Superdome’s revival resonates decade later
QB hopes recent flooding victims draw inspiration
NEW ORLEANS — Drew Brees hopes the world watches what happens in and around the Superdome on Monday night.
As the Saints host the Atlanta Falcons, New Orleans will mark the 10-year anniversary of the reopening of the hulking, 73,000seat stadium on Sept. 25, 2006, following its unprecedented 10-month restoration from extensive damage caused by Hurricane Katrina.
Brees figures coverage of the game will resonate with people he met this summer from floodravaged areas of West Virginia, when the Saints held training camp there — or with Louisiana residents whose communities around Baton Rouge were inundated last month.
“So many of those people, right when it happens to you, just can’t fathom ever being able to come back from that,” Brees said. “New Orleans is a great example and symbol of how it can come back when you have this community that bands together and continues to press on.”
The handful of current Saints who were on the team in 2006 — Brees, right guard Jahri Evans, right tackle Zach Strief and safety Roman Harper — don’t anticipate an atmosphere as electric and cathartic as a decade ago. Several said it would be impossible to contrive the raw, communal emotion that poured forth during a game played just 13 months after Katrina had transformed a community renowned for its joie de vivre into a sea of devastation.
And nothing could replicate the thunderous, drink-spilling frenzy that erupted when then-special teams standout Steve Gleason blocked a punt that Curtis Deloatch recovered for a Saints touchdown. That play — widely regarded as the most memorable in franchise history — is immortalized in a statue just outside the dome.
Still, they expect this Monday night to be special in its own way.
“As you begin to highlight the specific elements around New Orleans that have come back even stronger than they were prior to the storm, that’s a great story to tell,” Brees said. “It’s a very uplifting story.”
The Superdome, one of America’s most famous sporting arenas long before Katrina, became a poignant symbol of destruction, suffering and loss when Katrina hit. Its expansive white roof was torn up, exposing an estimated 30,000 evacuees inside to falling debris and water pouring in.
But architects advised it could be saved, and it required crews working long hours, six to seven days a week to get it done.