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On the eve of the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, the storm's survivors are giving all levels of government low marks for their performance.

Sixty-nine percent of respondents polled by Gallup/USA Today gave the federal government a thumbs down, while 66 percent were disappointed in the state government and 59 percent had a negative assessment of their city government's performance.

Nineteen percent of respondents said reconstruction was the most difficult thing they have personally had to deal with since the Aug. 29, 2005, storm that devastated the city of New Orleans and large swaths of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi.

The 602 adults polled also participated in Gallup/USA Today's post-Katrina survey last year, which included 1,510 respondents drawn from a Red Cross database. Because all respondents contacted the Red Cross for aid, the survey cannot be read as representative of all area residents affected by the storm -- and all the respondents were reachable by telephone, so the sample does not include Katrina's numerous refugees. Still, Gallup says in its analysis, the poll provides "important insights into how at least some of the victims of this major disaster are faring today."

Katrina's psychological trauma, epitomized in images of the corpses outside the Superdome and the impoverished Lower 9th Ward residents stranded on rooftops, is also a major issue for survivors. Respondents last year said they were frightened more than anything else following the storm. This year, emotional health was the second most commonly cited problem, tied at 8 percent with financial strains and "getting our lives back on track."

Respondents also said they had at least some trouble sleeping (45 percent), feelings of anxiety (54 percent) and feelings of depression (48 percent). A much smaller number, 34 percent, reported marital or family difficulties; only 11 percent said they have had to seek counseling.

As for their homes and communities, respondents felt fairly confident that life would go back to normal. While just 16 percent said that everything was completely back on track, 56 percent said that life would eventually return to a pre-Katrina state of affairs. The billions of dollars in property damage hit respondents fairly hard: Twenty-five percent said they lost everything, 24 percent recorded substantial financial losses and 38 percent said they suffered some losses.

Despite -- or perhaps because of -- the horrors of the storm and outrage over the government's seeming inaction afterward, the kindness of strangers has benefited many survivors. Seventy percent said that they had been helped by a person, business or organization, and only 25 percent said they had felt victimized by some entity. Of those being helped, four out of five received aid from a charitable organization, while about two-thirds got help from the federal government.

COMMENTS

• How about federal aid for the good people of Houston, who took in thousands of Katrina refugees, and were rewarded for their generosity by an exploding crime rate, and myriad other social problems brought into Houston by these same refugees? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! GovExec.com reader Posted October 18, 2006 3:23 PM
• Oh! Whoa is me. The hurricane hit four times now (where I live, twice in 1995, twice in 2005) and the feds have not come to bail me or my neighbors out. Katrina hit New Orleans and did some damage, but not the amount of damage the broken levees caused. The levees broke because of mismanagement of the funds by the people in control in New Orleans. Strange isn't it that the people who took the brunt of the storm on the Gulf coast aren't complaining. They have taken the problem by the horns and are fixing what has been destroyed. The folks in New Orleans need to get some backbone and correct their own problems and quit thinking "we" owe them. Maybe if they had elected people other then Nagin and the like, they would do better. In short, the people in New Orleans need to get off the "pity me" wagon and fend for themselves as the rest of us have. Dave Posted September 6, 2006 1:02 PM
• I am sick and tired of hearing about the "victims" of Katrina. Why is government responsible for everything. What about the "victims" that defrauded the government out of billions of dollars with the credit cards provided to them to help in their recovery. As far as I know, nothing is being done taken to rectify thier actions. If anything, this is a city and state problem, not federal government. The federal government provided the dollars years ago to prevent such flooding, but they spent the money on building casinos. Both local and state failed to respond, and have continually blamed the government for reacting slowly. You could go on and on, but the bottom line is they have to recover on their own; the government didn't take them on to raise. (Well, maybe they did when they created a society dependent upon welfare) I know many who went down there to help, and report that most of the "victims" were beligerent, disrespectful, and only wanted more and more. Let's stop beating a dead horse. The good people of New Orleans are recovering on their own and with very little help from government. It's the people of New Orleans that deserve the low marks, not government. There, I've vented my frustrations. GovExec.com reader Posted August 28, 2006 10:54 AM