Five years ago in rural Alabama, I woke up and watched a nightmare take shape.

At first, the news seemed good. Hurricane Katrina had pounded the Gulf Coast with high winds and heavy rain. But news reports immediately afterward showed a battered but mostly dry downtown New Orleans. Windows were blown out and portions of roofs had blown away. That was damage that could be repaired. Newscasters used the phrase “dodged a bullet” to describe the city.

I had arrived in Alabama the day before with Theresa, my next-door neighbor and soon-to-be wife, with enough clothes for a couple of days and plans to drive home after a long weekend with family. We would return to Abita Springs, La., a leafy New Orleans suburb on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, rake the pine needles and get on with the week.

At least, that was the plan before the levees broke.

From Alabama, I watched in horror as the breaches multiplied and New Orleans was swamped. Looters crawled out of dark corners. People were stranded on a city overpass in relentless heat. The Louisiana Superdome, filled with evacuees, was a sweltering prison of filth, crime and despair.

And things sounded worse in Mississippi. Entire towns had been blown apart. More than 1,800 people had been killed along the coast. The region was a place of shock and confusion.

Weeks later, when authorities allowed residents to re-enter Abita Springs, I returned to find my home buried in pines, the roof damaged but repairable. The house had protected Theresa's home, which was untouched by the trees.

During the years since then, I have watched from hurricane-free Switzerland as the Gulf Coast lurched through an uneven recovery.

While New Orleans has gotten the bulk of attention from Katrina because of the dire conditions stranded residents endured, the damage in Mississippi was nearly inconceivable. Pass Christian was so devastated that as I drove through the small town a month after the storm I became completely disoriented. All the landmarks had vanished. Bay St. Louis, Biloxi and Gulfport also were hit extremely hard.

Yet Mississippi led the pack in the recovery. Gov. Haley Barbour and other officials showed strong leadership in putting the devastated communities back together. Today, Mississippi's coastal communities are up and running—maybe not to the same degree as the pre-Katrina days, but significant progress has been made.

New Orleans, meanwhile, has not moved with the same speed. The recovery was thrown into chaos by an inept response from the city's mayor and the state's governor. Clearly unprepared before the storm, the politicians spent far too much time after the wind died down looking for scapegoats rather than executing a workable crisis response.

Five years later, blight remains in sections of New Orleans. Crime, which soared after the storm, remains a problem. Some schools and churches never reopened.

The fact that New Orleans' recovery is ongoing makes some people wince where catastrophes have left large-scale destruction. Someone in flood-ravaged Kentucky remarked last year on a news broadcast that his neighborhood was all but destroyed. His take was that the community would rebuild quickly without much outside help. “This ain't New Orleans,” he growled.

Granted, a flooded community is not a disaster the size of Katrina. And New Orleans has made gains in protecting the city against storms. Levees strengthened by flood protection programs are not expected to break under storm surges like those Katrina produced. A risk manager in the city told me he thinks it is unlikely that the levees will ever suffer another breach.

Let's hope he's right. Otherwise, another punch like the one Katrina delivered could be a knockout.