Remembering Katrina

NEW ORLEANS — As people in western Louisiana continue to dig out from Hurricane Laura, residents of eastern Louisiana and Mississippi marked the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on Saturday.

In New Orleans, Mayor LaToya Cantrell and other officials held a ceremony at 8:29 a.m. — the moment the devastating storm made landfall. Cantrell laid a wreath at the city’s Katrina memorial where the remains of unclaimed or unidentified victims of the storm were laid to rest.

“Let’s continue to remember and let’s never forget,” Cantrell said during the event. snapped off their posts or dangling. No stoplights worked, making it an exercise in trust to share the road with other motorists.

Mayor Nic Hunter cautioned that there was no timetable for restoring electricity and that water-treatment plants “took a beating,” leaving barely a trickle of water coming out of most faucets.

The Louisiana Department of Health estimated that more than 220,000 people were without water. Restoration of those services could take weeks or months, and full rebuilding could take years.

Forty nursing homes were relying on generators, and assessments were underway to determine whether more than 860 residents in 11 facilities that had been evacuated could return.

Several hospitals in Calcasieu Parish and one in Cameron Parish evacuated critical patients to other facilities because of water and power issues, the state health department said.

Nineteen babies who weathered the hurricane at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital were brought to other hospitals across around the state. The babies were at the neonatal intensive care unit of another hospital and had to be moved Wednesday.