The more things change ...

Dallas Morning News: Three years ago, Hurri-cane Katrina knocked the city of New Orleans down for the count. There’s no time for the Crescent City to stop for remembrances today, as residents nervously prepare for the growing possibility that Hurricane Gustav will slam them hard in the next few days.

Though the city is more aware of the hurricane danger now than it was then, unfortunately — even scandalously — New Orleans is not as prepared as it ought to be.

A recent yearlong Associated Press investigation found that many New Orleanians have a false sense of how secure their city really is behind rebuilt levees.

Behind schedule

Though there have been some improvements, an enormous amount of the necessary levee work remains undone and seriously behind schedule. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, whose faulty levee-building helped cause the Katrina disaster, has over the past three years put in drainage pumps that wouldn’t work and failed reviews by the National Research Council, among other shortcomings. The Corps has high hopes for its efforts, but hope won’t stop a rising storm tide.

It is hard to believe New Orleans remains so vulnerable after Katrina revealed how city, state and federal officials, as well as the people who kept electing them, wasted decades to build defenses against the killer hurricane everyone knew was bound to come.

But here we are, three years after Katrina, with the city still undefended beyond rudimentary repair work. The AP investigation made clear that the city’s crisis today is also the fault of business people, activists and others who don’t seem to grasp the urgency of their situation.

All we can do is pray that Gustav spares the poor old Crescent City and gives it one more chance to learn its lesson.