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New Orleans 10 Years After Katrina

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Ten years ago, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. We’ll look at how the city struggled, rebuilt, recovered — and where it stands now.

Young Sino and his daughter Demarri Warren participate in a remembrance event along the Industrial Canal flood wall, seen in background, in the Lower 9th Ward section of New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert 8/29/14)
Young Sino and his daughter Demarri Warren participate in a remembrance event along the Industrial Canal flood wall, seen in background, in the Lower 9th Ward section of New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert 8/29/14)

Ten years ago this weekend, it was Hurricane Katrina, and levee failure, and epic flood. And New Orleans, not just underwater but in epic distress. Scenes of dispossession and epic despair in the heart of America.  Of a fabled city, coming apart. It’s been a long road back. Not everyone’s come back. Parts of New Orleans are crackling with energy and money.  Parts are not. The city is whiter. The levees are stronger. There are newcomers aplenty. Old stories that go on. And still, a wary eye on the waters that could come again. This hour On Point: New Orleans, 10 years after Katrina.
-Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Jarvis DeBerry, editorial writer and columnist for The Times-Picayune/NOLA.com (@jarvisdeberry)

Flozell Daniels, president and CEO of the Foundation for Louisiana (@flozelldaniels)

Paul Kemp, coastal oceanographer and geologist, commissioner for the Southeast Louisiana Protection Authority

Burnell Cotlon, opened the lower 9th Ward's first grocery store since Hurricane Katrina (@bcotlon)

From Tom's Reading List

Washington Post: A 'resilience lab'— "Ten years after Hurricane Katrina slashed and snarled into New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, newcomers take their juice with chia seeds and buy fixer-uppers, and longtime locals fret that the city is no longer theirs, that it’s too expensive and still might lose its soul. A city some feared might be left for dead when 80 percent of its footprint was eventually submerged in floodwaters is undergoing a social, economic and cultural evolution. Yet it is still a place deeply tied to its ancient traditions and rites, stubbornly and proudly unique, unparalleled in its embrace of the weird, the mysterious, the whimsical."

New Orleans Times Picayune: Is every August 29 'Hurricane Katrina' for you? — "There will be much more difficult questions we'll be facing as Aug. 29, 2015 approaches: how we're doing mentally, how far we've come materially, what our assessment of the city's recovery is. But before we get to those harder questions, I'd like to know from folks who are here: When the calendar flips to Aug. 29, what do you call that day?"

BuzzFeed News: A Tale of Two New Orleans: Is Post-Katrina gentrification saving New Orleans or ruining it? — "Tension surrounding gentrification is hardly unique to New Orleans. Over the last two decades, major cities across the country have seen dramatic shifts in their demographics as young, typically white professionals have sought out neighborhoods with cheap housing that are close to their jobs and cultural hubs.But while in most cities gentrification is caused by a simple desire for prime real estate, in New Orleans the draw is the very culture that the resulting changes to the city is eroding."

This program aired on August 26, 2015.

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