Hurricane Katrina: 10 years on
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Mary Kay, second queen of the Wild Tchoupitoulas Mardi Gras Indian Tribe, raises her arms along the Industrial Canal levee in the Lower 9th Ward at a ceremony marking the 10th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, in New Orleans, Louisiana, August 29, 2015. REUTERS/Edmund D. Fountain
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President Obama visits New Orleans on August 27, 2015. Obama heralded the progress New Orleans has made rebuilding since Hurricane Katrina battered the area 10 years ago but said more needed to be done to overcome poverty and inequality.
U.S. President Barack Obama delivers a speech at the Andrew P. Sanchez Community Center in Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana, August 27, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with a local resident upon arrival at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in New Orleans, Louisiana, August 27, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Obama heralded the progress New Orleans has made rebuilding since Hurricane Katrina battered the area 10 years ago but said more needed to be done to overcome poverty and inequality. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
A map of a master plan to protect and restore the Louisiana coast is seen as U.S. President Barack Obama attends a meeting with local leaders at the Andrew P. Sanchez Community Center in Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana, August 27, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
U.S. President Barack Obama embraces a local resident after delivering a speech at the Andrew P. Sanchez Community Center in Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana, August 27, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks during a visit to an area reconstructed after Hurricane Katrina, accompanied by New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu (L), during a presidential visit to New Orleans, Louisiana, August 27, 2015.
U.S. President Barack Obama visits an area reconstructed after Hurricane Katrina, during a presidential visit to New Orleans, Louisiana, August 27, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
U.S. President Barack Obama chats with local residents of an area reconstructed after Hurricane Katrina, accompanied by New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu (3rd R), in New Orleans, Louisiana, August 27, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
U.S. President Barack Obama sits for lunch at Willie Mae's restaurant near downtown during a presidential visit to New Orleans, Louisiana, August 27, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
U.S. President Barack Obama prepares to board Air Force One on the way back to Washington after a presidential visit to New Orleans, Louisiana, August 27, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Guests, with their hair blown back, watch while Marine One takes off as U.S. President Barack Obama departs the White House in Washington August 27, 2015. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque1 of 11
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Low-lying Louisiana parish regroups behind reinforced levee system
ReutersOf all the areas near New Orleans blasted by Hurricane Katrina, none was harder hit than St. Bernard Parish, a low-lying coastal stretch southeast of the city, once known for its small fishing -
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Obama lauds New Orleans' progress since Katrina, says more to be done
ReutersPresident Barack Obama on Thursday heralded the progress New Orleans has made rebuilding since Hurricane Katrina battered the area 10 years ago but said more needed to be done to overcome poverty and -
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Obama to herald New Orleans' progress ahead of Katrina anniversary
President Barack Obama on Thursday will highlight the "structural inequality" that hurt poor black people in New Orleans before the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, during a visit to celebrate the city's progress 10 years after the storm.On what the White House said was his ninth trip to Louisiana, Obama will meet with people who lived through the storm and recovered, heralding a city reborn.
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Animal protection volunteer Jane Garrison poses with a picture taken during a pet rescue after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, at her house in Palm Springs, California, United States, August 6, 2015. Garrison travelled to New Orleans to assist after the hurricane struck. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
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Dehydrated and exhausted, Milvertha Hendricks, 84 at the time, sat in a chair on the sidewalk covered with an American flag blanket for six days before she was evacuated. It made no sense.- Alan Chin
Read more - Hurricane Katrina: Back from Iraq to find more horror - and incompetence -
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The calm before the storm, the saying goes. But for many survivors of Katrina, it’s the calm after the storm that truly haunts.
- Reuters photographer Carlos Barria, on arriving in New Orleans, ten years ago
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"It was very interesting going back to these places as I started to get a sense of what had happened to the people I met back then. Some had moved away, crossing state lines to start a new life elsewhere.
Others were still there, in some cases partly because they lacked the opportunity to move away and start over."
- CARLOS BARRIA, REUTERS PHOTOGRAPHER -
Photographer Carlos Barria holds a print of a photograph he took in 2005, as he matches it up at the same location 10 years on, in New Orleans, United States, August 16, 2015. The print shows Errol Morning sitting on his boat on a flooded street September 5, 2005, after Hurricane Katrina struck. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
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At one point I drove to Lafitte, south of the city, and was surprised to find a house I photographed 10 years ago still standing, even though it was quite a flimsy structure even then.
I started to play with the photos and the lines in them, comparing them with the exact same location where I found myself.
Visit The Wider Image to see Carlos's Katrina scenes overlaid -
Photographer Carlos Barria holds a print of a photograph he took in 2005, as he matches it up at the same location 10 years on, in New Orleans, United States, August 16, 2015. The print shows Joshua Creek looking at the height that the floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina reached at his house, September 13, 2005.
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Ten years on, Hurricane Katrina's scars endure for black New OrleansNEW ORLEANS | BY LETITIA STEINA decade after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans seems to have found its rhythm again: the French Quarter is choked with tourists, construction cranes tower over the skyline, and hipsters bike to cafes in gentrifying neighborhoods.
But recovery has been uneven in the city, which took the brunt of the 2005 storm that killed more than 1,800 people and was the costliest in U.S. history.
Many properties still bear physical scars from the hurricane, particularly in poorer African-American neighborhoods. Social, demographic and political changes still ripple through the city.
In the mostly black Lower Ninth Ward, devastated by the flooding, Charles Brown is still attending services in his pastor's nearly empty living room, waiting for the day when Mount Nebo Bible Baptist Church is rebuilt.
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Rebuilt confidence in New Orleans flood controls fuels rebuildingNEW ORLEANS | BY KATHY FINNWhen Angele Givens looks around her neighborhood in the Gentilly section of New Orleans, she is struck by the contrast with 10 years ago, when Hurricane Katrina triggered floods that filled her home and tens of thousands of others with water.
Today, more than 80 percent of the structures in her Vista Park neighborhood have been renovated or rebuilt, and work is underway on others. But the area may never have staged its comeback without a rebuilding of confidence in local flood protection, said Givens, president of her neighborhood's improvement association. -
A decade after Katrina, Bourbon street is rocking againNEW ORLEANS | BY LETITIA STEIN AND KATHY FINN
Eight days after Hurricane Katrina struck, food critic Tom Fitzmorris was asked how many of the 800 or so restaurants in storm-ravaged New Orleans were open. His answer was zero.A decade later, he marvels at the city's culinary renaissance, a major draw for the 9.5 million tourists who visited last year. With more than 1,400 restaurants now open for business in the metropolitan area, it is easy to find the po'boy sandwiches, gumbo and other Creole dishes that have made the region famous.The dining boom reflects a remarkable bounce-back for the travel industry, an economic pillar of the city that took the brunt of the costliest storm in U.S. history when Katrina made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, 2005.
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Blighted houses still mar New Orleans a decade after KatrinaFrom the hardscrabble Lower Ninth Ward to middle-class Gentilly, thousands of abandoned homes still litter neighborhoods in New Orleans, a glaring reminder of the mass exodus of residents that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
A man walks past an abandoned building in the Upper Ninth Ward neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, August 1, 2015. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman -
Nobody envisioned at the time of the storm that 10 years out there would still be very visible ramifications of the storm on the local landscape."
- Peter Yaukey, University of New Orleans professor who has surveyed the condition of damaged properties. -
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The vast portfolio of deteriorating houses in New Orleans runs counter to other signs pointing to an improbable rebound by the city from the devastation of late August 2005.Today the world-renowned French Quarter is buzzing with tourists, new restaurants abound and many neighborhoods are gentrifying.The blighted houses remain in part because of a tangle of bureaucratic red tape involved in selling them off.Read more - Blighted houses still mar New Orleans a decade after Katrina
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As the dark clouds from a big storm gathered in the sky, local resident Errol Morning remembered that he was not too drunk that day, he only had a few drinks of whisky in the morning. I managed to find Morning, whose photo I took after the hurricane, again this year.
But his buzz gave way to a sense of dread as water began seeping into his trailer home in a suburban area of New Orleans, slowly rose up the walls, then kept rising, all the way to the roof. He climbed on top of his home.
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Many people never moved back. They crossed state lines instead to start a new life. For those who returned home, the reality was hard - an entire city on its knees waiting to be rebuilt.
Some areas like the Lower Ninth Ward have seen many changes. The nearby levee broke, unleashing a wall of water that almost completely destroyed all the houses. The area is now rebuilt with homes on stilts.
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The Great DebateBy Alan Chin | August 25, 2015Ten years ago, I came home to New York after spending three months covering the savage war in Iraq.I was trying to enjoy doing nothing in late August when the phone rang: my friend and colleague Samantha Appleton was calling from Nigeria. She said to me words to the effect of “have you been watching the news? There’s a Category 5 hurricane barreling down on New Orleans. They are really going to get it.”And I said, “Don’t worry. There’s always unlucky people that get killed and a lot of stuff smashed, but it happens all the time. They know how to handle natural disasters down there.”
A helicopter drops water on burning houses either ignited by broken gas mains or arson from looters, according to local residents on Napoleon Avenue. Photograph by ALAN CHIN -
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New Orleans' finances still vulnerable 10 years after Katrina: Moody's
Thousands of houses in New Orleans, Louisiana remain under water one week after Hurricane Katrina went through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama in this September 5, 2005 file photo. REUTERS/ALLEN FREDRICKSON/FILESA decade after New Orleans was hit by Hurricane Katrina, the costliest storm in U.S. history, the city's finances have improved but still face several challenges, according to a Moody's Investors Service report released on Monday.
Pension, retiree healthcare and debt service costs combined increased nearly 54 percent from 2009 to 2014, from $129 million to $198 million in 2014, Moody's noted, while fixed costs exceeded 30 percent of the city's operating revenues, even as its contribution to its public pensions fell $17.7 million short in fiscal 2014.
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Katrina's unclaimed dead conjure memories of her ravagesNEW ORLEANS | BY LETITIA STEINAA decade after one of the most deadly storms in U.S history.Hurricane Katrina's forgotten victims lie in 83 caskets entombed in black granite mausoleums behind the gothic gates of a New Orleans cemetery. Their visitors are mostly tourists.
Each metal coffin is marked with serial numbers inside and out, should anyone ever seek to bring one of them home. The names of 30 remain a mystery, but authorities have recorded details about their DNA and where each was found.
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