August 29, 2025 • 59 mins
Two decades after Hurricane Katrina, Black New Orleans: 20 Years After Katrina explores how the city’s Black communities rebuilt, preserved their cultural roots, and led the revival from the grassroots up. Narrated by Tammy Estwick, this hour-long special centers authentic voices from neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward, Tremé, and Pontchartrain Park — spotlighting the people who lost homes, endured displacement, and turned collective hardship into new strengths. With the help of local New Orleanians, this special will help tell the true story of that moment in history through firsthand experience and reflection.Through storytelling, interviews, and local music, the special revisits:
- Community leaders and grassroots organizations redefining recovery and resilience
- Black artists, chefs, musicians, and tradition-bearers driving New Orleans’ cultural comeback
- The ongoing fight for affordable housing, resilient public schools, and neighborhood safety
- Hopes, innovations, and the unfinished journey toward justice and renewal in a city forever shaped by its Black residents
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Katrina Katrina, this is a very, very dangerous hurricane.
Speaker 3 (00:04):
If we're ready to respond in every possible way Katrina,
Hurricane Katrina curfew is now.
Speaker 4 (00:09):
In place, we would be doing a mandatory evacuation.
Speaker 5 (00:12):
We never thought we.
Speaker 6 (00:13):
Would see, not in our lifetime, and it.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Is everything we feared Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 7 (00:17):
Katrina plans were insufficient, people trapped in buildings.
Speaker 8 (00:21):
Major breach in a levee overnight.
Speaker 9 (00:22):
There were blunt warnings from the beginning Hurricane Katrina Katrina.
Speaker 5 (00:26):
We told everyone know what's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And I blame you.
Speaker 10 (00:29):
Read Nagan, You'll be how you need you.
Speaker 5 (00:33):
We're watching Hurricane Katrina and Patrina and Trina.
Speaker 9 (00:36):
This is a story of will, determination and the strength
of a city. But it's also a story about how race, socioeconomics,
and stereotypes shape the lives of black New Orleanians. In
two thousand and five, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,
Kanye West put it bluntly, I.
Speaker 5 (00:54):
Hate the way they portray us in the media. If
we see a black family that says they're looting, see a.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
White family that says they're looking.
Speaker 9 (01:02):
For food, and black residents felt that, whether it was
trying to feed their families by taking food from flooded
grocery stores, getting the attention of helicopters that seemed to
pass over certain neighborhoods, or facing programs that made it
nearly impossible to get the grants needed to rebuild. Many
black residents realized quickly we were in for a fight
(01:25):
for our lives. This is black New Orleans. Twenty years
after Katrina. I'm Timmy Swick for the Black Information Network.
It's still considered one of the most expensive hurricanes of
its time.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Ladies and gentlemen, I wish I had better news for you,
but we are facing a storm that most of us
have feared.
Speaker 9 (01:53):
That was New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagan twenty years ago,
calling for the evacuation of an entire American with a
large black population and a large poor population, as Hurricane
Katrina swirled in the Gulf of Mexico, so large it
filled up the whole body of water. Katrina started as
(02:16):
the usual tropical depression during hurricane season, but this storm
was different. It grew to a powerful Category five monster
within a six hour time span, gaining strength in the
warm waters of the Gulf. The deadly storm raked across
Florida and turned its gaze upon Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
Speaker 7 (02:37):
Could have had just split in half.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Your house split in half by hell hideham. May you
know we came up in the roof all the way
to the roof and.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Waller came and had just just op divided.
Speaker 9 (02:54):
Who is at your house with you?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
My wife?
Speaker 9 (02:57):
Where is she now?
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Ah.
Speaker 9 (03:01):
In the end, it damaged over a million structures, according
to the Data Center, leaving some areas looking like a
war zone with nothing left but rickety lumber and broken bricks.
Speaker 7 (03:11):
Buildings have collapsed. There are reports from New Orleans of
people trapped in buildings that have come down around them.
They have made desperate calls to nine one one, asking
for help, asking for rescue, but.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
The rescuers can't get out. It's simply too dangerous right now.
Speaker 9 (03:27):
In Louisiana, the hurricane made its first landfall as a
Category three, but the size and power still packed enough
force to destroy livelihoods, rip families apart, and change the
landscape forever. People sometimes question why New Orleans is the
focus of the disastrous Hurricane Katrina tail. As we said,
it impacted multiple states the answer. Nowhere else did the
(03:52):
levees fail, flooding almost an entire city. Nowhere else were
people stranded on rooftops at the super in one hundred
degree heat and humidity for days, struggling to survive. Nowhere
else was social, racial, and economic inequalities exacerbated and filmed.
(04:13):
The storm and its aftermath would result in the deaths
of almost fourteen hundred people across four states, many of
them in Louisiana. Twenty years later, we're looking down the
eye of the storm, looking at a changed New Orleans,
having candid conversations with survivors, community leaders, and storytellers as
(04:33):
they share raw moments of loss, resilience, and survival, from
the levees breaking, to neighbors saving neighbors, to the fight
to rebuild two decades later. These powerful voices remind us
of what we lost, what was learned, and why New
Orleanians will never be broken. As a new generation moves
(04:54):
us towards a new direction.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
The storm is now a Cat five, a Category five.
Speaker 11 (05:00):
This is a very very dangerous hurricane and cable causing
a lot of dan budge and lost alive.
Speaker 9 (05:05):
This country is in the midst of yet another incomprehensible catastrophe,
not at the hands of terrorists but nature. In the
days before Hurricane Katrina chewed through the Louisiana landscape, some
people weren't really concerned. The storm initially projected to go
somewhere else.
Speaker 12 (05:23):
I'm a singer and I first came here for JazzFest
and was just blown away that that trip changed my
life because I started writing music and you know, taking
my music more seriously. And then I just kept coming back,
you know, definitely for jazz Fest, like every year. I
(05:45):
would come for the second weekend of jazz Fest for
ten years straight before I moved here. The year before
I did a week stayed with my friend who I
eventually moved into his house, and so I was like, okay,
you know, coming from DC, you know, the weather swampy
and everything, so it was like, yeah, okay, you know,
it's just like DC, but a whole lot more fun
(06:08):
and cooler.
Speaker 9 (06:09):
Margie Perez has now been in New Orleans long enough
to be considered a local by some standards. She says
initially she had no plans to leave for the storm.
Speaker 12 (06:18):
On the Friday before, which would have been the twenty
seventh I guess. I was at a bar and on
the TV was the weather report, and I looked at
that thing in the golf and I just happened to comment,
you know, that's actually bigger than the golf. And then
(06:41):
the next day I was kind of, you know, just
not really thinking about it because nobody else around me was,
you know, in panic mode or anything, you know, and
so I just went about my day on Saturday, went
out Saturday night, and I got a call from a
(07:02):
friend of mine who was going to be evacuating, and
I didn't have a car at the time, and she said,
I will pick you up and take you where I'm going,
because this is serious. And that was the first indication that, yeah,
I should get out.
Speaker 9 (07:23):
So, with her friend's advice and a ride already secured,
Perez went home to get her house and herself ready
to evacuate.
Speaker 12 (07:31):
I spent the day kind of putting stuff up on
higher shelves just in case, you know, because I lived
on the bottom floor of the house, and so I
was like, Okay, well, if it floods, you know, I'll
just get my stuff out of the way. And then
my friend picked me up like Saturday night, and we
had hotel reservations at a little inn in Saint Francisville,
(07:54):
which normally it takes like an hour tops, you know,
to get up there, but it took us like three
hours over the causeway, and you know, I was like, wow,
there's there's a lot of us leaving, you know, and
then we just once we got there, we just stayed
put and you know, I packed en up for the
(08:16):
weekend and we just waited it out.
Speaker 9 (08:19):
Meanwhile, television, media and radio personalities were doing what they
usually do. We go home early, get packed and either
sleep at the station or drive a few hours away
so we can come back quickly. Q ninety three and
wyld Legends while Wayne A. D. Barry and Angela Watson
Charles aka Uptown Angela sat down with me. Uptown Angela,
(08:41):
by the way, also runs the show as a program
director and Executive VP of National Programming at iHeartMedia. And
trust me, it got real real fast.
Speaker 13 (08:51):
I was a wreck because I was watching the news.
You know, I was trying to think, what's my plan.
I initially said, oh, I'm going to stay because we
had been through this before, right being asked to evacuate,
you know, voluntarily. If we left we'd go maybe an hour,
two hours, get a hotel, then come back. So in
(09:13):
that moment, I was just like, Okay, let me see
what I need to do here, and I'm just going
to be completely transparent because that's who I am. I
was going through a divorce at the time, so we
had actually started the initial separation process. He had been
out of the house for a month, and I called
him first because we had little kids. I had a
six year old and a thirteen year old at the time.
(09:34):
So we got in two cars. It was my in laws,
my now ex husband. It was a total of fourteen
of us, and in that moment, we tried to figure
out what's the best way to go that's not going
to have traffic, but there was no such thing. So
we sat for seventeen hours. I guess to get to
Dallas and that's where we ended up.
Speaker 9 (09:53):
For Ady Barry, it was a little different.
Speaker 14 (09:55):
I was ready for hurricane duty. I was going to
stay home. We all did hurricane duty, you know, person
stay at the station all night, sleep there for three days,
four days. Wang turned me in onto YouTube TV. So
but yeah, I was ready for hurricane duty. And Angie
called me. I said, what up, Andrew was, hand, what
you doing? See, I'm getting ready for hurricane dudey, I'm
(10:16):
gonna take me a nap. Oh no you're not. No, no,
you have to go. I say, wait what? And she said, yeah,
you have to go. Hurricanes coming. They said the city
is evacuating.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
I'm like, wait what.
Speaker 14 (10:27):
If Angie wouldn't have called me, I would have fell asleep.
Probably woke up about twelve one o'clock that morning.
Speaker 13 (10:32):
And he was living in the seventh Ward, which got
a lot of water. Yeah, like you had a lot
of damage.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
At your house, right, food?
Speaker 9 (10:38):
So add you didn't hear Ray Nagan get on TV?
Speaker 14 (10:42):
No?
Speaker 8 (10:42):
I was.
Speaker 9 (10:43):
He was watching YouTube TV and I.
Speaker 10 (10:48):
Had a TV show that was wildly popular called Fat
Fat and all of that here. Remember, but my boss
was actually Ray Nagan before he was mayor, because he
was working at Cocks. So I'll never forget watching the
news and Ray was.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Always really smooth, but he was stuttering. I said, this
is serious, right.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
And then I looked at the.
Speaker 10 (11:14):
Digital maps or whatever, and this storm had filled the
entire Gulf of Mexico and I still was going to stay.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I was so hard headed, really, I was.
Speaker 10 (11:26):
I was I was, but I did have a toddler
at the time, My son was one, and my girl
at that time, she was like, we're not.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Staying, and you're not staying. We are leaving.
Speaker 10 (11:40):
I had a business at that time as well, called
Wonder Wonderland, which was a family entertainment venue, and that
Sunday I tried to cancel all my parties. You know, nobody,
I said, I'll give you money back, I'll give you double.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
No one would let me cancel their party.
Speaker 13 (11:54):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
So all my employees left me and I had to
do everything.
Speaker 10 (12:00):
And I finally got him out of there. You know,
at the end of their parties, I was beat because
I didn't have any help. And the last thing I
did was I put a sign on the window.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
The hurricane is coming. We'll be closed, but we'll be opening,
like in a day or so.
Speaker 9 (12:16):
In nineteen ninety two, Mark Morial was elected mayor of
New Orleans. After hitting his term limit in two thousand
and two, meaning he couldn't run again, he ventured off
for new opportunities, soon becoming the president of the National
Urban League. But with his deep roots in New Orleans,
he's always been a huge advocate and what a coincidence.
(12:37):
The day before Katrina struck Morial was in town.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
I had flown to New Orleans for a funeral. Ironically,
it was the funeral of Clarence Barney, the leader of
the Urban League Great in New Orleans, and I was
about a year and a half, two years into my
tenure as president of the National Verne. I left office
three years and probably three months before Katrina took place.
(13:05):
So I was in New Orleans for the funeral on
that Saturday, and I remember distinctly that as I was
waiting to offer some reflections about Clarence Barney, a little
bit around noon, close to noon, my communications the reactor
who traveled with me, beckoned me to come from the
(13:26):
front where I was sitting on the dais to speak
to her. She said, the hurricane, and we knew there
was a hurricane in the Gulf, has now become a
Category four and it's about to get become a category five.
We have to leave or we're going to be stuck
in New Orleans and not be able to get back
to New York. So I slipped a note to the
(13:47):
Master of Ceremonies and said, I really need to speak
because I'm going to have to leave.
Speaker 8 (13:52):
And I didn't tell them why.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
I just said I had a plane to catch, and
I spoke, and then I went to the car to
go to the airport. But then I said, before I
go to the airport, I need to go stop over
by my mother son to check on her. At this time,
my mother was seventy three years old and living in
(14:15):
the family home, still very vitalent, vibrant to the working.
And I went to her home. I said, Mom, the
hurricane is now a Category five. We're washing it on television.
I said, I've come over here to make sure you're
going to evacuate and get away from the situation. To
what she said, I'm not going anywhere. I don't see
(14:37):
the need to evacuate. I'm going to be fine here.
I have your nephew here, my grandson is here, and
I need to stay here.
Speaker 9 (14:46):
Moriel's mother, Sybyl, was like many New Orleanians, leaving for
a storm isn't always a first option. First off, it's
costly with gas, hotel, and food. You end up spending thousands.
Now multiply that by having to acuate several times a
year during the Atlantic hurricane season that runs from June
to the end of November, and don't forget. New Orleans
(15:08):
is the most hurricane prone city in the United States,
according to Noah, with a hurricane within fifty nautical miles
happening about once every seven years and a major hurricane
roughly every twenty and much like Katrina, they tend to
happen most often between August and October, according to Prevention
(15:28):
web dot net. Noah. Meteorologists say it has to do
with trade winds, the shape of Louisiana seafloor, and the
warm and nurturing waters of the Gulf. But we'll save
that for another story.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
I said, Mom, it's really important that she leaves.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
She said, well, why don't you get me a room
downtown at the hotel like you did six years ago
when Hurricane Georgia's was bearing down on the city. I said,
when Hurricane George was bearing down on the city, I
was running the city and I was here, and if
I put you in a hotel, I could take care
of you. I could watch you, I could keep an
eye on you. That's not the case today. Be leaving you.
(16:04):
She said, well, I really don't think I need to leave.
She went upstairs, and I'm about to miss my flight literally,
and I'm saying to myself, I'm not going to leave
until she has committed to leave. So finally she comes
downstairs and she says, I think you're insisting on this right,
And I said, why don't you drive to Batman to
(16:26):
go to my sister Shari's house and stay with them
at least for the next day or two to make
sure everything's going to be clear.
Speaker 8 (16:34):
And she says she just sort.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Of says okay and proceeds to take to begin to
prepare herself to leave, which took about two hours, and
by that.
Speaker 8 (16:47):
Time missed my flight.
Speaker 9 (16:48):
Will Moriol was working to get his mother out of town.
New Owns Police superintendent at a compass, was making calls
to cancel family plans that were in the works and
had to reorganize his family to a central location so
he didn't have to worry about everyone during the storm.
That way he could focus on his first responder duties.
Speaker 15 (17:07):
Well, I tell you, it was kind of a unique
situation because my birthday was August twenty nine, so my
family was planning a birthday party for me on August
twenty eight, and when we got the information that the
hurricane was coming. I canceled all the plans of the
birthday party.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
My son was in town from Texas A and M.
Speaker 15 (17:25):
I told him, you need to go back to Texas
A and M, you know there's not going to be
a party or anything. I can't you know, I won't
be able to be involved in any type of I want.
I don't want you in the city my daughters were
working at. When my daughter's working at the rich Carlton,
so I told her to bring my ex wife and
her sister to the rich Carlton. Then my current rife
(17:47):
at the time, she was eight months pregnant and I
had a three year old, and so she and her
family came with me to the Higher Regency because I
didn't know what the situation was going to be, but
I had a room over there, so I got my
family security. Then I called my sisters and I got
them at the Windsor Court Hotel.
Speaker 9 (18:06):
Hurricane Katrina made landfall near Louisiana's only inhabited barrier island,
Grand Isle. A barrier island is the first line of
defence against the storm surge and hurricanes. It helps slow
those storms down much like a speed bump. The vast,
fast moving monster of a storm made a second landfall
between the Louisiana Mississippi state line.
Speaker 7 (18:28):
At least one levee has broken in New Orleans, leading
to some localized flooding, but there could be far worse
still to come as the storm surge and as the
rainfall from Hurricane Katrina hits Representatives.
Speaker 9 (18:42):
Troy Carter waited the storm out in Algiers, a section
of Orleans Parish that just happens to be on the
other side of the Mississippi River was referred to as
the West Bank. There was an unusual calm after the
worst of Katrina passed, a peculiar silence in the air.
No bugs, no birds, no people. Carter was between political
(19:04):
jobs at the time, just having run for office. You
talked to me about the creepy quiet feeling.
Speaker 6 (19:10):
But I remember there being an unimaginable quiet. There was
an eerie quiet that was over the city. No bugs.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
This is the.
Speaker 6 (19:25):
Immediate aftermath of the storm. There were no bugs, no birds,
no crickets. It was the weirdest ecosystem that I could
ever describe. It was like something out of the Twilight Zone,
out of some B rated movie where it was a stillness.
(19:46):
I can't make a person see or feel that level
of quiet where everything was just frozen in time.
Speaker 9 (19:56):
At that point, residents on that side of the river
assumed everything thing was all clear, So did most of
the national media.
Speaker 6 (20:03):
We thought we had escaped the storm. We thought it
was over, and it wasn't until the breach of the
of the levees that we realized the true devastation.
Speaker 8 (20:16):
Was yet to come.
Speaker 9 (20:17):
You see, that's what the city had feared. I want
to take you back to Ray Nagan during that same
press conference when he told Orleans Paris residents to evacuate,
he also said this, the.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
Storm surge most likely will topple our levee system, so
we are preparing to deal with that also.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
So that's why we ordered a mandatory evacuation.
Speaker 9 (20:41):
The levees did break apart in several areas and unleashed
hell in the majority black city of New Orleans, exposing
flaws in the government's levee system that was supposed to
keep the water that surrounds the city out.
Speaker 11 (20:53):
We're trying to survive in houses.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
He's trapped in a house.
Speaker 9 (21:00):
It's common knowledge growing up in Southeast Louisiana that the
city of New Orleans sits below sea level. Here's a
quick lesson in topography, or the study of natural and
or artificial surfaces of the land. Go grab a bowl
and sit it on the table. That's pretty much the
topography of the city of New Orleans. It's shaped like
a bowl. On each side of that bowl, where the
(21:21):
high points are, there's a waterway, either Lake Pontchatrain, which
is on one side, or on the other side, the
Mississippi River. The city fits neatly inside. The problem is
it's not supposed to. It's supposed to be at least
as high as the lake and the river or the
top of that bowl. So when the levees broke, it
(21:42):
allowed the bowl to fill up with water. Perez and
her friends, who evacuated together, woke up to a new reality.
Speaker 12 (21:50):
Like the next morning when we were watching the weather
and it was like, oh, okay, it went through.
Speaker 5 (21:58):
We're good, we can come back.
Speaker 12 (22:00):
And then we got the word of the flooding, and
that's that changed everything.
Speaker 9 (22:04):
It wouldn't be until late September two thousand and five
that New Orleans residents were officially allowed to return, but
even then, what they were returning to was very different
from what they left. Many New Orleans residents I've talked
to over the years described cleaning up their homes before
they left, doing laundry, washing dishes, straightening up all to
(22:25):
come home to a flooded mess.
Speaker 14 (22:29):
I had everything in a fire cabinet, pulled the draw out,
put it on a table and said, in a word,
I'll be back everything my shack jacket. I had my
graduation picture. You know, I walked in that house. The
refrigerator was next to my front door, so we had
(22:49):
to get in there. And it was just something. I
have pictures you know of that and when I came
back in the city. But everything's gone.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
I think I lost fifty thousand records, like real nine
like yeah, Like I had a room.
Speaker 10 (23:07):
They were stacked tall as I'm six feet tall, they
were stacked around the room.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
I know.
Speaker 10 (23:13):
I lost like six pairs of technique twelve hundred turning
tables because we DJed. We did a lot, so I
lost all of that stuff. But I think the one
thing that I missed the most was some of the
vintage interviews that I did that we kind of didn't
have an archiving system. Like I did an interview with
(23:38):
Biggie Smalls and Craig Mac for the Big Mac Tour.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
You know that was at the Riverboat Hallelujah.
Speaker 10 (23:45):
You know, just Snoop Dogg interviews and a number of
artists that are no longer alive, local artists that are
no longer alive, music pictures.
Speaker 9 (24:00):
Is there anything that you wish you would have packed?
Speaker 12 (24:04):
I had a box of unwritten songs and you know,
just musical notes and everything, and I, you know, I
could just kick myself for not bringing that little box.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
And also I was a travel.
Speaker 12 (24:18):
Agent for many, many years before moving to New Orleans,
and I.
Speaker 5 (24:26):
Traveled all over the world.
Speaker 12 (24:29):
And I had pictures and I had this wonderful camera,
and all those pictures are gone, and you know, even
some of my my baby pictures, and so I lost
a lot of memories. But you know, I always just
have to remind myself that, you know, I got off
(24:52):
better than you know, a lot of people, and I
just I just sympathize with that. And I, you know,
you always have a sense of survivor's guilt, you know,
especially watching when everything was happening.
Speaker 9 (25:08):
New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Eddie Compass says he was
juggling a lot during the storm, helping residents, constantly updating
the media, and getting phone calls from family. Some things,
he says, Unfortunately, slip through the cracks doing.
Speaker 15 (25:24):
Hurricane Katrina, and my sister called me and she said,
we didn't get at Tony and Uncle Eddie.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
You got to go get him.
Speaker 15 (25:31):
Well, I was in the middle of battle at the
time with the flood, and I was like, well, we're
trying to put rescue missions out to save people. And
I've hurried to him my officers that we cannot leave
to take care of our personal families.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
We have to take care of the citizens.
Speaker 15 (25:49):
I said, if I don't leave to go get any tea,
Tony and Uncle Eddie, I'm letting every police auser on
this department know that it's okay to leave.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
And you got to leave from the front.
Speaker 15 (26:00):
So I couldn't live at my aunt uncle and they
drowned and they died, and it pains me.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
And it hurts me to this day.
Speaker 9 (26:08):
The mayor at that time, Ray Nagan, reacted to the
death toll days after the storm in an interview with
Sixty Minutes.
Speaker 16 (26:16):
Too many people died because of lack of action, lack
of coordination and some goofy laws that basically say there's
not a clear distinction of when the federal government stops
and when the state government starts. And if you have
federal if the federal government takes over, then you're giving
(26:39):
up some powers of if the governor don't ask the president,
and the president don't ask the governor. And it was
just bs.
Speaker 9 (26:48):
Mark Morio was able to get his mother to safety.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
My mother did evacuate up to my sister's house. Thank
god you did. Because the family home had a foot
or salt water water. It was, you know, isolated. She
would have been really, really in a risk situation, and
she stayed. I went back to New York and on
Monday Tuesday, when I turned on television and saw all
(27:13):
the people at the dome suffering, pleading, crying, I literally
became inconsolably upset and inconsolably angry. And at the time,
my wife was seven months six months pregnant with our daughter,
and I said, we at that time still it.
Speaker 8 (27:35):
I said, I have to go back to New Organs.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
I'm going to go back down and I'm going to
figure out how to get back down there.
Speaker 8 (27:39):
And me and two of my friends.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
We had to fly to bat Rouge and go back
to the city while the city was fundamentally almost completely evacuated.
It was a very emotional experience for me for many
many reasons. I was not on the front line. I
was not quarterbacking the response, but I head quarterback at
least three hurricane response since while I was mayor, including
(28:02):
a very serious hurricane known as Hurricane George's, which was
a hurricane where we had ordered evacuations and people went
to the dome and the convention Center. So when I
saw the conditions at the Dome and the convention Center,
I really became livid because it did not need to
be those. The people who were there should not have
been there without water, without food, without medical supplies. It
(28:23):
was a complete collapse of the response by not only
the federal government, but by city Hall and the state
as well. It would have challenged anyone, but I felt
for the first several days they were completely insensitive across
the booth as though the state said the city should
(28:46):
handle it, the city said the federal cavalry should rescue
us said the city and the state. It was a
compendium of finger pointing and political confusion by the then president,
the then government, and the then mayor, And that's what
I witnessed, and that's what I saw on It really
really took me because I felt like, in that moment
(29:11):
they should have all come together to adequately respond to
one of the most difficult and challenging natural disasters, man
made disasters ould had.
Speaker 8 (29:21):
In modern American history.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
And as things evolved, we learned that it was man
made levees that lapsed that caused the flooding in the
worlds almost twenty four hours after the storm had passed,
and so if the levees had.
Speaker 8 (29:39):
Not broken, we would not be having this conversation today.
Speaker 9 (29:43):
The President of the United States at that time, George W. Bush,
flew over the city on August thirty first on his
way back to d C, but never landed, a decision
he would later regret. He addressed the nation from the
French Quarter on September fifteenth.
Speaker 11 (30:00):
You need to know that our whole nation cares about you,
and in the journey ahead, you're not alone. To all
who carry a burden of loss. I extend the deepest
sympathy of our country.
Speaker 9 (30:11):
But how could this happen an entire city where the
majority of residents were Black people living in one of
the richest countries in the world consumed by floodwater. Officially,
it was the result of Mother Nature's fury that pushed
against the levees, though to this day many who stayed
in neighborhoods near the levees say they heard a boom
(30:35):
like a bomb going off. Personally speaking, after seeing everything
that happened to black residence during Katrina, the assumptions that
some entity or entities were trying to flood the majority
black areas cannot be ignored. But no matter what you believe,
the sole entity held to blame the US Army Corps
(30:57):
of Engineers, who had those levees put in.
Speaker 8 (31:01):
I went to the Lower Nine. I went on the levee.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
At this point in time, it was about a week
and a half after and the city was completely abandoned,
and I wanted to go to the site of the
break us being very familiar with the industrial canal, being
very familiar with these I.
Speaker 8 (31:18):
Wanted to see and see if my eyes would tell
a story about the break.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
When I was there, there was a man boring into
the soil who was a consultant for the Army Corps
of engineers, and he didn't know me from a can
of paint. I was out there and he was not
from New Orleans, but he was working, and you know,
we were there and we were just guys in the neighborhood.
And I said, hey, what you're doing? He says, I'm
(31:45):
doing some borings. I said, what you finding out?
Speaker 8 (31:47):
Man?
Speaker 3 (31:48):
What's going on here? He said, Boy, somebody's gonna be
in big trouble. He said, I said why. He said,
see these sheep piles right here. That and a sheep
pile is sort of like the steel He says. They
were not driven deep enough. Somehow they were not driven
deep enough. And if they're not driven deep enough, is
this susceptible of breaking and fall. They have to be
(32:10):
driven very very deep into the mud so that there's
more of more of the sheep pile underground than there
is on the top of the ground.
Speaker 8 (32:20):
That creates some level of stability.
Speaker 9 (32:24):
Black NPD Police Superintendent Eddie Compass had a lot on
his plate during Katrina. With cuts on his legs, he
laced up his boots and went into the flood water,
helping to save some of the most vulnerable New Orleans residents.
He would later have to seek medical care for cuts,
having them drained to avoid an infection. He also had
the deaths of his aunt and uncle on his heart.
(32:47):
All of this while he says, he was trying to
remain transparent with the media with constant updates. Then he
got a call that his press secretary committed suicide.
Speaker 15 (32:58):
The mayor was trying to show instead of community saying
that I was too weak to be in charge of
Katrina because they saw him cry on TV.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
He said, I broke down, but nobody asked the reason
why I broke down. Paul called over my press secretary.
Speaker 15 (33:14):
I told my staff to bring their families with us
to the hotel.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
He for some reason did not bring his wife with it.
Speaker 15 (33:22):
So he came to me when the flooding started, said
he just got a call from one of his natives
that his house was totally underwater and his wife had drowned.
He freaked out, I said, Paul, calm down. I said,
why didn't you bring your wife?
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Like out all that you too? He just kept saying,
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 15 (33:45):
I said, Paul, I'm so pissed at you right now,
I said, but I really can't talk to here right now.
I said, We're got to do this press conference. I said,
but we're gonna try to figure things out. We're going
to find out if your wife was indeed in that house.
I said, but right now, Paul, I'm really upset with
you that I really don't want to tell to you
right now. Well, I was doing that press conference. Police
also came up behind me and tapped me and said, Chief,
(34:08):
I take something. I said, do you see all these
cameras here, I mean a media can see. I turned
around to he said, He's gonna have been important. He said, Paul,
he just committed suicide. I felt so bad that I
screamed and hollered at him and kind.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Of made him feel guilty. I can't take that back.
Speaker 15 (34:27):
And the sad thing is his wife gut all the
how she hadn't killed herself has made his neighbor gave
him bad.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Information so she wasn't dead.
Speaker 15 (34:35):
People don't understand during Hurricane Katrina, there was no communication.
The radio system was down, the phone system was down.
Everything was being communicated to me by word of mouth.
And when you communicate things by word of mouth, you
lose a lot. In the transition and I kept it
resonated in my head that the mayor was saying, you
better not tell her anything up. You better be transparent,
(34:57):
because I know one thing, anything that wrong that happened.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
He was gonna blame me.
Speaker 15 (35:00):
If I said the truth to the best of my
ability that I know of and they couldn't prove it
right away down in Bellishy, then if I don't say
the truth and it turns out to be true later on,
then I'm covering something up.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
So I couldn't win in that regard.
Speaker 15 (35:15):
But if I had to do it all over again,
I would get two press confers, one in the morning
and one in the evening, and I wouldn't talk in
between those two press conficers. The situation was changing too rapid.
But hindsight is twenty twenty, you know.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
That's the thing.
Speaker 15 (35:29):
The biggest mistake I made, I was too transpact. I
gave too much information.
Speaker 9 (35:34):
I think You're also mentioned in the documentary Something about
the Cipher.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (35:41):
On August thirty first, a man who identifies himself as
an African American creole with a French last name stepped
off of a helicopter into the middle of the chaos
in New Orleans. That man was Army Lieutenant General Russell Honore.
Mediately things seemed to start coming together. CBS spoke to
(36:04):
the now retired generals sometime after the storm. General Honore
talked about the moment he saw all those people at
the super Dome.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Oh my god, how did this happen? But let's get
it fixed. I want dad on the ground so the
truck can go get another lower. Sure you can make
that happen.
Speaker 9 (36:22):
I can make it happen to you, the man.
Speaker 8 (36:23):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
You know, General Honorey did an outstanding job. I mean,
he did a great job.
Speaker 15 (36:30):
But the world that he came from in the military,
in the world I came up through the police department
is different jar than his. Different parts, is different identification
of situations. When General Honore said he weren't any snipers,
he said, the chief is getting it wrong.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
They aren't any snipers. Well, the definition of military I
don't know what is a sniper.
Speaker 15 (36:55):
But on a police department, if somebody shooting at you
no reason and they unidentified to me, that's a sniper.
And when he said they weren't shooting at the police,
I had to disagree with him because I told him
Kevin Thomas, one of my police officers, had a bullet
in his head from an unidentified shooter, which was reported
(37:16):
to me A sniper shot Kevin Thomas in the head.
And when I verified that Kevin Thomas shot in the
head by unidentified the individual for no apparent reason, I
reported as a sniper and General Honery said that wasn't accurate.
So I'm not saying jen Ron Ray was wrong, h
but I think I was wrong for reporting that way
because that's the way it was reported to me, and
(37:36):
I had verification that Kevin Thomas was shot in the
head by an unidentified individual for an unknown reason.
Speaker 9 (37:44):
Mark Morial says what happened to residents of New Orleans
was a travesty.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
It was a very emotional experience for me for many
many reasons. I was not on the front line. I
was not quarterbacking the response, but I head quarterback at
least three hurricane responses is while I was mayor, including
a very serious hurricane known as Hurricane George's, which was
a hurricane where we at ordered evacuations and people went
(38:10):
to the dome and the convention Center. So when I
saw the conditions at the Dome and the convention center.
I really became livid because it did not need to
be those The people who were there should not have
been there without water, without food, without medical supplies.
Speaker 8 (38:25):
It was a complete collapse of the response.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
By not only the federal government, but by city hall
and the state as well. I think when General Honore
came in and organized the evacuation of the city, I
would give that a strong B plus. Maybe it ain't
minus the way in which she stepped in. I think
after the initial challenges, I think the recovery and the
(38:52):
role of the federal government and appropriating the money may
deserve a seat, you know, maybe a low C, maybe
a D plus or C min yes, but the people
of New Orleans get an A plus.
Speaker 9 (39:04):
Twenty years ago, television cameras captured black people and white
people going into flooded grocery stores. They were called looters,
a categorization that to this day many question was that
a fair assessment. Representative Troy Carter thinks if the shoe
was on the other foot, things may have been different.
Speaker 6 (39:24):
And I'm very proud, very proud of the resilience of
the people. Still very sad about those lives that were lost,
very sad about the way New Orleanians were depicted during
our most challenged times. And I dare say, like the
(39:44):
movie with Eddie Murphy Trading Places, if those who are
critical of New Orleans or the people inhabitants of New
Orleans for merely trying to survive during a very difficult time,
I would offer them the movie Trading Places and offer
for them to swap places. Be disconnected from your checking account,
(40:06):
be disconnected from your wealth, be disconnected from your safety valves,
be disconnected from your families, be disconnected from civilization, be
disconnected from food and water and shelter. And see how
you would react, and see if you would still be
as critical. If all of a sudden, you had no money,
(40:31):
you had no wealth, you had no resource, You had
not even a piece of bread to eat, You didn't
have your medication. You couldn't call your banker and get
a signature loan. You couldn't go to an ATM and
withdraw money. You couldn't simply go and buy the things
that you need, because your money meant nothing, your wealth
(40:53):
meant nothing. Because Katrina was the great equalizer. It took
people of all economic strata, of all backgrounds all fates,
all religions, all wealth brackets, and it clumped them together
in a sea of hopelessness. So next time someone wants
(41:15):
to be critical about what they saw depicted the national media,
think about trading places and see if you would have
survived it.
Speaker 9 (41:24):
President George W. Bush would later write about Katrina in
his memoir He sat down with NBC's Matt Lauer in
twenty ten.
Speaker 11 (41:31):
It's one thing to say, you know, I don't appreciate
the way he handle his business. It's another thing to say,
this man's a racist. I resent it. It's not true,
and there's one of the most disgusting moments of my presidency.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
This from the book.
Speaker 17 (41:44):
I faced a lot of criticism as president. I didn't
like hearing people claim that I lied about Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich.
But the suggestion that I was racist because of the
response to Katrina represented an all time low.
Speaker 11 (41:58):
Still feel that way as you read those words, felt
them when I heard them, felt them when I wrote them,
and I felt what I'm listening.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
To me say.
Speaker 17 (42:06):
You told Laura at the time, it was the worst
moment of your presiden Yes, I wonder if some people
are going to read that, and they might give you
some heat for that, the.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Reason is that don't care.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Well, here's the reason.
Speaker 17 (42:16):
You're not saying that the worst moment in your presidency
was watching the misery in Louisiana. You're saying it was
when someone insulted you because and.
Speaker 11 (42:23):
I also make it clear that the misery in Louisiana
affected me deeply as well.
Speaker 9 (42:27):
During Katrina's evacuation and the fight to return home, there
were some moments that made New Orleans evacuees feel reassured
of their path back to the Big Easy. Those popular
longtime radio DJs Uptown Angela, Ady, Barry, and wa Wayne,
who all started at the station around the same time.
They gave residents a sense of hope and normalcy. Margie
(42:50):
Perez was not only able to come home to the
Laura Nine, but was offered an opportunity to buy a
mortgage through the nonprofit New Orleans' Habitat for Humanity. The
concept was the Musician's Village, a place for culture bearers
of New Orleans to have a place to call home
in hopes they could inspire others to come back.
Speaker 12 (43:10):
Harry Connock Junior and Brentford Marsalis, who are New Orleanians.
Of course, they were spokesmen for Habitat, and they came
up with the concept of making that neighborhood available to musicians.
And when I heard about this, I I said, well,
(43:33):
you know, I'll apply.
Speaker 9 (43:35):
Habitat helped many musicians and regular everyday residents come back
to the city, offering low interest loans to applicants who
also had to put in a little elbow grease by
helping to build their own homes in order to qualify
for the program. However, to this day, Press says she's
still heartbroken seeing some of her neighbors still suffering to
(43:57):
make their way home twenty years later. That's right, the
city's population still hasn't reached pre Katrina levels, and a
lack of tax base means a lack of money for resources.
Speaker 6 (44:09):
Fortunately, the media painted a picture and only showed the
worst of the worst. They showed people who were looting,
They showed people who were acting out against the directives
of law enforcement. But I'm so happy that you and
(44:29):
others are doing stories like this. They give us an
opportunity to tell the better side of individuals who stepped up,
who stepped up and provided help, and even in the
midst of their own trouble, showed the resiliency of helping
their neighbors, helping little ladies who were in wheelchairs and
(44:51):
couldn't move, and they were picking them up and helping
them onto trucks or boats in this case in some
cases to assist them to get to higher ground. CNN
and other newscasts they only showed the most horrific acts
that painted people in Louisiana and more specifically in New Orleans.
(45:13):
Is some type of some type of lawless individuals. When
certainly some of that did take place, we can't ignore it.
But that was the smaller part.
Speaker 12 (45:25):
Sure about the pumps and the levees. I mean, no
matter what, if another Katrina comes, I'm not here, you know, And.
Speaker 5 (45:39):
You know, it's just because of the way that things
were handled.
Speaker 12 (45:48):
I mean, like a few months after, there was word
that one of the levees was stuffed with newspaper or something.
I can't remember what the story was, but it was like,
you know, they weren't fixing it the way you were supposed.
Speaker 5 (46:04):
To, and that just sort of stayed with me.
Speaker 9 (46:08):
Perez Is right after the storm repairs had to be made,
and local journalists found the unthinkable. In Saint Bernard Parish,
a neighboring area, WWL spoke to a resident who says
they saw a contractor stuffing newspaper into the gap to
fill the floodwall.
Speaker 8 (46:25):
The one through the wall was stuffed with newspaper.
Speaker 9 (46:28):
That same resident unrolls the balled up paper and reads
off the date on it.
Speaker 5 (46:34):
May twenty first, two thousand and six.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
It's a date on the paper.
Speaker 9 (46:42):
One engineer at the time said they couldn't believe it.
Over time, it could affect the integrity of the wall.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
They should have done a bit of a job than
what you see here.
Speaker 6 (46:51):
I cannot even comprehend that somebody would put some stuff,
some newspaper there.
Speaker 9 (46:57):
As contractors who worked for the Art Army Corps of
Engineers hustled to get the walls that protect Saint Bernard
and Orleans parishes back up to park, the black residents
of New Orleans were battling to try and get home.
Speaker 8 (47:10):
One of the fractures that took place.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
The next step that really really divided the community was
when a group of business people had a meeting in
Dallas and decided to develop a plan that was tantamount
to ethnic cleansing. They wanted to in effect bulldose fifty
percent of the city, most of that those parts of
(47:35):
the city were African American neighborhoods and turn them into
golf courses and the goons they and in a highly,
highly incentive, incentive and racially motivated way.
Speaker 8 (47:48):
I think they were blind, very blind, and.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Basically and not consulted with anyone, had not spoken to anyone,
and they marginalized the elected officials in that moment. Because
the he was abandoned, everyone was evacuated, and it was
a crisis. Many of us rose up against that plan.
I flew to New Orleans and gave a major speech
against the plan at Saint Maria Garretti Church. Community activists
(48:18):
from all over rose up against the plan because the
plan was morally indefensive, not only what it was, but
how it came together.
Speaker 18 (48:26):
That compounded the difficulty of the recovery, which was a
class of visions as to whether the quota the city
should be rebuilt, completely rebuilt, some neighborhoods should be rebuilt.
Speaker 8 (48:38):
And it led to a chaotic beguinea of the recovery.
Speaker 9 (48:42):
Mar Ray Nagan reacted to that plan.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
We as black people.
Speaker 5 (48:47):
It's time.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
It's time for us to come together.
Speaker 19 (48:52):
It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the
one that should be a chocolate New Orleans.
Speaker 20 (48:59):
I don't care what people are saying uptown.
Speaker 19 (49:03):
All wherever they are. This city will be chocolate. At
the end of the day, this city will.
Speaker 20 (49:16):
Be a majority African American city. It's the way God
wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no
other way, it wouldn't.
Speaker 8 (49:27):
Be New Orleans.
Speaker 9 (49:28):
Mar Re Nagan's speech came as a sigh of relief
to tens of thousands of black New Orleanians who were
trying to make their way back to the city but
felt like they were being pushed out. Critics, however, called
his comments controversial and even racist.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
What of our culture to talk about chocolate cities?
Speaker 4 (49:48):
You know, DC was the first chocolate city that ever
came on the map Newark, Detroit, New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
So for me, the vernacular of Saint.
Speaker 4 (49:58):
Chocolate City was not a I have used that in
speeches for three and a half years now, and I've
even used it on Capitol Hill, So I didn't really
think it was a big deal. Where I crossed the
line was bringing God into the whole, you know, discussion,
and that's where I kind of zoned out.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
I don't know where that came from. It was a
crazy moment. You know, maybe I'm not getting enough sleep
at night, But that won't happen again.
Speaker 9 (50:23):
The second fail the Road Home program. It was meant
to help homeowners rebuild, but the red tape of the
program only ended up helping around one hundred and thirty
thousand people, according to the program's now closed website. That
may sound like a big number, but the Southern Poverty
Law Center says in April two thousand, there were approximately
(50:44):
four hundred and eighty five thousand people living in New Orleans.
Some say the Road Home program is the reason the
population has struggled to come back.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
The Road Home began with the Great Vision, but it
was fatally flawed from the beginning because it compensated people
solely for the appraised value of their own and which
meant that for many many poor, working class, even middle
class New Orleanians and people in the region, the cost
(51:16):
to rebuild was more than the appraised value the home
because the appraisals were depressed. They were depressed by racial disparities.
They were depressed by a lot of issues. So the
plan was flawed.
Speaker 8 (51:30):
From the beginning.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
And I one of my objections to the plan is
that the city of New Orleans should have been given
the money to have its own plan and the Powershing
Jefferys should have been given money to have its own plan,
as opposed to the state trying to create a one
size fit all plan with the money from the federal government.
Speaker 8 (51:47):
And that plan was successfully sued by the Legal Defense Fund.
Speaker 3 (51:52):
And the challenge is is that by the time the
suit was resolved, all of the money had been distributed,
but the plan had flaws in it. They should have
compensated people for the true replacement value to rebuild their homes,
which is why you had half built homes.
Speaker 8 (52:11):
You had people trying to strap together insurance money, savings
and road home money to rebuild.
Speaker 12 (52:20):
I'm just so disappointed in how some things were handled
in the city with like you know, the road home
program was just run so awful.
Speaker 5 (52:34):
I mean, some people are still dealing with, you know,
keeping up there.
Speaker 12 (52:40):
I have a neighbor Caddi corner from me, and his
grandmother still twenty years later, is hoping to get back
into her house. She's in Texas and they're slowly renovating
the house and they've been doing it for all the
years that I've been living in my house, and I just,
(53:06):
you know, I hope, I pray that one day she
is able to move back into her into her house.
You know, because of the way that they're the funding
and the contractors and everything, they lost money they you know,
and there's so many stories like that because you know,
there are so many there were so many scammers that
(53:26):
came through, and you.
Speaker 5 (53:29):
Know, it's just it's so tragic.
Speaker 12 (53:32):
I mean, people are supposed to be made whole by
insurance and by grants and by FEMA, and so many
weren'ts It.
Speaker 6 (53:42):
Was disproportionately distributed to communities that needed it most. They
seemed to have gotten less. But then years after Katrina
was over, people were still being sued and being having
leans put on their properties. Were program that never really worked.
One of the first things I did as a member
of Congress was to go to then Secretary Marsha Fudge
(54:07):
and to petition to her and Governor John Bell Edwards
to get rid of this program, to shut it down
and forgive all of these homeowners who were being taxed,
punished for resources that never got the full compliment of
And nearly twenty years later, it was two years ago
(54:29):
that I ended this program. Two and a half, almost
three years ago that I was able to end Road
Home for good and forgive every penny that people had
been awarded to fix their homes.
Speaker 13 (54:46):
I've got friends who left here and went elsewhere Jackson, Texas,
Georgia and were given, when I say, given, given homes
to live in for free, you know, and even offering
them the option to purchase it at a very low price.
But they chose to come back to New Orleans to
(55:09):
little to nothing, just because they love the city so much.
Speaker 9 (55:12):
So it's like, why couldn't we have that here? We're
losing our people every day.
Speaker 14 (55:17):
I am seeing that.
Speaker 13 (55:18):
I'm looking at all kinds of reports every day, and
you know, looking at data when we look at ratings
for the radio station, and we can see that we're
dwindling down because the opportunity is not there.
Speaker 3 (55:29):
The plan should have been designed in the same fashion
as the post nine eleven victims compensation. I argue for
that then I fairly believe that would have been the
best approach. I think New Orleans was treated a particular
way because it was this majority black, southern city. I
think it was treated this way because it didn't have
(55:49):
the political cloud of a New York city, it didn't
have the political cloud of many of the great population centers.
Speaker 8 (55:56):
And I believe that, notwithstanding.
Speaker 3 (55:58):
Good faith efforts by a lot of people who worked
very hard, the road home plan was faily flawed from
the beginning in terms of how carried out compensation. And
then people needed more than to rebuild their home, they
needed to rebuild their lives, and there was no compensation money.
And people said, why should they have been compensation money?
I said, because the levees broke because of negligence, and
(56:22):
only because the government is immune from suit, the Army
Corps of Engineers is immune from suit. There wasn't a
massive class actions that would to force the government to
play the.
Speaker 8 (56:32):
Real cost and the real price of the damage that
was caused.
Speaker 3 (56:36):
The point is is that even though the compensation was inadded,
even though philanthropy and people from all over the world
rolled in in many cases many people great will to
rescue the city. The truth is that twenty years later,
(56:57):
many great challenges still remain. The truth is is that
the city's sustainability in survival has come from people's love
of its unique culture, its unique people, and people's desire
to rescue, retain that, and keep that is what makes
the city so strong today. That is important that there'd
(57:19):
be a commitment to raise, strengthen, and fortify the whole
flood control system. There's no doubt that global warming climate
change have impacted the severity of storms, have eroded in
many respects the natural barrier that the marsh and the
coast provides, and that the fortifications that took place some
(57:44):
twenty years ago are really going to be inadequate to
protect the city in the years to come.
Speaker 8 (57:50):
There's got to be an investment.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
Never forget what happened twenty years ago.
Speaker 10 (57:54):
I think it's very important because things are cyclical, right
and with the way that the weather pattern to have
become so much more forceful and rapid, like, we have
to have a plan.
Speaker 1 (58:05):
I think that's really important. Moving past year.
Speaker 9 (58:07):
Twenty Dorothy played by Diana Ross and the Wiz sang
the song Home. There's a lyric that goes, maybe there's
a chance for me to go back there now that
I have some direction. Maybe there's a chance for me
too go back now that I.
Speaker 10 (58:26):
Have some direction.
Speaker 9 (58:28):
For people from here, there's no place like New Orleans.
It's like our own Emerald City. Our wizard may be
wacky from time to time, but the people from here
are resilient. The Black experience and excellence that comes out
of this city is inspiring. Our unique culture and beauty
and strength are just some of the driving forces behind
(58:50):
the fight for many to still make their way home
decades after feeling like they were forced out. Twenty years later,
a lot has changed, Neighbors don't know neighbors anymore, and
some homes still lay abandoned in neighborhoods. But there is
some hope a new generation of Katrina babies that have
sprouted up to take the place of those who have
(59:11):
moved on. They remember the stories told by older relatives,
They've seen the documentaries on TV, and they're looking at
filling those political and social gaps to start pushing the
city in a better direction. This has been a special
presentation of Black New Orleans twenty years after Katrina. I'm
Timmy Swick for the Black Information Network. Follow us on
(59:34):
vinnews dot com.
Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Katrina Katrina, this is a very, very dangerous hurricane.
Speaker 3 (00:04):
If we're ready to respond in every possible way Katrina,
Hurricane Katrina curfew is now.
Speaker 4 (00:09):
In place, we would be doing a mandatory evacuation.
Speaker 5 (00:12):
We never thought we.
Speaker 6 (00:13):
Would see, not in our lifetime, and it.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Is everything we feared Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 7 (00:17):
Katrina plans were insufficient, people trapped in buildings.
Speaker 8 (00:21):
Major breach in a levee overnight.
Speaker 9 (00:22):
There were blunt warnings from the beginning Hurricane Katrina Katrina.
Speaker 5 (00:26):
We told everyone know what's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And I blame you.
Speaker 10 (00:29):
Read Nagan, You'll be how you need you.
Speaker 5 (00:33):
We're watching Hurricane Katrina and Patrina and Trina.
Speaker 9 (00:36):
This is a story of will, determination and the strength
of a city. But it's also a story about how race, socioeconomics,
and stereotypes shape the lives of black New Orleanians. In
two thousand and five, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,
Kanye West put it bluntly, I.
Speaker 5 (00:54):
Hate the way they portray us in the media. If
we see a black family that says they're looting, see a.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
White family that says they're looking.
Speaker 9 (01:02):
For food, and black residents felt that, whether it was
trying to feed their families by taking food from flooded
grocery stores, getting the attention of helicopters that seemed to
pass over certain neighborhoods, or facing programs that made it
nearly impossible to get the grants needed to rebuild. Many
black residents realized quickly we were in for a fight
(01:25):
for our lives. This is black New Orleans. Twenty years
after Katrina. I'm Timmy Swick for the Black Information Network.
It's still considered one of the most expensive hurricanes of
its time.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Ladies and gentlemen, I wish I had better news for you,
but we are facing a storm that most of us
have feared.
Speaker 9 (01:53):
That was New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagan twenty years ago,
calling for the evacuation of an entire American with a
large black population and a large poor population, as Hurricane
Katrina swirled in the Gulf of Mexico, so large it
filled up the whole body of water. Katrina started as
(02:16):
the usual tropical depression during hurricane season, but this storm
was different. It grew to a powerful Category five monster
within a six hour time span, gaining strength in the
warm waters of the Gulf. The deadly storm raked across
Florida and turned its gaze upon Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
Speaker 7 (02:37):
Could have had just split in half.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Your house split in half by hell hideham. May you
know we came up in the roof all the way
to the roof and.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Waller came and had just just op divided.
Speaker 9 (02:54):
Who is at your house with you?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
My wife?
Speaker 9 (02:57):
Where is she now?
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Ah.
Speaker 9 (03:01):
In the end, it damaged over a million structures, according
to the Data Center, leaving some areas looking like a
war zone with nothing left but rickety lumber and broken bricks.
Speaker 7 (03:11):
Buildings have collapsed. There are reports from New Orleans of
people trapped in buildings that have come down around them.
They have made desperate calls to nine one one, asking
for help, asking for rescue, but.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
The rescuers can't get out. It's simply too dangerous right now.
Speaker 9 (03:27):
In Louisiana, the hurricane made its first landfall as a
Category three, but the size and power still packed enough
force to destroy livelihoods, rip families apart, and change the
landscape forever. People sometimes question why New Orleans is the
focus of the disastrous Hurricane Katrina tail. As we said,
it impacted multiple states the answer. Nowhere else did the
(03:52):
levees fail, flooding almost an entire city. Nowhere else were
people stranded on rooftops at the super in one hundred
degree heat and humidity for days, struggling to survive. Nowhere
else was social, racial, and economic inequalities exacerbated and filmed.
(04:13):
The storm and its aftermath would result in the deaths
of almost fourteen hundred people across four states, many of
them in Louisiana. Twenty years later, we're looking down the
eye of the storm, looking at a changed New Orleans,
having candid conversations with survivors, community leaders, and storytellers as
(04:33):
they share raw moments of loss, resilience, and survival, from
the levees breaking, to neighbors saving neighbors, to the fight
to rebuild two decades later. These powerful voices remind us
of what we lost, what was learned, and why New
Orleanians will never be broken. As a new generation moves
(04:54):
us towards a new direction.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
The storm is now a Cat five, a Category five.
Speaker 11 (05:00):
This is a very very dangerous hurricane and cable causing
a lot of dan budge and lost alive.
Speaker 9 (05:05):
This country is in the midst of yet another incomprehensible catastrophe,
not at the hands of terrorists but nature. In the
days before Hurricane Katrina chewed through the Louisiana landscape, some
people weren't really concerned. The storm initially projected to go
somewhere else.
Speaker 12 (05:23):
I'm a singer and I first came here for JazzFest
and was just blown away that that trip changed my
life because I started writing music and you know, taking
my music more seriously. And then I just kept coming back,
you know, definitely for jazz Fest, like every year. I
(05:45):
would come for the second weekend of jazz Fest for
ten years straight before I moved here. The year before
I did a week stayed with my friend who I
eventually moved into his house, and so I was like, okay,
you know, coming from DC, you know, the weather swampy
and everything, so it was like, yeah, okay, you know,
it's just like DC, but a whole lot more fun
(06:08):
and cooler.
Speaker 9 (06:09):
Margie Perez has now been in New Orleans long enough
to be considered a local by some standards. She says
initially she had no plans to leave for the storm.
Speaker 12 (06:18):
On the Friday before, which would have been the twenty
seventh I guess. I was at a bar and on
the TV was the weather report, and I looked at
that thing in the golf and I just happened to comment,
you know, that's actually bigger than the golf. And then
(06:41):
the next day I was kind of, you know, just
not really thinking about it because nobody else around me was,
you know, in panic mode or anything, you know, and
so I just went about my day on Saturday, went
out Saturday night, and I got a call from a
(07:02):
friend of mine who was going to be evacuating, and
I didn't have a car at the time, and she said,
I will pick you up and take you where I'm going,
because this is serious. And that was the first indication that, yeah,
I should get out.
Speaker 9 (07:23):
So, with her friend's advice and a ride already secured,
Perez went home to get her house and herself ready
to evacuate.
Speaker 12 (07:31):
I spent the day kind of putting stuff up on
higher shelves just in case, you know, because I lived
on the bottom floor of the house, and so I
was like, Okay, well, if it floods, you know, I'll
just get my stuff out of the way. And then
my friend picked me up like Saturday night, and we
had hotel reservations at a little inn in Saint Francisville,
(07:54):
which normally it takes like an hour tops, you know,
to get up there, but it took us like three
hours over the causeway, and you know, I was like, wow,
there's there's a lot of us leaving, you know, and
then we just once we got there, we just stayed
put and you know, I packed en up for the
(08:16):
weekend and we just waited it out.
Speaker 9 (08:19):
Meanwhile, television, media and radio personalities were doing what they
usually do. We go home early, get packed and either
sleep at the station or drive a few hours away
so we can come back quickly. Q ninety three and
wyld Legends while Wayne A. D. Barry and Angela Watson
Charles aka Uptown Angela sat down with me. Uptown Angela,
(08:41):
by the way, also runs the show as a program
director and Executive VP of National Programming at iHeartMedia. And
trust me, it got real real fast.
Speaker 13 (08:51):
I was a wreck because I was watching the news.
You know, I was trying to think, what's my plan.
I initially said, oh, I'm going to stay because we
had been through this before, right being asked to evacuate,
you know, voluntarily. If we left we'd go maybe an hour,
two hours, get a hotel, then come back. So in
(09:13):
that moment, I was just like, Okay, let me see
what I need to do here, and I'm just going
to be completely transparent because that's who I am. I
was going through a divorce at the time, so we
had actually started the initial separation process. He had been
out of the house for a month, and I called
him first because we had little kids. I had a
six year old and a thirteen year old at the time.
(09:34):
So we got in two cars. It was my in laws,
my now ex husband. It was a total of fourteen
of us, and in that moment, we tried to figure
out what's the best way to go that's not going
to have traffic, but there was no such thing. So
we sat for seventeen hours. I guess to get to
Dallas and that's where we ended up.
Speaker 9 (09:53):
For Ady Barry, it was a little different.
Speaker 14 (09:55):
I was ready for hurricane duty. I was going to
stay home. We all did hurricane duty, you know, person
stay at the station all night, sleep there for three days,
four days. Wang turned me in onto YouTube TV. So
but yeah, I was ready for hurricane duty. And Angie
called me. I said, what up, Andrew was, hand, what
you doing? See, I'm getting ready for hurricane dudey, I'm
(10:16):
gonna take me a nap. Oh no you're not. No, no,
you have to go. I say, wait what? And she said, yeah,
you have to go. Hurricanes coming. They said the city
is evacuating.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
I'm like, wait what.
Speaker 14 (10:27):
If Angie wouldn't have called me, I would have fell asleep.
Probably woke up about twelve one o'clock that morning.
Speaker 13 (10:32):
And he was living in the seventh Ward, which got
a lot of water. Yeah, like you had a lot
of damage.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
At your house, right, food?
Speaker 9 (10:38):
So add you didn't hear Ray Nagan get on TV?
Speaker 14 (10:42):
No?
Speaker 8 (10:42):
I was.
Speaker 9 (10:43):
He was watching YouTube TV and I.
Speaker 10 (10:48):
Had a TV show that was wildly popular called Fat
Fat and all of that here. Remember, but my boss
was actually Ray Nagan before he was mayor, because he
was working at Cocks. So I'll never forget watching the
news and Ray was.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Always really smooth, but he was stuttering. I said, this
is serious, right.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
And then I looked at the.
Speaker 10 (11:14):
Digital maps or whatever, and this storm had filled the
entire Gulf of Mexico and I still was going to stay.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I was so hard headed, really, I was.
Speaker 10 (11:26):
I was I was, but I did have a toddler
at the time, My son was one, and my girl
at that time, she was like, we're not.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Staying, and you're not staying. We are leaving.
Speaker 10 (11:40):
I had a business at that time as well, called
Wonder Wonderland, which was a family entertainment venue, and that
Sunday I tried to cancel all my parties. You know, nobody,
I said, I'll give you money back, I'll give you double.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
No one would let me cancel their party.
Speaker 13 (11:54):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
So all my employees left me and I had to
do everything.
Speaker 10 (12:00):
And I finally got him out of there. You know,
at the end of their parties, I was beat because
I didn't have any help. And the last thing I
did was I put a sign on the window.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
The hurricane is coming. We'll be closed, but we'll be opening,
like in a day or so.
Speaker 9 (12:16):
In nineteen ninety two, Mark Morial was elected mayor of
New Orleans. After hitting his term limit in two thousand
and two, meaning he couldn't run again, he ventured off
for new opportunities, soon becoming the president of the National
Urban League. But with his deep roots in New Orleans,
he's always been a huge advocate and what a coincidence.
(12:37):
The day before Katrina struck Morial was in town.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
I had flown to New Orleans for a funeral. Ironically,
it was the funeral of Clarence Barney, the leader of
the Urban League Great in New Orleans, and I was
about a year and a half, two years into my
tenure as president of the National Verne. I left office
three years and probably three months before Katrina took place.
(13:05):
So I was in New Orleans for the funeral on
that Saturday, and I remember distinctly that as I was
waiting to offer some reflections about Clarence Barney, a little
bit around noon, close to noon, my communications the reactor
who traveled with me, beckoned me to come from the
(13:26):
front where I was sitting on the dais to speak
to her. She said, the hurricane, and we knew there
was a hurricane in the Gulf, has now become a
Category four and it's about to get become a category five.
We have to leave or we're going to be stuck
in New Orleans and not be able to get back
to New York. So I slipped a note to the
(13:47):
Master of Ceremonies and said, I really need to speak
because I'm going to have to leave.
Speaker 8 (13:52):
And I didn't tell them why.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
I just said I had a plane to catch, and
I spoke, and then I went to the car to
go to the airport. But then I said, before I
go to the airport, I need to go stop over
by my mother son to check on her. At this time,
my mother was seventy three years old and living in
(14:15):
the family home, still very vitalent, vibrant to the working.
And I went to her home. I said, Mom, the
hurricane is now a Category five. We're washing it on television.
I said, I've come over here to make sure you're
going to evacuate and get away from the situation. To
what she said, I'm not going anywhere. I don't see
(14:37):
the need to evacuate. I'm going to be fine here.
I have your nephew here, my grandson is here, and
I need to stay here.
Speaker 9 (14:46):
Moriel's mother, Sybyl, was like many New Orleanians, leaving for
a storm isn't always a first option. First off, it's
costly with gas, hotel, and food. You end up spending thousands.
Now multiply that by having to acuate several times a
year during the Atlantic hurricane season that runs from June
to the end of November, and don't forget. New Orleans
(15:08):
is the most hurricane prone city in the United States,
according to Noah, with a hurricane within fifty nautical miles
happening about once every seven years and a major hurricane
roughly every twenty and much like Katrina, they tend to
happen most often between August and October, according to Prevention
(15:28):
web dot net. Noah. Meteorologists say it has to do
with trade winds, the shape of Louisiana seafloor, and the
warm and nurturing waters of the Gulf. But we'll save
that for another story.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
I said, Mom, it's really important that she leaves.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
She said, well, why don't you get me a room
downtown at the hotel like you did six years ago
when Hurricane Georgia's was bearing down on the city. I said,
when Hurricane George was bearing down on the city, I
was running the city and I was here, and if
I put you in a hotel, I could take care
of you. I could watch you, I could keep an
eye on you. That's not the case today. Be leaving you.
(16:04):
She said, well, I really don't think I need to leave.
She went upstairs, and I'm about to miss my flight literally,
and I'm saying to myself, I'm not going to leave
until she has committed to leave. So finally she comes
downstairs and she says, I think you're insisting on this right,
And I said, why don't you drive to Batman to
(16:26):
go to my sister Shari's house and stay with them
at least for the next day or two to make
sure everything's going to be clear.
Speaker 8 (16:34):
And she says she just sort.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Of says okay and proceeds to take to begin to
prepare herself to leave, which took about two hours, and
by that.
Speaker 8 (16:47):
Time missed my flight.
Speaker 9 (16:48):
Will Moriol was working to get his mother out of town.
New Owns Police superintendent at a compass, was making calls
to cancel family plans that were in the works and
had to reorganize his family to a central location so
he didn't have to worry about everyone during the storm.
That way he could focus on his first responder duties.
Speaker 15 (17:07):
Well, I tell you, it was kind of a unique
situation because my birthday was August twenty nine, so my
family was planning a birthday party for me on August
twenty eight, and when we got the information that the
hurricane was coming. I canceled all the plans of the
birthday party.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
My son was in town from Texas A and M.
Speaker 15 (17:25):
I told him, you need to go back to Texas
A and M, you know there's not going to be
a party or anything. I can't you know, I won't
be able to be involved in any type of I want.
I don't want you in the city my daughters were
working at. When my daughter's working at the rich Carlton,
so I told her to bring my ex wife and
her sister to the rich Carlton. Then my current rife
(17:47):
at the time, she was eight months pregnant and I
had a three year old, and so she and her
family came with me to the Higher Regency because I
didn't know what the situation was going to be, but
I had a room over there, so I got my
family security. Then I called my sisters and I got
them at the Windsor Court Hotel.
Speaker 9 (18:06):
Hurricane Katrina made landfall near Louisiana's only inhabited barrier island,
Grand Isle. A barrier island is the first line of
defence against the storm surge and hurricanes. It helps slow
those storms down much like a speed bump. The vast,
fast moving monster of a storm made a second landfall
between the Louisiana Mississippi state line.
Speaker 7 (18:28):
At least one levee has broken in New Orleans, leading
to some localized flooding, but there could be far worse
still to come as the storm surge and as the
rainfall from Hurricane Katrina hits Representatives.
Speaker 9 (18:42):
Troy Carter waited the storm out in Algiers, a section
of Orleans Parish that just happens to be on the
other side of the Mississippi River was referred to as
the West Bank. There was an unusual calm after the
worst of Katrina passed, a peculiar silence in the air.
No bugs, no birds, no people. Carter was between political
(19:04):
jobs at the time, just having run for office. You
talked to me about the creepy quiet feeling.
Speaker 6 (19:10):
But I remember there being an unimaginable quiet. There was
an eerie quiet that was over the city. No bugs.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
This is the.
Speaker 6 (19:25):
Immediate aftermath of the storm. There were no bugs, no birds,
no crickets. It was the weirdest ecosystem that I could
ever describe. It was like something out of the Twilight Zone,
out of some B rated movie where it was a stillness.
(19:46):
I can't make a person see or feel that level
of quiet where everything was just frozen in time.
Speaker 9 (19:56):
At that point, residents on that side of the river
assumed everything thing was all clear, So did most of
the national media.
Speaker 6 (20:03):
We thought we had escaped the storm. We thought it
was over, and it wasn't until the breach of the
of the levees that we realized the true devastation.
Speaker 8 (20:16):
Was yet to come.
Speaker 9 (20:17):
You see, that's what the city had feared. I want
to take you back to Ray Nagan during that same
press conference when he told Orleans Paris residents to evacuate,
he also said this, the.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
Storm surge most likely will topple our levee system, so
we are preparing to deal with that also.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
So that's why we ordered a mandatory evacuation.
Speaker 9 (20:41):
The levees did break apart in several areas and unleashed
hell in the majority black city of New Orleans, exposing
flaws in the government's levee system that was supposed to
keep the water that surrounds the city out.
Speaker 11 (20:53):
We're trying to survive in houses.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
He's trapped in a house.
Speaker 9 (21:00):
It's common knowledge growing up in Southeast Louisiana that the
city of New Orleans sits below sea level. Here's a
quick lesson in topography, or the study of natural and
or artificial surfaces of the land. Go grab a bowl
and sit it on the table. That's pretty much the
topography of the city of New Orleans. It's shaped like
a bowl. On each side of that bowl, where the
(21:21):
high points are, there's a waterway, either Lake Pontchatrain, which
is on one side, or on the other side, the
Mississippi River. The city fits neatly inside. The problem is
it's not supposed to. It's supposed to be at least
as high as the lake and the river or the
top of that bowl. So when the levees broke, it
(21:42):
allowed the bowl to fill up with water. Perez and
her friends, who evacuated together, woke up to a new reality.
Speaker 12 (21:50):
Like the next morning when we were watching the weather
and it was like, oh, okay, it went through.
Speaker 5 (21:58):
We're good, we can come back.
Speaker 12 (22:00):
And then we got the word of the flooding, and
that's that changed everything.
Speaker 9 (22:04):
It wouldn't be until late September two thousand and five
that New Orleans residents were officially allowed to return, but
even then, what they were returning to was very different
from what they left. Many New Orleans residents I've talked
to over the years described cleaning up their homes before
they left, doing laundry, washing dishes, straightening up all to
(22:25):
come home to a flooded mess.
Speaker 14 (22:29):
I had everything in a fire cabinet, pulled the draw out,
put it on a table and said, in a word,
I'll be back everything my shack jacket. I had my
graduation picture. You know, I walked in that house. The
refrigerator was next to my front door, so we had
(22:49):
to get in there. And it was just something. I
have pictures you know of that and when I came
back in the city. But everything's gone.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
I think I lost fifty thousand records, like real nine
like yeah, Like I had a room.
Speaker 10 (23:07):
They were stacked tall as I'm six feet tall, they
were stacked around the room.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
I know.
Speaker 10 (23:13):
I lost like six pairs of technique twelve hundred turning
tables because we DJed. We did a lot, so I
lost all of that stuff. But I think the one
thing that I missed the most was some of the
vintage interviews that I did that we kind of didn't
have an archiving system. Like I did an interview with
(23:38):
Biggie Smalls and Craig Mac for the Big Mac Tour.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
You know that was at the Riverboat Hallelujah.
Speaker 10 (23:45):
You know, just Snoop Dogg interviews and a number of
artists that are no longer alive, local artists that are
no longer alive, music pictures.
Speaker 9 (24:00):
Is there anything that you wish you would have packed?
Speaker 12 (24:04):
I had a box of unwritten songs and you know,
just musical notes and everything, and I, you know, I
could just kick myself for not bringing that little box.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
And also I was a travel.
Speaker 12 (24:18):
Agent for many, many years before moving to New Orleans,
and I.
Speaker 5 (24:26):
Traveled all over the world.
Speaker 12 (24:29):
And I had pictures and I had this wonderful camera,
and all those pictures are gone, and you know, even
some of my my baby pictures, and so I lost
a lot of memories. But you know, I always just
have to remind myself that, you know, I got off
(24:52):
better than you know, a lot of people, and I
just I just sympathize with that. And I, you know,
you always have a sense of survivor's guilt, you know,
especially watching when everything was happening.
Speaker 9 (25:08):
New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Eddie Compass says he was
juggling a lot during the storm, helping residents, constantly updating
the media, and getting phone calls from family. Some things,
he says, Unfortunately, slip through the cracks doing.
Speaker 15 (25:24):
Hurricane Katrina, and my sister called me and she said,
we didn't get at Tony and Uncle Eddie.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
You got to go get him.
Speaker 15 (25:31):
Well, I was in the middle of battle at the
time with the flood, and I was like, well, we're
trying to put rescue missions out to save people. And
I've hurried to him my officers that we cannot leave
to take care of our personal families.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
We have to take care of the citizens.
Speaker 15 (25:49):
I said, if I don't leave to go get any tea,
Tony and Uncle Eddie, I'm letting every police auser on
this department know that it's okay to leave.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
And you got to leave from the front.
Speaker 15 (26:00):
So I couldn't live at my aunt uncle and they
drowned and they died, and it pains me.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
And it hurts me to this day.
Speaker 9 (26:08):
The mayor at that time, Ray Nagan, reacted to the
death toll days after the storm in an interview with
Sixty Minutes.
Speaker 16 (26:16):
Too many people died because of lack of action, lack
of coordination and some goofy laws that basically say there's
not a clear distinction of when the federal government stops
and when the state government starts. And if you have
federal if the federal government takes over, then you're giving
(26:39):
up some powers of if the governor don't ask the president,
and the president don't ask the governor. And it was
just bs.
Speaker 9 (26:48):
Mark Morio was able to get his mother to safety.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
My mother did evacuate up to my sister's house. Thank
god you did. Because the family home had a foot
or salt water water. It was, you know, isolated. She
would have been really, really in a risk situation, and
she stayed. I went back to New York and on
Monday Tuesday, when I turned on television and saw all
(27:13):
the people at the dome suffering, pleading, crying, I literally
became inconsolably upset and inconsolably angry. And at the time,
my wife was seven months six months pregnant with our daughter,
and I said, we at that time still it.
Speaker 8 (27:35):
I said, I have to go back to New Organs.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
I'm going to go back down and I'm going to
figure out how to get back down there.
Speaker 8 (27:39):
And me and two of my friends.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
We had to fly to bat Rouge and go back
to the city while the city was fundamentally almost completely evacuated.
It was a very emotional experience for me for many
many reasons. I was not on the front line. I
was not quarterbacking the response, but I head quarterback at
least three hurricane response since while I was mayor, including
(28:02):
a very serious hurricane known as Hurricane George's, which was
a hurricane where we had ordered evacuations and people went
to the dome and the convention Center. So when I
saw the conditions at the Dome and the convention Center,
I really became livid because it did not need to
be those. The people who were there should not have
been there without water, without food, without medical supplies. It
(28:23):
was a complete collapse of the response by not only
the federal government, but by city Hall and the state
as well. It would have challenged anyone, but I felt
for the first several days they were completely insensitive across
the booth as though the state said the city should
(28:46):
handle it, the city said the federal cavalry should rescue
us said the city and the state. It was a
compendium of finger pointing and political confusion by the then president,
the then government, and the then mayor, And that's what
I witnessed, and that's what I saw on It really
really took me because I felt like, in that moment
(29:11):
they should have all come together to adequately respond to
one of the most difficult and challenging natural disasters, man
made disasters ould had.
Speaker 8 (29:21):
In modern American history.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
And as things evolved, we learned that it was man
made levees that lapsed that caused the flooding in the
worlds almost twenty four hours after the storm had passed,
and so if the levees had.
Speaker 8 (29:39):
Not broken, we would not be having this conversation today.
Speaker 9 (29:43):
The President of the United States at that time, George W. Bush,
flew over the city on August thirty first on his
way back to d C, but never landed, a decision
he would later regret. He addressed the nation from the
French Quarter on September fifteenth.
Speaker 11 (30:00):
You need to know that our whole nation cares about you,
and in the journey ahead, you're not alone. To all
who carry a burden of loss. I extend the deepest
sympathy of our country.
Speaker 9 (30:11):
But how could this happen an entire city where the
majority of residents were Black people living in one of
the richest countries in the world consumed by floodwater. Officially,
it was the result of Mother Nature's fury that pushed
against the levees, though to this day many who stayed
in neighborhoods near the levees say they heard a boom
(30:35):
like a bomb going off. Personally speaking, after seeing everything
that happened to black residence during Katrina, the assumptions that
some entity or entities were trying to flood the majority
black areas cannot be ignored. But no matter what you believe,
the sole entity held to blame the US Army Corps
(30:57):
of Engineers, who had those levees put in.
Speaker 8 (31:01):
I went to the Lower Nine. I went on the levee.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
At this point in time, it was about a week
and a half after and the city was completely abandoned,
and I wanted to go to the site of the
break us being very familiar with the industrial canal, being
very familiar with these I.
Speaker 8 (31:18):
Wanted to see and see if my eyes would tell
a story about the break.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
When I was there, there was a man boring into
the soil who was a consultant for the Army Corps
of engineers, and he didn't know me from a can
of paint. I was out there and he was not
from New Orleans, but he was working, and you know,
we were there and we were just guys in the neighborhood.
And I said, hey, what you're doing? He says, I'm
(31:45):
doing some borings. I said, what you finding out?
Speaker 8 (31:47):
Man?
Speaker 3 (31:48):
What's going on here? He said, Boy, somebody's gonna be
in big trouble. He said, I said why. He said,
see these sheep piles right here. That and a sheep
pile is sort of like the steel He says. They
were not driven deep enough. Somehow they were not driven
deep enough. And if they're not driven deep enough, is
this susceptible of breaking and fall. They have to be
(32:10):
driven very very deep into the mud so that there's
more of more of the sheep pile underground than there
is on the top of the ground.
Speaker 8 (32:20):
That creates some level of stability.
Speaker 9 (32:24):
Black NPD Police Superintendent Eddie Compass had a lot on
his plate during Katrina. With cuts on his legs, he
laced up his boots and went into the flood water,
helping to save some of the most vulnerable New Orleans residents.
He would later have to seek medical care for cuts,
having them drained to avoid an infection. He also had
the deaths of his aunt and uncle on his heart.
(32:47):
All of this while he says, he was trying to
remain transparent with the media with constant updates. Then he
got a call that his press secretary committed suicide.
Speaker 15 (32:58):
The mayor was trying to show instead of community saying
that I was too weak to be in charge of
Katrina because they saw him cry on TV.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
He said, I broke down, but nobody asked the reason
why I broke down. Paul called over my press secretary.
Speaker 15 (33:14):
I told my staff to bring their families with us
to the hotel.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
He for some reason did not bring his wife with it.
Speaker 15 (33:22):
So he came to me when the flooding started, said
he just got a call from one of his natives
that his house was totally underwater and his wife had drowned.
He freaked out, I said, Paul, calm down. I said,
why didn't you bring your wife?
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Like out all that you too? He just kept saying,
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 15 (33:45):
I said, Paul, I'm so pissed at you right now,
I said, but I really can't talk to here right now.
I said, We're got to do this press conference. I said,
but we're gonna try to figure things out. We're going
to find out if your wife was indeed in that house.
I said, but right now, Paul, I'm really upset with
you that I really don't want to tell to you
right now. Well, I was doing that press conference. Police
also came up behind me and tapped me and said, Chief,
(34:08):
I take something. I said, do you see all these
cameras here, I mean a media can see. I turned
around to he said, He's gonna have been important. He said, Paul,
he just committed suicide. I felt so bad that I
screamed and hollered at him and kind.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Of made him feel guilty. I can't take that back.
Speaker 15 (34:27):
And the sad thing is his wife gut all the
how she hadn't killed herself has made his neighbor gave
him bad.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Information so she wasn't dead.
Speaker 15 (34:35):
People don't understand during Hurricane Katrina, there was no communication.
The radio system was down, the phone system was down.
Everything was being communicated to me by word of mouth.
And when you communicate things by word of mouth, you
lose a lot. In the transition and I kept it
resonated in my head that the mayor was saying, you
better not tell her anything up. You better be transparent,
(34:57):
because I know one thing, anything that wrong that happened.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
He was gonna blame me.
Speaker 15 (35:00):
If I said the truth to the best of my
ability that I know of and they couldn't prove it
right away down in Bellishy, then if I don't say
the truth and it turns out to be true later on,
then I'm covering something up.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
So I couldn't win in that regard.
Speaker 15 (35:15):
But if I had to do it all over again,
I would get two press confers, one in the morning
and one in the evening, and I wouldn't talk in
between those two press conficers. The situation was changing too rapid.
But hindsight is twenty twenty, you know.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
That's the thing.
Speaker 15 (35:29):
The biggest mistake I made, I was too transpact. I
gave too much information.
Speaker 9 (35:34):
I think You're also mentioned in the documentary Something about
the Cipher.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (35:41):
On August thirty first, a man who identifies himself as
an African American creole with a French last name stepped
off of a helicopter into the middle of the chaos
in New Orleans. That man was Army Lieutenant General Russell Honore.
Mediately things seemed to start coming together. CBS spoke to
(36:04):
the now retired generals sometime after the storm. General Honore
talked about the moment he saw all those people at
the super Dome.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Oh my god, how did this happen? But let's get
it fixed. I want dad on the ground so the
truck can go get another lower. Sure you can make
that happen.
Speaker 9 (36:22):
I can make it happen to you, the man.
Speaker 8 (36:23):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
You know, General Honorey did an outstanding job. I mean,
he did a great job.
Speaker 15 (36:30):
But the world that he came from in the military,
in the world I came up through the police department
is different jar than his. Different parts, is different identification
of situations. When General Honore said he weren't any snipers,
he said, the chief is getting it wrong.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
They aren't any snipers. Well, the definition of military I
don't know what is a sniper.
Speaker 15 (36:55):
But on a police department, if somebody shooting at you
no reason and they unidentified to me, that's a sniper.
And when he said they weren't shooting at the police,
I had to disagree with him because I told him
Kevin Thomas, one of my police officers, had a bullet
in his head from an unidentified shooter, which was reported
(37:16):
to me A sniper shot Kevin Thomas in the head.
And when I verified that Kevin Thomas shot in the
head by unidentified the individual for no apparent reason, I
reported as a sniper and General Honery said that wasn't accurate.
So I'm not saying jen Ron Ray was wrong, h
but I think I was wrong for reporting that way
because that's the way it was reported to me, and
(37:36):
I had verification that Kevin Thomas was shot in the
head by an unidentified individual for an unknown reason.
Speaker 9 (37:44):
Mark Morial says what happened to residents of New Orleans
was a travesty.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
It was a very emotional experience for me for many
many reasons. I was not on the front line. I
was not quarterbacking the response, but I head quarterback at
least three hurricane responses is while I was mayor, including
a very serious hurricane known as Hurricane George's, which was
a hurricane where we at ordered evacuations and people went
(38:10):
to the dome and the convention Center. So when I
saw the conditions at the Dome and the convention center.
I really became livid because it did not need to
be those The people who were there should not have
been there without water, without food, without medical supplies.
Speaker 8 (38:25):
It was a complete collapse of the response.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
By not only the federal government, but by city hall
and the state as well. I think when General Honore
came in and organized the evacuation of the city, I
would give that a strong B plus. Maybe it ain't
minus the way in which she stepped in. I think
after the initial challenges, I think the recovery and the
(38:52):
role of the federal government and appropriating the money may
deserve a seat, you know, maybe a low C, maybe
a D plus or C min yes, but the people
of New Orleans get an A plus.
Speaker 9 (39:04):
Twenty years ago, television cameras captured black people and white
people going into flooded grocery stores. They were called looters,
a categorization that to this day many question was that
a fair assessment. Representative Troy Carter thinks if the shoe
was on the other foot, things may have been different.
Speaker 6 (39:24):
And I'm very proud, very proud of the resilience of
the people. Still very sad about those lives that were lost,
very sad about the way New Orleanians were depicted during
our most challenged times. And I dare say, like the
(39:44):
movie with Eddie Murphy Trading Places, if those who are
critical of New Orleans or the people inhabitants of New
Orleans for merely trying to survive during a very difficult time,
I would offer them the movie Trading Places and offer
for them to swap places. Be disconnected from your checking account,
(40:06):
be disconnected from your wealth, be disconnected from your safety valves,
be disconnected from your families, be disconnected from civilization, be
disconnected from food and water and shelter. And see how
you would react, and see if you would still be
as critical. If all of a sudden, you had no money,
(40:31):
you had no wealth, you had no resource, You had
not even a piece of bread to eat, You didn't
have your medication. You couldn't call your banker and get
a signature loan. You couldn't go to an ATM and
withdraw money. You couldn't simply go and buy the things
that you need, because your money meant nothing, your wealth
(40:53):
meant nothing. Because Katrina was the great equalizer. It took
people of all economic strata, of all backgrounds all fates,
all religions, all wealth brackets, and it clumped them together
in a sea of hopelessness. So next time someone wants
(41:15):
to be critical about what they saw depicted the national media,
think about trading places and see if you would have
survived it.
Speaker 9 (41:24):
President George W. Bush would later write about Katrina in
his memoir He sat down with NBC's Matt Lauer in
twenty ten.
Speaker 11 (41:31):
It's one thing to say, you know, I don't appreciate
the way he handle his business. It's another thing to say,
this man's a racist. I resent it. It's not true,
and there's one of the most disgusting moments of my presidency.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
This from the book.
Speaker 17 (41:44):
I faced a lot of criticism as president. I didn't
like hearing people claim that I lied about Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich.
But the suggestion that I was racist because of the
response to Katrina represented an all time low.
Speaker 11 (41:58):
Still feel that way as you read those words, felt
them when I heard them, felt them when I wrote them,
and I felt what I'm listening.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
To me say.
Speaker 17 (42:06):
You told Laura at the time, it was the worst
moment of your presiden Yes, I wonder if some people
are going to read that, and they might give you
some heat for that, the.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Reason is that don't care.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Well, here's the reason.
Speaker 17 (42:16):
You're not saying that the worst moment in your presidency
was watching the misery in Louisiana. You're saying it was
when someone insulted you because and.
Speaker 11 (42:23):
I also make it clear that the misery in Louisiana
affected me deeply as well.
Speaker 9 (42:27):
During Katrina's evacuation and the fight to return home, there
were some moments that made New Orleans evacuees feel reassured
of their path back to the Big Easy. Those popular
longtime radio DJs Uptown Angela, Ady, Barry, and wa Wayne,
who all started at the station around the same time.
They gave residents a sense of hope and normalcy. Margie
(42:50):
Perez was not only able to come home to the
Laura Nine, but was offered an opportunity to buy a
mortgage through the nonprofit New Orleans' Habitat for Humanity. The
concept was the Musician's Village, a place for culture bearers
of New Orleans to have a place to call home
in hopes they could inspire others to come back.
Speaker 12 (43:10):
Harry Connock Junior and Brentford Marsalis, who are New Orleanians.
Of course, they were spokesmen for Habitat, and they came
up with the concept of making that neighborhood available to musicians.
And when I heard about this, I I said, well,
(43:33):
you know, I'll apply.
Speaker 9 (43:35):
Habitat helped many musicians and regular everyday residents come back
to the city, offering low interest loans to applicants who
also had to put in a little elbow grease by
helping to build their own homes in order to qualify
for the program. However, to this day, Press says she's
still heartbroken seeing some of her neighbors still suffering to
(43:57):
make their way home twenty years later. That's right, the
city's population still hasn't reached pre Katrina levels, and a
lack of tax base means a lack of money for resources.
Speaker 6 (44:09):
Fortunately, the media painted a picture and only showed the
worst of the worst. They showed people who were looting,
They showed people who were acting out against the directives
of law enforcement. But I'm so happy that you and
(44:29):
others are doing stories like this. They give us an
opportunity to tell the better side of individuals who stepped up,
who stepped up and provided help, and even in the
midst of their own trouble, showed the resiliency of helping
their neighbors, helping little ladies who were in wheelchairs and
(44:51):
couldn't move, and they were picking them up and helping
them onto trucks or boats in this case in some
cases to assist them to get to higher ground. CNN
and other newscasts they only showed the most horrific acts
that painted people in Louisiana and more specifically in New Orleans.
(45:13):
Is some type of some type of lawless individuals. When
certainly some of that did take place, we can't ignore it.
But that was the smaller part.
Speaker 12 (45:25):
Sure about the pumps and the levees. I mean, no
matter what, if another Katrina comes, I'm not here, you know, And.
Speaker 5 (45:39):
You know, it's just because of the way that things
were handled.
Speaker 12 (45:48):
I mean, like a few months after, there was word
that one of the levees was stuffed with newspaper or something.
I can't remember what the story was, but it was like,
you know, they weren't fixing it the way you were supposed.
Speaker 5 (46:04):
To, and that just sort of stayed with me.
Speaker 9 (46:08):
Perez Is right after the storm repairs had to be made,
and local journalists found the unthinkable. In Saint Bernard Parish,
a neighboring area, WWL spoke to a resident who says
they saw a contractor stuffing newspaper into the gap to
fill the floodwall.
Speaker 8 (46:25):
The one through the wall was stuffed with newspaper.
Speaker 9 (46:28):
That same resident unrolls the balled up paper and reads
off the date on it.
Speaker 5 (46:34):
May twenty first, two thousand and six.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
It's a date on the paper.
Speaker 9 (46:42):
One engineer at the time said they couldn't believe it.
Over time, it could affect the integrity of the wall.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
They should have done a bit of a job than
what you see here.
Speaker 6 (46:51):
I cannot even comprehend that somebody would put some stuff,
some newspaper there.
Speaker 9 (46:57):
As contractors who worked for the Art Army Corps of
Engineers hustled to get the walls that protect Saint Bernard
and Orleans parishes back up to park, the black residents
of New Orleans were battling to try and get home.
Speaker 8 (47:10):
One of the fractures that took place.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
The next step that really really divided the community was
when a group of business people had a meeting in
Dallas and decided to develop a plan that was tantamount
to ethnic cleansing. They wanted to in effect bulldose fifty
percent of the city, most of that those parts of
(47:35):
the city were African American neighborhoods and turn them into
golf courses and the goons they and in a highly,
highly incentive, incentive and racially motivated way.
Speaker 8 (47:48):
I think they were blind, very blind, and.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Basically and not consulted with anyone, had not spoken to anyone,
and they marginalized the elected officials in that moment. Because
the he was abandoned, everyone was evacuated, and it was
a crisis. Many of us rose up against that plan.
I flew to New Orleans and gave a major speech
against the plan at Saint Maria Garretti Church. Community activists
(48:18):
from all over rose up against the plan because the
plan was morally indefensive, not only what it was, but
how it came together.
Speaker 18 (48:26):
That compounded the difficulty of the recovery, which was a
class of visions as to whether the quota the city
should be rebuilt, completely rebuilt, some neighborhoods should be rebuilt.
Speaker 8 (48:38):
And it led to a chaotic beguinea of the recovery.
Speaker 9 (48:42):
Mar Ray Nagan reacted to that plan.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
We as black people.
Speaker 5 (48:47):
It's time.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
It's time for us to come together.
Speaker 19 (48:52):
It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the
one that should be a chocolate New Orleans.
Speaker 20 (48:59):
I don't care what people are saying uptown.
Speaker 19 (49:03):
All wherever they are. This city will be chocolate. At
the end of the day, this city will.
Speaker 20 (49:16):
Be a majority African American city. It's the way God
wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no
other way, it wouldn't.
Speaker 8 (49:27):
Be New Orleans.
Speaker 9 (49:28):
Mar Re Nagan's speech came as a sigh of relief
to tens of thousands of black New Orleanians who were
trying to make their way back to the city but
felt like they were being pushed out. Critics, however, called
his comments controversial and even racist.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
What of our culture to talk about chocolate cities?
Speaker 4 (49:48):
You know, DC was the first chocolate city that ever
came on the map Newark, Detroit, New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
So for me, the vernacular of Saint.
Speaker 4 (49:58):
Chocolate City was not a I have used that in
speeches for three and a half years now, and I've
even used it on Capitol Hill, So I didn't really
think it was a big deal. Where I crossed the
line was bringing God into the whole, you know, discussion,
and that's where I kind of zoned out.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
I don't know where that came from. It was a
crazy moment. You know, maybe I'm not getting enough sleep
at night, But that won't happen again.
Speaker 9 (50:23):
The second fail the Road Home program. It was meant
to help homeowners rebuild, but the red tape of the
program only ended up helping around one hundred and thirty
thousand people, according to the program's now closed website. That
may sound like a big number, but the Southern Poverty
Law Center says in April two thousand, there were approximately
(50:44):
four hundred and eighty five thousand people living in New Orleans.
Some say the Road Home program is the reason the
population has struggled to come back.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
The Road Home began with the Great Vision, but it
was fatally flawed from the beginning because it compensated people
solely for the appraised value of their own and which
meant that for many many poor, working class, even middle
class New Orleanians and people in the region, the cost
(51:16):
to rebuild was more than the appraised value the home
because the appraisals were depressed. They were depressed by racial disparities.
They were depressed by a lot of issues. So the
plan was flawed.
Speaker 8 (51:30):
From the beginning.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
And I one of my objections to the plan is
that the city of New Orleans should have been given
the money to have its own plan and the Powershing
Jefferys should have been given money to have its own plan,
as opposed to the state trying to create a one
size fit all plan with the money from the federal government.
Speaker 8 (51:47):
And that plan was successfully sued by the Legal Defense Fund.
Speaker 3 (51:52):
And the challenge is is that by the time the
suit was resolved, all of the money had been distributed,
but the plan had flaws in it. They should have
compensated people for the true replacement value to rebuild their homes,
which is why you had half built homes.
Speaker 8 (52:11):
You had people trying to strap together insurance money, savings
and road home money to rebuild.
Speaker 12 (52:20):
I'm just so disappointed in how some things were handled
in the city with like you know, the road home
program was just run so awful.
Speaker 5 (52:34):
I mean, some people are still dealing with, you know,
keeping up there.
Speaker 12 (52:40):
I have a neighbor Caddi corner from me, and his
grandmother still twenty years later, is hoping to get back
into her house. She's in Texas and they're slowly renovating
the house and they've been doing it for all the
years that I've been living in my house, and I just,
(53:06):
you know, I hope, I pray that one day she
is able to move back into her into her house.
You know, because of the way that they're the funding
and the contractors and everything, they lost money they you know,
and there's so many stories like that because you know,
there are so many there were so many scammers that
(53:26):
came through, and you.
Speaker 5 (53:29):
Know, it's just it's so tragic.
Speaker 12 (53:32):
I mean, people are supposed to be made whole by
insurance and by grants and by FEMA, and so many
weren'ts It.
Speaker 6 (53:42):
Was disproportionately distributed to communities that needed it most. They
seemed to have gotten less. But then years after Katrina
was over, people were still being sued and being having
leans put on their properties. Were program that never really worked.
One of the first things I did as a member
of Congress was to go to then Secretary Marsha Fudge
(54:07):
and to petition to her and Governor John Bell Edwards
to get rid of this program, to shut it down
and forgive all of these homeowners who were being taxed,
punished for resources that never got the full compliment of
And nearly twenty years later, it was two years ago
(54:29):
that I ended this program. Two and a half, almost
three years ago that I was able to end Road
Home for good and forgive every penny that people had
been awarded to fix their homes.
Speaker 13 (54:46):
I've got friends who left here and went elsewhere Jackson, Texas,
Georgia and were given, when I say, given, given homes
to live in for free, you know, and even offering
them the option to purchase it at a very low price.
But they chose to come back to New Orleans to
(55:09):
little to nothing, just because they love the city so much.
Speaker 9 (55:12):
So it's like, why couldn't we have that here? We're
losing our people every day.
Speaker 14 (55:17):
I am seeing that.
Speaker 13 (55:18):
I'm looking at all kinds of reports every day, and
you know, looking at data when we look at ratings
for the radio station, and we can see that we're
dwindling down because the opportunity is not there.
Speaker 3 (55:29):
The plan should have been designed in the same fashion
as the post nine eleven victims compensation. I argue for
that then I fairly believe that would have been the
best approach. I think New Orleans was treated a particular
way because it was this majority black, southern city. I
think it was treated this way because it didn't have
(55:49):
the political cloud of a New York city, it didn't
have the political cloud of many of the great population centers.
Speaker 8 (55:56):
And I believe that, notwithstanding.
Speaker 3 (55:58):
Good faith efforts by a lot of people who worked
very hard, the road home plan was faily flawed from
the beginning in terms of how carried out compensation. And
then people needed more than to rebuild their home, they
needed to rebuild their lives, and there was no compensation money.
And people said, why should they have been compensation money?
I said, because the levees broke because of negligence, and
(56:22):
only because the government is immune from suit, the Army
Corps of Engineers is immune from suit. There wasn't a
massive class actions that would to force the government to
play the.
Speaker 8 (56:32):
Real cost and the real price of the damage that
was caused.
Speaker 3 (56:36):
The point is is that even though the compensation was inadded,
even though philanthropy and people from all over the world
rolled in in many cases many people great will to
rescue the city. The truth is that twenty years later,
(56:57):
many great challenges still remain. The truth is is that
the city's sustainability in survival has come from people's love
of its unique culture, its unique people, and people's desire
to rescue, retain that, and keep that is what makes
the city so strong today. That is important that there'd
(57:19):
be a commitment to raise, strengthen, and fortify the whole
flood control system. There's no doubt that global warming climate
change have impacted the severity of storms, have eroded in
many respects the natural barrier that the marsh and the
coast provides, and that the fortifications that took place some
(57:44):
twenty years ago are really going to be inadequate to
protect the city in the years to come.
Speaker 8 (57:50):
There's got to be an investment.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
Never forget what happened twenty years ago.
Speaker 10 (57:54):
I think it's very important because things are cyclical, right
and with the way that the weather pattern to have
become so much more forceful and rapid, like, we have
to have a plan.
Speaker 1 (58:05):
I think that's really important. Moving past year.
Speaker 9 (58:07):
Twenty Dorothy played by Diana Ross and the Wiz sang
the song Home. There's a lyric that goes, maybe there's
a chance for me to go back there now that
I have some direction. Maybe there's a chance for me
too go back now that I.
Speaker 10 (58:26):
Have some direction.
Speaker 9 (58:28):
For people from here, there's no place like New Orleans.
It's like our own Emerald City. Our wizard may be
wacky from time to time, but the people from here
are resilient. The Black experience and excellence that comes out
of this city is inspiring. Our unique culture and beauty
and strength are just some of the driving forces behind
(58:50):
the fight for many to still make their way home
decades after feeling like they were forced out. Twenty years later,
a lot has changed, Neighbors don't know neighbors anymore, and
some homes still lay abandoned in neighborhoods. But there is
some hope a new generation of Katrina babies that have
sprouted up to take the place of those who have
(59:11):
moved on. They remember the stories told by older relatives,
They've seen the documentaries on TV, and they're looking at
filling those political and social gaps to start pushing the
city in a better direction. This has been a special
presentation of Black New Orleans twenty years after Katrina. I'm
Timmy Swick for the Black Information Network. Follow us on
(59:34):
vinnews dot com.
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