Obama to visit New Orleans for Katrina anniversary

To be sure, boarded-up houses and overgrown lots remain common sights in some of the poorest neighbourhoods, a sign that the city’s revitalisation has bypassed many areas off the main tourist drags.

While there is no way to determine a priori whether all of these partners see the city’s multi-faceted progress exactly as portrayed it’s by Katrina 10, there are other nonprofits are somewhat less enamored with the Katrina 10 narrative. Ward is now an Associate Professor at Tulane University in New Orleans.

“Here we are a decade later, the sun is shining, and New Orleans is smiling once again”, she said.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were displaced from their homes after mass flooding.

It is all but obvious that the Gulf Coast is a powerful site for a statement on climate change, but there is another agenda going on that the president may be called upon to address, whether he wants to or not. New Orleans has grown since Katrina but is still smaller than before the storm.

“If you found a life here because of your situation in life, that’s great”, Landrieu said.

The older parts of New Orleans – the French Quarter, Garden District and central business district – escaped the worst of Katrina’s wrath because they were built on higher ground. It’s encircled by a new almost $15 billion flood protection system.

Since Katrina, numerous public schools have been replaced with charters. And Forbes Magazine listed New Orleans as America’s No. 1 “brain magnet”. And real estate prices have soared, meaning some families can not afford to come back. “They don’t eat the way we eat, they don’t hug the way we hug, they don’t love the way”. Because you know what? “I mean, it was a big, big, massive deal that spanned the entire city….” I love Atlanta.

“Not only has New Orleans come back….”

A squad of heavily armed soldiers – who had been given shoot-to-kill orders – marched into the glow of our headlights as we drove through the pitch-black French Quarter.

Chantel Hodges Jones is originally from New Orleans East and has a good job at MD Anderson hospital in the Texas Medical Center. If anything, Amerski said, Katrina provided the National Guard an opportunity to rebuilt a hodge-podge approach to building the historic military post.

“It’s an unfolding story, and I talk about that”, she said. “And I stayed there 5 1/2 hours, until the water went down”.

The church where the survivors gathered is their new spiritual home, with another congregation still active in New Orleans.

The sense of triumph the mayor exhibits, even today, 10 years later, is also about the Superdome’s resident team: the New Orleans Saints.