A year after landfall.

Byline: The Register-Guard

One thing many people forget about Hurricane Katrina is that the gigantic storm - which at one point stretched 325 miles from Lafayette, La., to Panama City, Fla. - had weakened before it slammed into the Gulf Coast one year ago today.

Twenty-four hours earlier over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Katrina had exploded into a Category 5 hurricane packing 175-mph winds extending more than 100 miles from its center. It was 200 miles off shore and headed straight for New Orleans.

By the time Katrina made landfall at 6 a.m. on Aug. 29, it had diminished to a Category 3 storm with sustained winds of approximately 126 mph. The hurricane changed course unexpectedly at the last minute, veering eastward and sparing New Orleans a direct hit.

Though it seems inconceivable, if Katrina had remained a Category 5 hurricane or if it had punched ashore directly on top of New Orleans, damage and casualties could have been much worse. That's saying something for a storm that in its weakened state still produced the costliest natural disaster in the nation's history.

Much of the analysis occurring on the first anniversary of Katrina's coronation as queen of U.S. natural disasters centers on how keenly the storm's staggering consequences are still being felt. Damage estimates are upward of $100 billion for an area stretching 100 miles inland across Louisiana and Mississippi.

It was the deadliest hurricane in more than three-quarters of a century, killing 1,695 people (1,464 in Louisiana and 231 in Mississippi). The 20-foot storm surge that blasted into New Orleans caused catastrophic structural failures in three key levees, pouring billions of gallons of salt water into a city that is essentially a below-sea-level bowl.

In a matter of hours, 75 percent of the metropolitan area was covered with as much as 15 feet of water. It took 53 days to pump 250 billion gallons of water out of the city.

An estimated 350,000 cars were flooded and abandoned, and 78,000 nonresidential buildings were destroyed. New Orleans lost more than 200,000 homes and 43,000 rental units to the storm.

Hurricane damage created 24.6 million tons of debris, enough to fill the city's Louisiana Superdome to the roof 13 times. Almost a third of the debris has yet to be removed.

One year after Katrina made landfall, the city of New Orleans has 181,400 residents, just 40 percent of its pre-Katrina population of 463,000. More than 200,000 people in Louisiana lost their jobs as a result of the storm.

New Orleans residents today live in a city with only 29 percent of its public schools open and just three of 11 hospitals functioning. Gas and electricity service is reaching only 41 percent and 60 percent, respectively, of the pre-Katrina customer base.

So how does all this square with the famous declaration President Bush made in New Orleans two weeks after Katrina struck? "We will do what it takes," the president reassured a shaken city. "We will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities."

The short answer is that it will take much more, and much longer. In a recent USA Today poll, only 16 percent of New Orleans residents say their lives are back to normal.

Just $44 billion of the $110 billion in federal money earmarked for rebuilding has been spent. In June, the Government Accountability Office reported that FEMA had wasted as much as $1.4 billion on individual assistance payments to hurricane evacuees or people claiming to be. The GAO discovered that FEMA-issued debit cards were used to buy champagne, admission to strip clubs and season tickets to New Orleans Saints football games.

Though several important commissions were formed to guide recovery efforts, disagreements, political infighting, lack of leadership and confused lines of authority made it almost impossible for a coordinated recovery plan to emerge.

New Orleans is in serious financial trouble, yet Mayor Ray Nagin and city leaders continue to let residents believe they can rebuild virtually anywhere. City government cannot afford to pick up trash, maintain roads and provide law enforcement everywhere it used to, but so far no one seems willing to admit that services will have to be rationed.

Apart from the enormous problems facing New Orleans, the first anniversary of the Katrina debacle raises equally troubling questions about the nation's capacity to respond to future disasters. FEMA remains a suspect agency, the Army Corps of Engineers has been described as a "dysfunctional family" and the need for a coordinated national emergency communication system remains unfilled.

One year isn't enough time to fairly or accurately assess the response to a disaster of Hurricane Katrina's magnitude. But a thorough analysis of what has gone right and wrong in the first 12 months is crucial to creating mechanisms that will allow local, state and federal governments to respond more effectively to future catastrophes.

The American people must not allow Katrina's legacy to be the grudging acceptance of urban poverty, housing inequity, racial injustice and governmental failures just because those problems are so complex and frustrating. Progress can and must be made, because an opportunity to rebuild a vital city and region without repeating the old mistakes may never come again.