New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward After Hurricane Katrina
The lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans is in an older part of the city where most of the houses are made of cypress in the shotgun or double shotgun style and are built on brick piers some three to four feet off the ground.
When the powerful water from the levee breaks of the Industrial Canal swept through this area it also swept many houses off their piers.
Today, January 16, 2006, four and one-half months after Katrina the area is still a disaster zone. There is no electricity, hardly one house left intact, and not much cleanup has been done. The City wants to bulldoze the houses that are just splinters but the homeowners are fighting every step of the way. The shock has been too much for them and only time will bring realization. Some yards are just heaps of pieces of houses, a roof, a window, a door, a brightly painted table. The force of water had its way.
And, just as in the gallery I did of Lakeview, I keep asking "where are all the people who lived here?"
SO, IF THE REST OF THE WORLD THINKS THAT NEW ORLEANS IS BACK TO NORMAL, TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT THIS GALLERY.
Fats Domino's House in Ninth Ward
Lower Ninth Ward-Five Months After Katrina
Lower Ninth With Bridge Over Industrial Canal at North Claiborne Avenue
Lower Ninth
New Orleans' Industrial Canal Levee Breach - Ninth Ward of New Orleans
Broken Up Houses Still Sit in the Streets
When Houses Collided
Lower Ninth Four and One Half Months After Hurricane Katrina
Ironic Street Sign in Devastated Area
Steamboat House
Second Steamboat House
Holy Cross District of Ninth Ward
Across Side Street of Holy Cross School
Across the side street from Holy Cross School
Holy Cross District Around the Corner from Previous Three Images
The Third Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina
Brad Pitt's Legacy to New Orleans
Three Years Later the Steps Still Wait for Its People
Another wonderful gallery in your New Orleans - Katrina series. It's heartbreaking to look at these. I remember the friends who once live in this neighborhood and the games played in the gym when I was a teen and my friends who played football, basket ball and wrestled for Holy Cross. I played against them for Aloysius.
And then all the doors we knocked here years later. The memories and the people… It is still very hard to believe.
I have yet to see Gentilly where I grew up but they describe it for me and that, for now, has to be enough.
Voted.