Hurricane Katrina

On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina flooded 80% of the City of New Orleans, and killed 1,577 people in Louisiana. One of the hardest hit areas was the Lower 9th Ward which flooded rapidly after the breach of the Industrial Canal. Multiple accounts have claimed the canal breached explosively. The flooding in the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood killed over 700 people and destroyed over 4,000 homes. Houses within the immediate vicinity of the breach were smashed and ruined instantly, while others were said to be pushed completely off their foundations. The Industrial Canal is a 5.5 mile waterway that connects the Mississippi River to the Intracoastal Waterway and when the levies broke, all areas east of it flooded about 12ft above sea level. Since the Lower 9th Ward lies below sea level, houses in that area were totally submerged leaving 100% of the homes uninhabitable.


Despite the presence of non-profit organizations in the lower 9th ward, approximately only 1/5 of the community has returned. From interviewing residents of the area, I’ve learned that many families didn’t have insurance to cover the repairs needed on their homes; therefore they haven’t been able to return. Many have been struggling ever since to find some way to finance the rebuilding of their homes, and have not found the government to be sympathetic to their needs. A common problem for families requesting government assistance is their failure to prove ownership. This is because many houses have been passed down from one generation to the next without formally changing the names on the deed. Therefore even families who have lived in the same house and paid taxes on it for generations are rejected by government assistance programs because they cannot prove the property to be theirs.

The community is still struggling to recover. Most of the neighborhoods are made up of vacant lots that are so overgrown with grass and litter it is hard to imagine the tight knit community that once existed here. Since the storm the only school to reopen has been Martin Luther King Jr. School of Science and Technology. Very few businesses have returned, leaving the residents no choice but to travel long distances for basic things like grocery shopping or going out to eat. As reports show, the Lower 9th Ward is trailing far behind the rest of the city on its road to recovery.