We drove through St. Bernard’s Parrish, an area hit hard. Pictures cannot describe the devastation. After a year, it looks like Katrina happened yesterday. There are square miles without electrical infrastructure, gas or running water. There are no traffic lights, no open businesses — not the local coffee shop, not a grocery store, not the Home Depot.

Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers with temporary power dot the neighborhood and stand in sharp contrast to the demolished homes. In a commercial parking area, a “tent city� of trailers houses many homeless residents.

Small bands of volunteers and missionaries are seen clearing out homes and offering free food, but it just isn’t enough.

The daily news forewarns of rodent infestations, West Nile virus and clogged storm drains – and the upcoming hurricane season.

And yet, there is a spirit of hope. These people will survive. Once tourists return — our hotel was lovely and the food fantastic — things will get better.

But the question haunts me: Why are we providing millions of dollars in aid to other countries when “our own American people� are suffering and in need? In talking to them, they feel forgotten.

The recovery will take much more than small groups of volunteers. Our nation needs to step up to the rebuilding and recovery of New Orleans and its Katrina-devastated neighbors.

— Connie Kline, Camarillo