Driving through the neighborhoods of northern and eastern New Orleans, you see many newly built or repaired houses. But there are also a surprising number of areas of empty land where houses used to stand.
JACKSON HILL: "You see, all these vacant lots, they are all houses that are not there."
Mister Hill points out that just because you see houses, does not mean that these neighborhoods have recovered. Many houses that are standing are still wrecked and must be torn down. Some are only partly repaired. And he says that when you consider recovery, you cannot just think about the houses in a community.
JACKSON HILL: "You also gotta think about schools, fire stations, police stations. They're all gone too."
New Orleans was built on low-lying wetlands along the Mississippi River. Because of the risk of flooding, the city is surrounded by protective levees and floodwalls. But the poorly designed protection system was widely known to be too weak to protect against a major hurricane.
A damaged house in New Orleans sits abandonedJACKSON HILL: "And the water here, came in like that, bang."
When Katrina hit, water levels exceeded the height and strength of many of these walls. Many walls broke, allowing billions of liters of water from the Gulf of Mexico and two nearby lakes to flood the city. Eighty percent of the city was underwater for days.
After the storm, recovery and aid efforts by local, state and federal agents were not well organized. This only added to the storm's damage.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25