Lower 9th Ward in Film - Hurricane Katrina 10-year anniversary

This is the fifth is a series of posts about the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005. The storm made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane at Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, with sustained winds of more than 125 mph. Because of a breach in the Industrial Canal, by 09:00 AM CDT, there was 6–8 feet of water in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. People had been warned to evacuate, but many did not heed the warnings or were unable to leave, requiring days of heroic rescue efforts by the National Guard and Coast Guard.

The paint marks on the buildings show where a rescue team inspected the house and recorded what they found or did not find.

I took these photographs in October of 2006 in the Holy Cross area of the Lower Ninth Ward. The historic cottages had been flooded, but the water drained out and most looked like the were reasonably intact. Sheetrock had to be cut out, but the cypress boards were fine.

These photographs are scanned from Kodak B+W film, exposed in a Leica M3 rangefinder camera with 35mm and 50mm Summicron lenses. The B+W film scans well and is fine grain - I need to use the current equivalent more often. I love film, especially black and white; it looks different than all-digital photographs.

By 2006, some residents had returned and a little activity was ongoing. I think the SnowBalls truck was operational.

Please click any of the photographs to enlarge them or use the search function to see earlier posts about Katrina damage.

Hurricane Katrina 10-year anniversary - return to the Lower Ninth Ward (New Orleans)

On the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, this the fourth in a series of articles showing some of the damage in New Orleans. 

In December of 2006, I returned to New Orleans with some out-of-town visitors. I took them to the Lower Ninth Ward, whose damage and general state of abandonment was still a common topic in the news media at the time.

Derbigny Street was still a mess. We found an abandoned Juke Joint with pool table and cassette tapes still in place.

On Reynes Street, an abandoned restaurant had not been cleared out. It was sad - this was once someone's business, probably their dream of making a better life for themselves and their family.

A church on Forstall Street had a plea for restoration.

Further west, in the Upper Ninth Ward, a traditional New Orleans cottage on Chatres Street was in poor condition. The roof had lost many of its asbestos shingles. Many of these asbestos roofs were installed in the 1910s and 1920s because the tiles were fireproof and much safer than wood shingles.

The French Quarter, which had not flooded, had plenty of tourists, and the cottages were decorated for the Christmas season.

Lafayette Cemetery, in the Garden District, is the oldest of the seven municipal cemeteries in New Orleans. The cemetery was first surveyed in 1832 and laid out with two center aisles in a cruciform (cross) pattern. Save Our Cemeteries is an organization dedicated to preserving and documenting the history of New Orleans' historic cemeteries.

All photographs taken with a compact Sony DSC-W7 digital camera (a very competent 7 megapixel camera).

Hurricane Katrina 10-year anniversary: The Holy Cross District, New Orleans

The neighborhood of New Orleans east of the Industrial Canal and along the banks of the Mississippi River is known as the Holy Cross District, named for the historic Catholic school of the same name. This was a subdistrict of the Lower Ninth Ward. Further east or downstream along the Mississippi is the area known as Arabi. The Historic Districts Landmark Commission has an information page on Holy Cross. The photograph above shows the Industrial Canal in November 2006.

During Hurricane Katrina, the northern part of the Holy Cross subdistrict, the blocks near St. Claude Avenue, were inundated just as severely as the blocks in the Lower Ninth Ward north of St. Claude Avenue. But as you proceed south, the land level rises until it is above sea level near the Mississippi River levees.

This topographic change was reflected in the architecture. The houses in the north were mostly on slab foundations and were largely post-Hurricane Betsy vintage (1965). But closer to the river, many houses were historic late-1800s wood cottages with typical elegant New Orleans architectural details. These had survived for a century because, during floods, they had either not been inundated or had suffered only minor water damage. Consider the building style: a slab house is right on the ground and doomed if it floods. A post-and-beam house is already two, three, or more feet off the ground, and if it floods, as soon as the water recedes, the water pours out through the floor boards. Most of these older houses in this area were made of cypress planks because the early builders knew that cypress resisted water and rot.

Some of these cottages are quite striking in their simple symmetry and graceful proportions.

I don't mean to imply that there was not damage in the Holy Cross area, but it was less than the area further north.

Commercial companies (consisting of Mexican workers?) cleared debris out of houses. Children's toys, mattresses, clothing, moldy sheetrock, and other mess was still being piled in the streets a year after Katrina.

The markings showed where rescue workers checked the buildings for human or animal victims.

In 2006, we saw a few signs of business returning, as per this snowball truck and the recycler who stored things on the front porch.

This is one of the two Doullut Steamboat Houses, built by Captain Doullut in 1905. They are on Egania Street and are designated as historic landmarks.

Back to the Industrial Canal, we saw one of the largest metal scrap piles we have ever seen. This is where old wash machines, stoves, and school busses ended up after being retrieved from streets and houses. We were told that much of this metal scrap went to Bangladesh. You can tell the scale of the pile by the two Holy Cross school busses.

Ten years on, the Holy Cross area looks good, residents have returned, and rents are sky high. The school has moved to the Gentilly area, and many buildings have been demolished. The neighborhood is changing, and it is good to see the historic homes renovated and revitalized.

Photographs taken with a Sony DSC-R1 digital camera. This was an excellent digital camera with an APS-size sensor. 

Toilets of Hurricane Katrina and the Gentilly District

Visiting the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast a year after Hurricane Katrina, we were struck by the vast number of abandoned porta-potties. It looks like they were set up quickly for the rescue workers and just abandoned. Hmmm, I suspect the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) was paying for the service and the contractors figured it was easier to bill for loss of equipment rather then retrieve the units.

These cheerful units were in the Lower Ninth Ward. It was easy exploring. If you needed to use a lavatory, there was one on every 2nd or 3rd street corner. Very convenient. The contents had dried and congealed into solid masses, so the porta-potties were quite usable.

The Mississippi coast near Pass Christian and beyond was similarly well-supplied with abandoned Royal Flush containers. The manufacturers of these plastic units must have done well in 2005.

On a more serious note, the Gentilly part of town paralleled the London Avenue Canal. This failed in two sections and flooded the low-lying homes.

Many of the locals felt that government had failed them miserably. Can you blame them?