%1

The second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina has come and gone, and the storm’s devastation continues to take its toll—sometimes in ways that are the consequence of human negligence, indifference, incompetence and just plain stinginess. For example, ongoing investigations by several environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, have revealed that the hastily and cheaply made mobile housing units provided to hurricane evacuees by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) contain dangerously high levels of formaldehyde.

Pastor R. C. Blakes has two flocks in two different cities. On Sunday mornings in New Orleans, services are packed at his New Home Family Worship Center, which is working to get all of its ministry programs up and running two years after Hurricane Katrina.

Blake’s other church is 300 miles away in Houston, where hundreds of his former parishioners relocated. Earlier last month, they broke ground for a new church there.

Driving west from New Orleans along the water’s edge toward Mobile, Alabama, one sees that the boulevard stretching along the Mississippi coastline now has flora and fauna, but piers are ruined and homes are missing.

The Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi has been coping with its own losses for two years and has struggled to address the spiritual, emotional and physical deficits of the coast area pummeled by Hurricane Katrina, according to Episcopal News Service.