New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have been rebuilt. However, there are continuing questions raised by Katrina in 2005 regarding climate, government and race.
Twenty years later, Edward Buckles Jr. remembers Katrina – at age 13, his neighborhood was swept away by the raging seas of a hurricane.
Twenty years later, America also remembers Katrina – one of the most deadly natural disasters in modern history. It raises continuing questions today about the climate crisis, the role of government, and the division of race and class.
A new USA Today/Ipsos poll said 85% of Americans are familiar with Hurricane Katrina despite the passing of two turbulent decades filled with competing news events, from economic meltdowns to the international pandemic.
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New Orleans officials and experts share how Hurricane Katrina restructured its emergency plans and preparations.
“The images are burnt into people’s hearts, hearts and souls about how those days and weeks look underwater,” said Mary Landryu, Democrat Sen. of Louisiana, daughter of the then mayor of New Orleans and the daughter of another sister. “Thousands of people left behind in the Superdome – that’s a catastrophe, a real failure of the local, state and federal government.”
As the hurricane approached, she and her extended family fled summer camp at Pont Chart Line Lake. A few hours later, “it was destroyed,” she said in an interview. “There were no sticks or stones left.”
The most intense memories are, of course, in the south, where scars from the storm’s abuses can still be seen.
However, traces of Katrina remained significantly wider across the country, with around nine, from 10 in the northeast, and more than ten in the Midwest and West.
Even among people now 18-34 years old, they are just teenagers when the storm hit and are not yet born – three-quarters know at least a little, sometimes much about the tropical cyclone that escaped in August 2005 in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Almost all surveyed said the storm had a negative impact on New Orleans. Three out of four explained the harm that it was important.
Hurricane Katrina is believed to have killed 1,392 people, the deadliest hurricane since the 1928 Okechevy Hurricane, and when adjusted for inflation, it is believed to have caused an estimated $200 billion in damage, one of the most costly storms struggling the United States.
Who should help when disaster strikes?
One reason Americans may remember Katrina is that the story is not actually over, and the problem that it ignited has not been resolved.
“Katrina was a canary of the coal mine,” said Maurice Carlos Ruffin, now an award-winning novelist and professor at Louisiana State University, but at the time a young professional who lost his home, job and car in the storm. It spotlighted what many viewed poor people and people of color as government incompetence or neglect.
Among the issues that resonate today:
What should I do before the next storm?
Eight in ten said Katrina had shown that the country needs to improve disaster preparedness. Almost 73%, 73% said they demonstrated that they need to invest more in infrastructure in vulnerable coastal regions.
Katrina was not only a natural disaster, but also an artificial disaster. The death toll has deteriorated as the New Orleans embankment was breached. He was subsequently criticised for engineering flaws and cost-cutting measures when the US Army Corps of Engineers were built.
Who should help after a disaster?
The majority of Americans approved the main roles of the federal government (71%), state government (83%) and local government (79%), but not in the private sector (38%). Approximately 66% called services from the Federal Emergency Management Agency “very necessary” and 57% supported the budget increase.
However, FEMA is currently being attacked by the Trump administration, and its future is uncertain. President Donald Trump said he wanted to phase out FEMA after the current hurricane season ended in November, cutting funds and shifting most of its responsibility to the state.
Despite important support for FEMA, Trump’s proposals have hit chords with the public in several ways. Americans were skeptical of the ability of governments at all levels to handle major natural disasters, but were more confident in state and local governments (48% and 49%, respectively) than in federal governments (30%).
Even lower was their confidence that Washington had learned Katrina’s lessons. Only 22% predicted that the federal response would be better if a storm like Katrina hit again.
Should people not put anything at risk?
There was no consensus on how much the government should support people living in areas known to be particularly susceptible to landslides, earthquakes, hurricanes and floods. 35% said that in the event of a disaster, the government should help them recover.
It is not surprising that the view of the role of government reflects the country’s partisan division. Democrats 2-1 supported the government’s support. Republicans said they should be the ones who are at risk, at risk.
Is the weather disaster worsening?
Most Americans said extreme weather has become more frequent and more intense in the places they live in the past decade. The third said he was sometimes or often worried about becoming a victim of disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.
The surveyed person said in 3-1 that humans could slow or reverse climate change, but would be willing to change their behavior to do so. It is thought that one in five people is considered. A fifth said it was too late.
Online voting for 1,023 adults, taken from June 13th to 15th using the IPSOS KnowledgePanel, has an error margin of either plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
Dividing your life into the previous Katrina and the after Katrina
For some, Katrina’s legacy is personal, not a policy.
“Whether you’re looking at it from a tourism perspective or from a business perspective, are you debating that New Orleans has completely bounced?” Buckles, the filmmaker who produced “Katrina Babies,” is an HBO documentary about the impact of the storm on the children who lived it. “But I think it’s something you really can’t see – mental health trauma – it’s still emerging.”
Many of the people he introduced said the lesson they learned is that neither the federal government nor the local police can count to save them when a catastrophe strikes. They explain that their lives are divided into previous Katrina and after Katrina.
“It’s constantly in our daily conversation,” Buckles said. “It’s like you can hardly talk about anything without mentioning Katrina.”
A national poll showed a majority of 58% that Katrina showed that race and economic status helps determine who will be hurt by natural disasters and how much.
That was the 3-1 view among white and Hispanic respondents. Among black respondents, the opinion was held between 6-1 and 61%-11%.
In modern times, a handful of images have become iconic, defining historical moments and being recognized by flash. For the civil rights movement, the Alabama Troopers lifted the tranch to beat the Marchers across Selma’s Edmund Petus Bridge. On 9/11, three New York City firefighters are holding American flags in the wreckage of the World Trade Center.
Some of Katrina’s images are indelible, some of the hopeless people trapped in roofs and attics for days, with thousands taking chaotic shelters in the Superdome over the flood. President George W. Bush’s president is flying overhead in Air Force 1, peering into the window of devastation a mile down.
Exclusive Book: How Katrina Changed All of us
Critics saw it as a demonstration of his distance rather than a sign of his concern, and Katrina became a kind of political shorthand. Critics will debate when and whether the following president has “their Katrina moment,” a misstep that puts their reputation and support at risk.
“The hand of God has wiped out the shore.”
Twenty years later, then Mississippi Republican Governor Haley Barber remembers Katrina and her devastation. “It seemed like God’s hand had wiped out the shore,” he said in an interview. The storm and floods killed 238 residents of his state, leaving behind billions of dollars in damages – he also remembers pouring out of support from across the country when the state was rebuilt.
Twenty years later, Ruffin remembers Katrina too, wondering how it reshapes him and the country. “I’m still an optimist, but I wonder if it was an optimist that didn’t happen,” he said. “There were many moments in American history that I think changed my attitude towards myself.”
To him and others, Katrina still stands as one of those moments.
20 years from now.
