New Orleans today has 110,000 fewer people than before Katrina. Some longtime residents told me they feel now they made a mistake returning and rebuilding their homes in the still-desolate neighborhood. In the Lower 9th Ward, only about a third of the households came back. Some neighborhoods may not be fully repopulated for decades. Ten years out, you see few of the telltale marks of Katrina anymore - the discolored flood lines and spray-painted X's left by rescue teams that searched houses after the storm. Some business districts, such as those in Central City and the Freret neighborhood, are more vital than before the storm. The mountains of debris eventually disappeared many neighborhoods were rebuilt. I've been back to New Orleans many times since then and reported on the city's progress. Many said they'd been waiting for help since the storm. Four days after the storm, I was aboard the Algiers ferry, which was picking up people from the flooded communities of Arabi and Chalmette. Many at the Superdome had been waiting for days on buses they'd been promised would take them to shelters in Baton Rouge and other cities. Just as surprising as the lawless atmosphere was the slow government response. When it was time to leave, we found ourselves wading through waist-deep water. Outside, people lay on sheets of cardboard on walkways usually populated by sports fans on their way to Saints games. Inside, with no air conditioning or ventilation, it was stifling and the smell was terrible. The Superdome was truly a miserable place. We were able to hitch a ride in on a National Guard high-water truck. He glared at me and said, "No." When I asked why, he said, "Because I'm not a snitch."īy the time we got to the city's largest "shelter of last resort," the Louisiana Superdome, it was two days after the storm. With microphone in hand, I asked him if he would describe what's going on. I saw a man who, like me, was watching the activity. I quickly found out that being a reporter in that situation can be dicey. Driving through the city, we saw people lined up outside a chain drug store, filing in through the shattered doors and coming out carrying goods. Covered with a plastic sheet, we saw a male gunshot victim - lying there, residents said, since the night before. A few blocks away, we saw our first dead body. ![]() ![]() When people realized the floodwaters were rising, it seemed to raise the level of panic and lawlessness in the city. ![]() Thousands wait to be evacuated outside the Superdome on Sept. "You know, everybody there just felt like trash," remembered Kevin Goodman, a Mardi Gras Indian chief from the 7th Ward. What I will never forget is the sense of despair in the voices of evacuees waiting in the squalid convention center, day after day, for aid and buses that never came. I watched people at the Morial Convention Center sharing water, sandwiches, and clean clothes lifted from the mall next door. But most of the victims of Katrina helped one another. Some flood victims preyed on one another. ![]() How would you react? Some police stayed on the job heroically. It stripped people down and revealed who they were. The storm didn't just strip the city of law and order and utility services. New Orleans had dissolved into bedlam and the scale of the disaster had overwhelmed every local, state and federal emergency response plan formulated to handle a major hurricane. They needed to see that the reassuring pronouncements from federal officials meant absolutely nothing. Of course we had a job to do, because the rest of the country needed to see and hear what was happening to this great Southern city. John Burnett, standing in knee-deep water in front of the Superdome shortly after Hurricane Katrina had passed.
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