern part of the city and the North Shore.

In a recent radio interview on Chris Lydon's Open Source, City Council President Oliver Thomas and I, as well as other New Orleans residents, did a "reality check" on the recovery of the city.  The consensus was that too much remains to be done in hammering out a recovery plan.  Too many are in limbo, with aid money and processes months away, and there is no security in the mad dash to repair levees before storm season.

Listen to the Open Source show of June 7, 2006