Three Years Later, Did We Learn Katrina's Lessons?

BOSTON - Hurricane Gustav is not just a meteorological event. It is a national examination — the first full test since 2005 of whether a humbled country rebuilt more than levees, and rebuilt the competence and honesty that failed along with them.

The early signs are genuinely encouraging. The evacuation of nearly 2 million people — orderly, early, with buses for those without cars — is precisely what did not happen in August 2005. Someone studied the failure. That alone is progress worth marking.

But an evacuation is the easy part. It requires days of competence. Recovery requires years of it. New Orleans remains half-rebuilt, its Lower Ninth Ward still a moonscape of slabs, its levee system years from the strength its people were promised.

Katrina's deepest lesson was not about storms. It was about what Americans saw on their screens: fellow citizens, disproportionately poor and Black, waiting days for rescue on rooftops and overpasses in the wealthiest nation on earth. The storm's true name was inequality, and it has not been evacuated.

We hope for the best from Gustav and prepare to be judged by the worst. The measure of a government is not the press conference before the storm. It is the trailer that arrives on time, the claim paid without a fight, the neighborhood rebuilt as promised.

Three years on, the Gulf Coast is owed more than vigilance. It is owed memory — and follow-through.

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