New Orleans marked Katrina's 20th anniversary with solemn memorials, uplifting music and a parade honoring the dead, the displaced and survivors who rebuilt. Dignitaries and longtime residents gathered under gray skies at a cemetery where dozens who perished were never identified or claimed. A coroner's office worker opens the cemetery gate annually and maintains the grass to keep victims' memory alive. Katrina made landfall Aug. 29, 2005, as a Category 3 hurricane, killing nearly 1,400 people across five states and causing an estimated $200 billion in damage. Failure of the federal levee system inundated about 80% of New Orleans, forcing rooftop rescues and prolonged drainage, and crowding the under-provisioned Superdome. In the Lower Ninth Ward, children sang of sorrow, survival and perseverance; the storm remains the costliest U.S. hurricane on record.
Dignitaries and longtime residents gathered under gray skies at the memorial to Katrina's victims in a New Orleans cemetery where dozens who perished in the storm but were never identified or claimed are interred. "We do everything to keep the memory of these people alive," said Orrin Duncan, who worked for the coroner when Katrina hit. He comes to the memorial every year, opening the cemetery gate and making sure the grass is cut.
A Category 3 hurricane when it made landfall in Louisiana on Aug. 29, 2005, Katrina inflicted staggering destruction. The storm killed nearly 1,400 people across five states and racked up an estimated $200 billion in damage, flattening homes on the coast and sending ruinous flooding into low-lying neighborhoods. Two decades later, it remains the costliest U.S. hurricane on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, a predominantly Black community devastated by flooding when parts of the protective levee collapsed, hundreds watched Friday as an ensemble of white-clad children atop the levee wall sang a song of the sorrow and survival. "We are the children of the ones who did not die," they sang. "We are the children of the people who could fly. And we are the children of the ones who persevered."
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