Next weekend, Aug. 29, will mark one decade since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast and nearly ruined the incomparable city of New Orleans.
Katrina dumped so much water into the Gulf that the levees designed in 1965 to protect New Orleans were washed out and the city experienced massive flooding. The death toll was high — 1,800 by many estimates. More than 204,000 homes in New Orleans were damaged or destroyed and more than 800,000 citizens displaced — the greatest displacement in the US since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
This natural disaster was compounded by a man-made disaster. Reconstruction was hindered by bureaucratic problems and funding issues with the US Corps of Army Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Several relief agencies filled the gap. Some considered this breakdown in the government a tragic failure of the Bush Administration.
Financial, emotional and health factors made every Katrina survivor’s recovery story different. Insurance scams and contractor fraud made many people wary and distrustful of rebuilding efforts. This is one of the many reasons why many former residents have not returned to New Orleans. Repopulating the city has been steady but gradual, with neither the rapid return of most evacuees hoped for by some optimists, nor the long-term “ghost town” desertion of the city feared by some pessimists. Tourism, though, has returned to New Orleans.
Those who have rebuilt their lives there have the admiration and respect of those of us who witnessed that tragedy from afar. May they go from strength to strength.
Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News
