Touro Hospital CEO Les Hirsch said he’ll never forget the moment his medical facility was forced to shut down – it was his seventh day on the job, the day after Hurricane Katrina landed.

"Before you know it, within a few hours,” Hirsch said, “our generators were failing and a few hours after that it was clear to me Touro would have to be evacuated.”

Those generators have since been replaced and could keep the hospital operational for about six days straight in the event of a power failure. And much of the $2.9 million was made possible by FEMA.

“We've obligated to date over 4.9 billion—billion with a ‘B’—dollars,” said Bob Josephson, FEMA Director of External Affairs.

That equates to about 35,000 rebuilding projects in the state, the most recent of which include: $21.8 million to rebuild an acute care hospital in Cameron Parish; $10.6 million to rebuild Our Lady of Lourdes School in Slidell; $3.5 million to hire an engineering firm to help the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board.

And FEMA hopes to add fixing pot holes and warped roads to the list. Two years after the storm, FEMA said it has not finished dishing out public assistance money, because the agency is still accepting claim applications. The agency could allocate another $1.4 billion in aid before 2008.

“That's repairs to schools and bridges,” and whatever else Katrina and Rita may have left behind, Josephson said.

But some non-profit groups, cities, and schools said they’re still waiting on their public assistance money.

And one reason FEMA is still in the process of approving applications is because it takes awhile for cities, schools and other groups to submit the applications since they first have to get their construction plans together, Josephson said.

Even once an application is approved by FEMA, the money is distributed directly to the state and then it's up to state officials to trickle the funds down to the community.

Nearly $5 billion has been given to the state by FEMA. Only half of that has actually been filtered out.

Josephson said that’s because the state has it’s own separate approval process groups and businesses must go through.