10 years on, recovery in areas of New Orleans hit worst by the flooding is painfully slow
Scott and Kimberly Roberts clung to each other in the attic of their clapboard home, praying the gale-force winds and rising flood water would not carry them away.
With shaking hands, they captured the moment they were hit by Hurricane Katrina — one of the fiercest storms in living memory — on a US$20 camera bought days before.
Kimberly Roberts, 34, said: “The water almost reached the ceiling, but I wasn’t afraid because I knew I could swim, but my husband couldn’t.”
By sheer luck the couple survived. Unlike many of the wooden houses in their poor New Orleans neighbourhood, their home stood firm.
On August 29 they will mark 10 years since the city was hit by the category 3 storm — the costliest, and one of the deadliest, disasters in United States history. It broke the levees and wrecked the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida; killing 1833 people and causing damage of more than US$100 billion ($153 billion).
Television pictures showed children waist-high in fetid swamp water, waving at helicopters as families waited on roofs to be rescued from the scorching sun. The scenes, said broadcasters, looked more like Haiti or the Philippines than first-world US.
The Mayor of New Orleans had waited to order a mandatory evacuation while he conferred with lawyers; the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) held back much-needed relief, and it was later found the floods had resulted largely from negligence by US army engineers who built the levee.
More than 1000 of the dead were from the Lower Ninth Ward: a mainly African-American, working class neighbourhood which lies below sea level and closest to the levee.
The Robertses were evacuated to Memphis, Tennessee, and only returned years later once the city started to get back on its feet.
Nearly a quarter of a million homes were damaged or destroyed, and more than 800,000 people displaced.
New Orleans quickly rebuilt the levees and strengthened the floodwalls, which mercifully held when Hurricane Isaac hit in 2012, but elsewhere recovery has been painfully slow. While millions of tourists now stream through the French Quarter each year for Mardi Gras and other annual jazz and food festivals, the city’s population is still not back to pre-Katrina numbers.
More than 25 per cent of those who fled the city — about 100,000 — never returned. Many are still waiting for homes under a Government scheme, but one in five are yet to be rebuilt.
Kimberly Roberts says the regeneration is a tale of two cities. While the more affluent areas and the businesses have bounced back with the help of federal money, she said its poorest are worse off than before.
“In America, where you live and the colour of your skin determines whether you live or die, whether you sink or prosper,” she said.
In response to the floundering recovery, actor Brad Pitt set up the Make it Right foundation in 2007, pledging to build 150 new sustainable, flood-proof houses for those displaced from the Lower Ninth Ward. Pitt’s scheme allowed residents to pay what they could and take out zero-interest loans to cover the rest.
Nearly a decade on, the foundation has spent US$26.8 million on construction and completed 109 homes but is struggling to finance the remainder. Many of the homes already built have begun rotting.
“It’s just not a great solution to affordable housing issues,” says Laura Paul, of charity Lower Nine, which organises volunteer labour and donations to help former residents in the district rehabilitate their homes.
“If I had that money, I could run my organisation, at its current capacity, for 170 years.”
Kimberly Roberts and most of her neighbours will not attend the day of commemorations the mayor had hoped would close the chapter on one of the worst periods in its history.
“It’s safe to say this is America’s best comeback story,” said Mayor Mitch Landrieu. But the Lower Ninth Ward is still waiting for its comeback.