When we arrived in New Orleans on the final night of our trip, we got a chance to see the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the hardest-hit areas of the city by Katrina. The area now looks like a wildlife preserve. Overgrown grass and other plant life covers 70% of the lots, where it can grow. You can still see the concrete slab foundations where there once stood homes. Other lots, like the one above, were neatly trimmed, with only the stairs remaining.
It was simply not possible to avoid the tremendous sense of shame and embarrassment that came with realizing we still had not rebuilt this area 5 years after the storm. I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to this community in the wake of the evacuations, the discovery that homes once lived in for generations were now completely gone, and the painful realization that damage caused by the flooding would not covered be by insurance companies. Many have now probably resettled in other locations like Texas, their entire lives up-ended and now defined by the storm and the failure of America to help them straighten out the aftermath.
Even though I live over a thousand miles away from New Orleans, I felt a deep connection to this region, both as an American and simply in the wake of my interactions with the people of Plaquemines Parish. It made what we found in the Lower Ninth Ward exponentially more difficult to stomach. These people had been so profoundly wronged by such a horrifying turn of events.
If I were president and looking for items to incorporate into my Gulf Coast recovery plan, adding rebuilding not just the Lower Ninth Ward, but much of Louisiana to the list would be a no-brainer. Even if the plan only achieved marginal improvements in the areas we visited, and brought the region to a fraction of where it was at pre-Katrina, it would be an incredibly powerful symbol of American unity and strength.
