Five months after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, TV broadcasts and newspapers across the nation are still plastered with photos of debris blocking the streets of New Orleans.

The task of cleaning nearly 50 million cubic yards of debris scattered in New Orleans alone will cost about $200 billion and require thousands of man hours before any semblance of rebuilding can even begin.

While excuses can be made for the seemingly halfhearted recovery efforts, keeping thousands of people at bay in hotels, and if they are lucky enough, in trailers, is ludicrous. Kicking homeless citizens out of hotels to honor Mardi Gras reservations is shameful. And promising debris removal within weeks, only to have it remain six months later, is disgraceful.

Such lackadaisical recovery efforts show the United States no longer has the right to preach to the rest of world about human rights violations.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that the levees and a more cohesive emergency response system need to be created.

But we heard the same story in 1992 after Hurricane Andrew hit Florida, didn't we?

And what of it? Thirteen years have passed, the nation has faced a similar disaster, and according to the National Weather Service's National Hurricane Center, the nation, particularly New York and New England, could be faced with an era of even more devastating "super-hurricanes."

One would think the government would have learned from Andrew, and one would certainly hope that the lessons of Katrina will not be forgotten.

But the American government is content on having judicial hearings about what should have been done and waiting for the population to forget just in time for the next disaster to occur.

The lesson would've been a lot simpler, had we taken Andrew's 23 deaths and $36.5 billion in damage to heart.

But here we are today, nearly five months after Katrina hit land, and we are faced with over a thousand deaths, 300,000 evacuees from Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi and an estimated $200 billion in damages, not to mention the possible loss of a culturally and historically rich city.

It's been long enough already, and if the federal government continues to drag its feet, then we've got a long way to go.