A year later, Katrina survivors give government low marks

On the eve of the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, the storm's survivors are giving all levels of government low marks for their performance.

Sixty-nine percent of respondents polled by Gallup/USA Today gave the federal government a thumbs down, while 66 percent were disappointed in the state government and 59 percent had a negative assessment of their city government's performance.

Nineteen percent of respondents said reconstruction was the most difficult thing they have personally had to deal with since the Aug. 29, 2005, storm that devastated the city of New Orleans and large swaths of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi.

The 602 adults polled also participated in Gallup/USA Today's post-Katrina survey last year, which included 1,510 respondents drawn from a Red Cross database. Because all respondents contacted the Red Cross for aid, the survey cannot be read as representative of all area residents affected by the storm -- and all the respondents were reachable by telephone, so the sample does not include Katrina's numerous refugees. Still, Gallup says in its analysis, the poll provides "important insights into how at least some of the victims of this major disaster are faring today."

Katrina's psychological trauma, epitomized in images of the corpses outside the Superdome and the impoverished Lower 9th Ward residents stranded on rooftops, is also a major issue for survivors. Respondents last year said they were frightened more than anything else following the storm. This year, emotional health was the second most commonly cited problem, tied at 8 percent with financial strains and "getting our lives back on track."

Respondents also said they had at least some trouble sleeping (45 percent), feelings of anxiety (54 percent) and feelings of depression (48 percent). A much smaller number, 34 percent, reported marital or family difficulties; only 11 percent said they have had to seek counseling.

As for their homes and communities, respondents felt fairly confident that life would go back to normal. While just 16 percent said that everything was completely back on track, 56 percent said that life would eventually return to a pre-Katrina state of affairs. The billions of dollars in property damage hit respondents fairly hard: Twenty-five percent said they lost everything, 24 percent recorded substantial financial losses and 38 percent said they suffered some losses.

Despite -- or perhaps because of -- the horrors of the storm and outrage over the government's seeming inaction afterward, the kindness of strangers has benefited many survivors. Seventy percent said that they had been helped by a person, business or organization, and only 25 percent said they had felt victimized by some entity. Of those being helped, four out of five received aid from a charitable organization, while about two-thirds got help from the federal government.