Seeing thousands of sharp-suited professionals happily networking away among the hundreds of RIMS exhibits in an immaculate convention centre was enough to create the impression that New Orleans was back to normal.

Just up the road in the French Quarter, where the cafes and bars were packed at night with visitors enjoying the Big Easy’s unique ambience, the worst natural disaster in American history seemed but a memory.

Venture just a couple of miles farther east, however, and Hurricane Katrina’s horrific legacy is still there for all to see.

Katrina paid her deadly visit on Monday, August 29, 2005. The levees broke and 80 percent of the Crescent City found itself inundated. An estimated 1,500 people died in the floods and thousands more lost their homes. Tens of thousands left and have not returned. The population is now around 255,000, compared to 454,000 before the storm.

The worst-hit part of town was the Lower Ninth Ward, a poor, black neighbourhood that is the lowest-lying part of a city below sea level. It used to be home to 14,000 people but now whole swathes of it are lifeless wasteland.

The astonishing thing is how little appears to have changed over the last 20 months in this area lying just east of the Industrial Canal, which links the Mississippi River in the south with Lake Pontchartrain to the north. It is as if the place has been abandoned, ignored and untouched since the day the floodwaters finally retreated.

The mangled remains of scores of one-storey wooden houses lie all over the place, overgrown with weeds. What is even eerier is look down one of the silent, car-less roads, where a row of houses used to stand, and see only the cinder blocks on which those homes used to sit as a futile precaution against flooding.

There are signs everywhere of the nightmare scenario that played out here for residents. A high water mark is clearly visible on one house — on the roof. Some of the wrecked roofs have holes that were kicked out by people who climbed up to their loft and could only escape the rising water by going up further.

Some of course, didn’t make it. Many homes still bear the red crosses that were spray-painted on walls or doors by rescue workers to indicate where they had searched, when and what they had found. One home bears the words: “One dead in attic.” Another wall is emblazoned with: “One small dog.” The dates of the searches were also notable, some as late as “9/20” — more than three weeks after Katrina struck. Sixty bodies were found in the area, but it’s likely that many more dead were washed away together with cars, trees and houses.

There is almost no sign of life in the part of the Lower Nine, as it’s known locally, closest to the canal walls that burst soon after Katrina reached the city. As the electricity supply has not yet been restored to the area, explained my guide, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) trailers that have been erected for returning residents in other parts of town cannot be stationed here.

However in one deserted street a trailer stands where a house once did. In front of it is a white table, propped up to display a poignant message, scrawled in felt-tip pen. It reads: “We want our country to love us as much as we love our country. The strength of our country belongs to us. Mr. Bush, rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward, ‘cross the canal, Tennessee Street, NOT IRAQ”. Billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money and private donations have been committed to the New Orleans recovery effort — which makes the lack of progress “‘cross the canal” even more shocking.

The local daily paper, The Times-Picayune, reported this week that the Road Home programme, designed to compensate homeowners for some of their storm losses to help them rebuild their lives, as well as their homes, was working very slowly and going broke.

“If the Road Home keeps paying out homeowner grants at the current rate — and all the remaining applicants qualify for compensation — the state aid programme could be more than $3 billion short,” the paper reported on Wednesday. “For the first 10,000 grants, the programme paid out nearly $750 million. That left about 120,000 applicants in the pipeline as of last week.”

The state of Louisiana has budgeted $7.5 billion for the scheme, $1.14 billion of which has not even received yet from FEMA due to legal issues. But claims look likely to end up totalling more than $10 billion, the paper reported.

If that money is reaching Lower Nine, there is little sign of it. Last weekend New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and activist the Rev. Jesse Jackson marched through the neighbourhood to highlight its slow recovery. Mr. Nagin blamed the slow release of government funds.

The reasons may be more complicated than that. For one thing, in a neighbourhood with a home ownership rate of 59 percent, many owners have simply not returned. A report published this week, however, showed that is beginning to change, with parts of east New Orleans back up to one third of their pre-Katrina population. Plans mooted by both Mr. Nagin and the federal government to buy up the devastated properties, clear them and convert the area into parkland have met with strong opposition.

What happened during the disaster and since has caused much racial tension and suspicion. Some 98.5 percent of Lower Ninth Ward residents were black. Some even suspected the levees had been blown up deliberately, so the authorities could clear the poor area and redevelop it.

The RIMS Conference gave the city a boost by bringing in 10,000 people and their spending power for a few days. In addition RIMS put on a comedy benefit show featuring Dennis Miller on Wednesday night for some 4,000 delegates, with all money raised going towards buying a $500,000 communications and command vehicle for the New Orleans Fire Department.

And many of the insurers and reinsurers represented at RIMS had paid out enormous claims from the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes, Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Bermuda played a significant part. Of the combined $66 billion in insured losses from the storms, Island companies shouldered around a quarter of the burden.

Two weeks after the floods, President George W. Bush stood in New Orleans’ magnificent, historic Jackson Square and announced to the world: “This great city will rise again.” He added: “We will build higher and better.”

The driver of the bus I was on told me he’d been present for that speech. “I ain’t seen it happen yet,” he laughed.

The New Orleans recovery still has a long way to go.

New Orleans’ painful recovery