Eight Years After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Has Been Resurrected

[cbayer]

This is highly personal for me and Jason Berry one of my favorite New Orleans writers. I hope we can take a minute to remember what started 8 years ago today.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/29/eight-years-after-hurricane-katrina-new-orleans-has-resurrected.html

Aug 29, 2013 12:42 PM EDT


Mario Tama / Getty ImagesWriter

Jason Berry marks the eighth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina by looking at the triumphs and failures of New Orleans today, as chronicled in a handful of recent books on the Big Easy.

Eight years after the Katrina floodwaters soaked 80 percent of New Orleans, the holy city where jazz began has risen from the muck, a blue-town floorshow in the deep-red South.

New Orleans has 100,000 fewer people and 500 more restaurants than on August 29, 2005. The city that sank on global television has a booming film industry, thriving music economy, Mardi Gras, Bowl games, and festivals that have spawned a grassroots entertainment mecca.

But the living city carries the dead city, places where nearly 1,000 people perished, and many thousands more were too broke or broken to make it back. Most of the Lower Ninth Ward and chunks of New Orleans East, near Lake Pontchartrain, are still ghost towns. Husks of homes, some of them choked in jungular vines, furnish a tropical Pompeii for viewers on the disaster bus tours. Nevertheless, 79 percent of homeowners did rebuild, many after long battles with stiff-arming insurance adjustors that sent them into the labyrinth of Road Home, a federally-funded program that dispensed grants for construction costs at an achingly slow pace.

With more than 360,000 people, a resurrected New Orleans stands out in high relief from the spurious values of the Tea Party. Absent the federal lifeline that the social Darwinists who rule the House hope to slash, New Orleans would have been left a mud town of losses to rival Detroit.

more at link

[pinto]

1. ...

"New Orleans, flaws and all, is an encouraging sign that battered places can rebuild and begin to prosper."

Good read.

[cbayer]

4. I never had any doubt that New Orleans would rise from the dead.

It's spooky like that.

[Behind the Aegis]

2. I remember being there during the 1st anniversary of Katrina.

We had just moved from Oklahoma in May 2006. I was walking in Jackson Square the day before the actual day Katrina hit, a year later. It was cloudy, sprinkling, and the thunder and lightning was getting pretty bad. I was standing outside the church when a huge peel of thunder tore across the sky. The bustling square stopped dead in its tracks! It was easy to see how visibly shaken many people were. Then, I turned around and there was a child with his mother, grasping her hand tightly, and he said, "Momma, we aren't going to lose our house again, are we?" I lost it and went home! I cried for almost two hours and I wasn't even a victim.

Things did get better, but it was tough. The city was a mess and the politicians made it worse in many ways.

[cbayer]

3. Thanks for sharing that.

I was there for the first 8 days after the storm hit and, although I consider myself a survivor, I have been unalterably changed by the event.

Going back is getting easier and I am currently planning to reestablish a part time life there.

I love it and still consider it my home.

I don't think anyone in New Orleans was surprised that Louisiana politics made some things worse. It always does, lol.

[Behind the Aegis]

5. I wasn't prepared for NOLA politics. Talk about a world unto its own!

We haven't been back since we moved back to OK, but we want to go back so bad. Every time I see a music video or TV show with NOLA in it, I get misty eyed and nostalgic. After the storm, everything was so damn expensive, especially land. That of course has changed, which ended up costing us about $60,000.

[cbayer]

6. I had the great fortune of going to Jazz Fest this year. Want to hear something weird?

I dreamt of New Orleans during Katrina last night for what seemed like the entire night. I relived much of what actually happened. I was presented with the some opportunities to make decisions and was tormented with whether I should have done some things differently, could have been of more help.

When I woke up this morning, I asked myself if this was the anniversary. I am not concious of having anticipated the date or read anything about it recently.

Anyway, my sleeping brain was aware on some level.

It takes very little for me to get misty eyed or even overwhelmed about New Orleans.

[Behind the Aegis]

7. That happens with anniversaries on a subconscious level.

Every March, there are a few days that I will get really down and cry for no reason...until I realize, it was the week (day) my aunt died. I was devastated. We may not always be conscious of the trauma, but it still seems to find us.

[cbayer]

8. You are right, it does seem to find us.

And mourning the loss on an anniversary is not a bad thing at all.

[awoke_in_2003]

9. And I bet developers...

are slobbering over the abandoned real estate.

[Javaman]

10. +1

I went to Jazzfest this year and most locals do not go. Why? because most of the locals left. And those that stayed can't afford to attend anymore because of the jacked up prices.

I could go on and on in regards to what I witnessed there.

[cbayer]

12. Hey I was at Jazzfest!

I don't know where you hung out, but a lot of locals do actually go. I would say it was about the same proportion of local/visitor this year as it has always been.

I lived there for over 20 years and have been back about 5 times since katrina. It gets better and better and feels more and more like New Orleans every time I go back.

There has clearly been a drop in population, but pretty much everyone I knew when I lived there is there now.

What is it you witnessed?

[cbayer]

11. Would that be a bad thing?

[geek tragedy]

13. Amazing how a city looks more prosperous when they force all the poor

to leave.