Bitterness Lingers 2 Years After Katrina

Shawnette Humphrey, center, and her husband Arthur Humphrey behind her in hat, hold candles aloft during a candle light vigil on the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2007.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (Alex Brandon - AP)

Bells pealed amid prayers, song and tears at the groundbreaking for a planned Katrina memorial at a New Orleans cemetery. The memorial will be the final resting place for more than two dozen unclaimed bodies.

"We ring the bells for a city that is in recovery, that is struggling, that is performing miracles on a daily basis," said Nagin, who famously cursed the federal response in a radio interview days after the storm.

In Mississippi, about 100 people prayed and sang in the shadow of a Katrina monument on the neatly manicured town green of Biloxi.

The memorial itself stands about 12 feet tall, marking the peak of the muscular tidal surge that sucked entire neighborhoods out to sea and tossed ashore hulking casino barges longer than football fields.

Occasionally during the solemn service, snippets of music could be heard from the Hard Rock hotel and casino across U.S. Highway 90 _ a sign of the rebounding Gulf Coast tourism market.

"We have a new outlook on life and a new appreciation for what's really important in life. It's not your car or your clothes or your possessions. It's being alive and knowing the importance of family and friends and knowing that we all have a higher power," Mayor A.J. Holloway said.

In Gulfport, Miss., Gov. Haley Barbour urged people to see the positive. About 13,000 of his state's families are still living in FEMA trailers, but that's down from a peak of 48,000, and he expects they could all be out of the temporary housing in a year.

Along Biloxi's coastal highway, most twisted metal, concrete and other storm debris has been cleared away, leaving vacant lots in most places where stately, century-old homes used to overlook the beach. In some places, front porch steps lead to nowhere.

In New Orleans, recovery has been spotty at best. The historic French Quarter and neighborhoods close to the Mississippi River did not flood and have bounced back fairly well. The city's population has reached an estimated 277,000, about 60 percent its pre-storm level of 455,000. Sales tax revenues are approaching normal, and tourism and the port industry are recovering.

Jason Freeman had an answer to his Katrina blues. He got a grill fired up in the empty and weedy lot where he once lived in the Lower 9th Ward and started cooking for family and old friends.

"By next year we're going to see a lot of people back," Freeman said.

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Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in Biloxi, Miss., and Cain Burdeau in New Orleans contributed to this story.