Frustrated New Orleans residents fleeing city

 It seems the worst is not yet here.

New Orleans is a city on a knife's edge.

A year and a half after Hurricane Katrina, an alarming number of residents are leaving or seriously thinking of getting out for good.

They have become fed up with the violence, the bureaucracy, the political finger-pointing, the sluggish rebuilding and the doubts about the safety of the levees.

With the shipping and petrochemical industries, New Orleans will never go completely away. The question is, will it ever recapture it's place in the eyes of the rest of America. I feel it is going to take many years for New Orleans to recapture any of the stature it once had. The rebuilding is going to be slow, and, for every year that it drags out, some of the New Orleans natives are being absorbed by other regions and other communities. Many of these people will never return, even when the rebuilding begins to ramp up.

Source: Frustrated New Orleans residents fleeing city | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle