Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast with catastrophic storm surge and flooding, New Orleans marked the storm’s anniversary Friday with solemn memorials, uplifting music and a parade that honored the dead, the displaced and the determined survivors who endured and rebuilt.
Dignitaries and longtime residents gathered under gray skies at the memorial to Katrina’s victims in a New Orleans cemetery where dozens who perished in the storm but were never identified or claimed are interred.
“We do everything to keep the memory of these people alive,” said Orrin Duncan, who worked for the coroner when Katrina hit. He comes to the memorial every year, opening the cemetery gate and making sure the grass is cut.
A Category 3 hurricane when it made landfall in Louisiana on Aug. 29, 2005, Katrina inflicted staggering destruction. The storm killed nearly 1,400 people across five states and racked up an estimated $200 billion in damage, flattening homes on the coast and sending ruinous flooding into low-lying neighborhoods.
Two decades later, it remains the costliest U.S. Hurricane on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The failure of New Orleans’ federal levee system inundated about 80% of the city in floodwaters that took weeks to drain. Thousands of people clung to rooftops to survive or waited for evacuation in the sweltering, under-provisioned Superdome football stadium.
In New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, a predominantly Black community devastated by flooding when parts of the protective levee collapsed, hundreds watched Friday as an ensemble of white-clad children atop the levee wall sang a song of the sorrow and survival.
“We are the children of the ones who did not die,” they sang. “We are the children of the people who could fly. And we are the children of the ones who persevered.”
Mayor says New Orleans came back ‘better and stronger’
At the cemetery memorial, revered jazz clarinetist Michael White played “When the Saints Go Marching In” as a procession carried several wreaths to lay beside mausoleums of the storm victims. Mayor LaToya Cantrell recalled the city’s sacrifices and projected optimism for its future.
“New Orleans is still here; New Orleans still stands,” Cantrell said. “New Orleans came back better and stronger than ever before.”
A minute of silence in front of the levee in the Lower Ninth Ward was followed by defiant speeches from community leaders recalling the delayed government response to Katrina that exacerbated suffering in New Orleans and worries that President Donald Trump’s talk of dismantling the Federal Emergency Management Agency, if carried out, would have grave consequences.
“Government neglect killed us,” local civil rights attorney Tracie Washington said. “We will never forget it.”
Hundreds more joined a brass band parade known as a second line. The beloved New Orleans tradition has its roots in African American jazz funerals, in which grieving family members march with the deceased alongside a band and trailed by a second line of dancing friends and bystanders.
A parade has been staged on every Katrina anniversary since local artists organized it in 2006 to help neighbors heal and unite the community.
“Second line allows everybody to come together,” said the Rev. Lennox Yearwood of Hip Hop Caucus, an organizer of the anniversary events. “We’re still here, and despite the storm, people have been strong and very powerful and have come together each and every year to continue to be there for one another.”
City leaders are pushing for the anniversary to become a state holiday.
Katrina’s impact still felt
In Mississippi, where hundreds perished as Katrina’s storm surge demolished homes overlooking the Gulf, residents and officials gathered to mark the anniversary in Gulfport.
Haley Barbour, Mississippi’s governor when the hurricane struck, recalled the “utter obliteration” he witnessed from a helicopter after the storm passed.
“It looked like the hand of God had wiped away the coast,” Barbour said.
The population of New Orleans, nearly half a million before Katrina, is now 384,000 after displaced residents scattered across the nation. While New Orleans remains a majority Black city, the exodus disproportionately affected its Black residents. Tens of thousands were unable to return after Katrina.
In the storm’s aftermath, the levee system was rebuilt, public schools were privatized, most public housing projects were demolished and a hospital was shuttered.
New Orleans resident Gary Wainwright said never misses the cemetery memorial service on Katrina’s anniversary. On Friday he wore a frayed red necktie, covered with the phrase “I love you.” He salvaged it from his battered home in the storm’s aftermath.
“It’s a little bit tattered, like the city,” Wainwright said. “But it’s still beautiful.”
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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.