Bush draws ire of N.O.

NEW ORLEANS—President George W. Bush can defend the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. But to Gertrude LeBlanc, the view from her home in the city’s Lower 9th Ward is all the evidence she needs to believe it was a failure.
A row of concrete foundations is all that’s left where her neighbors’ houses once stood.
“Bush didn’t give a damn what we got,” said the 73-year-old, who says she rebuilt her bright yellow house with the neat yard with help from a church group and the “little bit” in federal aid she got from the state-run program meant to help hurricane-affected homeowners, Road Home.
“To me, black folks weren’t handled right, but we can’t worry about it. We have to do the best we can.”
When Bush leaves office next week, New Orleans will still show the scars of Hurricane Katrina, which slammed ashore on Aug. 29, 2005. LeBlanc’s neighborhood is still largely uninhabited, with weeds tall around some decrepit houses and roads cracked and warped. In some neighborhoods, apartment buildings and businesses are empty. Some
houses still bear the haunting markings left by search teams in the frantic aftermath of the storm.
Bush, in some of his last comments before leaving office, said Monday at a news conference that he stood behind the federal government’s response to Katrina.