Hy and Christopher look back to the seminal moment of 21st Century New Orleans history. We remember Armand St. Martin’s subsequent yearly efforts to “artistically remember” the storm, often with humor. We play his song “Contraflow”, which lampooned many of the bureaucratic screw ups of the time. In particular, in the ballad, Armand asks the question which every New Orleanian asks about this time of year, “Where’s Nash when we need him?"Continuing this theme of laughter through tears, we welcome Chris Champagne and Philip Melancon on to the show, who are performing their own comedy retrospective “ Katrina does New Orleans” on August 28, 29, & 30 at 8 pm at the Monkey Hill Bar on 6100 Magazine—with a matinee on the Sunday Aug 31st at 2 PM. We hear a few of Chris’s jokes and listen to Phillip’s famous ‘lament by accordion’ of the Sewerage & Water Board. Tickets available by calling 504-202-0986 or emailing [email protected],000 Lost After KatrinaBy Christopher TidmoreAugust 28, 2005, just two weeks from The Louisiana Weekly’s 80th birthday, a looming hurricane just seemed like another false alarm.  Dutifully, hundreds of thousands of New Orleanians—who possessed the economic means—packed their children, loved ones, and/or the pets into cars for the twelve hour crawling contra-flowing commute to Baton Rouge.Thousands more stayed put at home. Some were broke from two previous evacuations over previous two years, where those who remain behind only experienced clear skies and a day off from work. Others saw a Category 1 hurricane, which had turned towards the Gulf Coast.  ‘No threat’, they thought.The desperate images over next week emblazoned themselves upon the memories of the nation. Katrina’s botched aftermath became one of those singular turning points in American history.  Our people displaced. The press would call us refugees, until we demanded the dignity of being Americans… and therefore “evacuees”.We became a culture scattered to the winds. The comedianne Becky Allen later quipped, “Next time we all have to agree to evacuate to the same place.”Many never returned.  It should not have been surprising, but this reporter did have an inkling after an odd experience in Des Moines, Iowa three weeks after the storm.  Staying with friends, I learned of a small street festival a few blocks from their house. As I walked up, I heard a band playing, “ I went on down to the Audubon Zoo, and they all ask for you…”Iowa’s only zydeco band performed in a public tribute to the people of New Orleans. That was interesting, considering Iowa had expected 1500 evacuees and got about 150. (Most people had gone eastwood towards Atlanta or westward towards Dallas, not northward.)Nevertheless, for an exile, it warmed my heart.  Perhaps not as much as the next sign which read, “Real Louisiana Gumbo”.  Cocky, I went over to the lady at the front, and asked, “How long have you been cooking the roux on that gumbo?”Without missing a beat, she replied proudly, “24 Hours!”Then she added, “Our chef is from New Orleans.”Immediately, I figured he was one of the evacuees, and so walked up to meet the giant hulking man stirring a massive cauldron of gumbo, which was probably 3‘ x 3‘ in diameter. I looked him in the eyes and said, as only a New Orleanian could, “ I hear you’re from New Orleans; where’d you go to school?”He smiled, “McDonough 35!”We both laughed.  I said, “You came here because of the storm?”“Yeah, the last one, Betsy,” he said.“I was never going back after that.”He had built a life elsewhere when the floodwaters overcame the Ninth Ward in September 1965 and never truly returned. The major difference is that most of his peers were able to come home rather quickly. How 2005 differed was emphasized on a radio program which hosted Oliver Thomas and myself a couple of months later.The topic was toxic mold, and the dangers of returning. I spoke about the health dangers and precautions which must be made as a result —like the good reporter that I sought to be. (I also came on the air to make the point that, unlike some other media sources, The Louisiana Weekly had only missed one week of publication after Katrina, thanks to the valiant efforts of our Publisher Renette Dejois-Hall.)My exegesis on the need to carefully remediate mold from the receding floodwaters before reoccupying homes drew an uncharacteristically fiery response from the normally genial Councilman Thomas. “That’s ridiculous.  After Hurricane Betsy, we just took a little bleach and some water and wiped down the walls.”Oliver Thomas and I sparred over the issues, like the radio talkshow hosts that we essentially were (even though we were both without radio stations at the time). The Councilman’s fundamental point, that there could be no more delays in letting people get back to rebuilding their homes, proved prophetic, however. Thomas feared that some might never be able to get home if they were forced to live away for much longer, and he was right.In April 2000, 484,674 people lived In Orleans Parish. Just an estimated 230,172 residents remained by April 2006, according to the New Orleans Data Center, a loss of more than 250,000 people. By 2024, the population had only rebounded to 362,701.Elizabeth Fussell, who was an assistant professor at Tulane University from 2001 to 2007, found that 33 percent of people who had been living in New Orleans when Katrina hit had not returned to the metro area by 2006. Of those people who had not returned, 21.7 percent lived in Baton Rouge, 14.6 percent in Atlanta, 11.7 percent in Houston and 5.8 percent in Dallas-Fort Worth. The remainder scattered across the United States. By 2019, her research shows, 30.9 percent of Katrina-affected New Orleanians still lived elsewhere, though by then, Texas cities succeeded in keeping (and even attracting) more of them. Atlanta's 14.6 percent share of displaced New Orleanians in 2006 dropped to 7.7 percent by 2019. In contrast, during that same timeframe, Houston's share grew from 21 to 38 percent.Race proved the major distinguishing factor for those who did return to the Crescent City. “Everybody was displaced from New Orleans," Fussell told Axios, but her earlier research shows "that non-Black residents … came back earlier to New Orleans than Black residents...Neighborhoods that had larger percentages of Black residents were more likely to have suffered greater damage and have higher flood deaths, but [it's also because of] access to rebuilding resources."The proportion of African-American residents of Orleans Parish, while still a majority, has decreased from around 67 percent in 2000 to 56 percent in 2024. Yet, the gumbo cooking chef aside, a similar demographic collapse did not occur after Hurricane Betsy, 20 years before, when 164,000 homes were flooded in New Orleans.The death toll amounted to far less, of course, 75 versus 1400. Still in 1965, people were able to quickly return to the city and start cleaning up their houses, even without electric power or resources.  In 2005, denied the opportunity to even enter their neighborhoods (in many areas) for up to four months, much less begin rebuilding their homes, many gave up and never returned to the lifestyles and livelihoods which defined this city.

Ver todos los episodios