In the dark, a community’s righteous anger festers

As J. Lo’s and Shakira’s  show ended – is it actually over? – fireworks exploded above Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, producing  a kaleidoscope of Technicolor pyrotechnics.
    

All I could think about was the somber irony being played out 670 air miles to the west in New Orleans: the partially collapsed Hard Rock Hotel, listing for the world to see, containing the mortal remains of two construction workers caught in the collapse nearly four months ago.
    

In the slow process to decide the best and safest way to take the building down – and, with God’s grace, retrieve the bodies for the grieving families – everyone who lives in New Orleans deserves better.
    

Certainly, the type of collapse and the shattered structural integrity of the building require engineers and city officials to examine carefully every law of calculus and physics to ensure that no other workers are injured or killed in the demolition process.
    

Yes, that can be a grindingly slow process. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the city’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) are investigating the collapse, and they need to be deliberate and exacting. 
    

But what has been apparent since the collapse is the utter lack of solid information about the collapse, the demolition and the future of the site – information that should be coming directly from the city of New Orleans and from the developers.
    

Information after a community crisis is a precious commodity, and by keeping citizens in the dark about what is known – and, especially, about what is not known – leaders fail in their most fundamental task.
    

I can distinctly remember after Katrina, listening to WWL radio as residents began to phone in and talk about the mysteriously rising water levels 48 hours after the storm passed.
    

Virtually every parish president was on the radio offering regular, post-storm updates. To this day, I am amazed by the heroic service WWL radio provided in one of the darkest moments of our 300-year history.
    

And, yet, I kept asking myself on the Monday after Katrina blew through: Why aren’t we hearing from Mayor Nagin? Where is he? If he’s not available to give us the latest verified information, we must really be in trouble.
    

And, so we were.
    

Leadership 101 does not need a team of attorneys to vet statements. It requires transparency and honesty. It requires admitting what you don’t know.
    

The failure of the city to regularly inform the community about what is going on at the Hard Rock site is a failure of leadership.
    

That’s why the City Council got it exactly right last week when it voted unanimously to form a special committee (of all seven members) that will hold hearings into the Hard Rock collapse, as well as the recovery and demolition efforts since then.
    

Mayor Cantrell says the City Council hearings will impede the process of the OSHA and OIG investigations and slow the demolition.
    

I seriously doubt that.
    

When the tarp covering one of the two bodies trapped in the rubble blew off two weeks ago, the mayor complained about those grisly pictures being shipped instantly to the world on social media.
    

She was understandably and legitimately outraged by the affront to two mourning families, whose human dignity was shredded once again.
    

But what about the city’s responsibility to those families? Yes, the city is working behind the scenes to offer comfort and aid to those families, which is the right thing to do.
    

Where the mayor’s outrage falls flat, however, is in not doing enough to ensure that an entire community understands why, after nearly four months, we have a building weeping on Canal Street.
    

The solution is not rerouting Mardi Gras parades. The solution is rerouting our thinking and treating citizens like adults. The grieving families deserve so much better.
    

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at pfinney@clarionherald.org.