Louisiana's St. Bernard Parish flooded extensively when Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29, 2005, displacing residents and inundating nearly every building. Residents recalled a powerful storm surge that pushed debris and trash ahead of fast-moving water. Twenty years later oil and sugar refineries have reopened, but the local population remains about two-thirds of its pre-storm size. The community continues rebuilding and shows increasing optimism while implementing new flood prevention measures as part of a regional $14.5 billion federally funded flood protection system. At only a few feet above sea level, the parish faces greater hurricane intensity and more severe flooding driven by climate change.
When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, 2005, Louis Pomes was standing on top of a St. Bernard Parish government building that overlooked a marsh. "All of a sudden it just looked like somebody picked up the earth and started running with it," Pomes remembers. "It was a surge of water coming, but it was pushing all the debris and the trash in front of it."
In December 2005, NPR first talked with Kevin Potter outside his home, in the parish town of Chalmette. It was flooded with about three-and-a-half feet of water and was not habitable. His family was staying in an apartment about 100 miles away, near Baton Rouge, while they waited for a FEMA trailer to show up so he could move back to his property. "Hopefully we'll be back within a couple of weeks and start to remodel the house," Potter said at the time.
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