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A listener note. Against the Odds uses dramatizations that are based on true events. Some elements, including dialogue, may be invented, but everything is based on research. ♪
Dr. Kirsta Kurtz-Burke stands on a ramp at the Ambulance Bay of Charity Hospital in New Orleans. She watches as a National Guard truck slowly makes its way towards her through the flooded street. The water has subsided somewhat, but there's still several feet of it around the hospital. She taps her foot, impatiently clicking her pen.
It's the afternoon of Thursday, September 1st, 2005. The scrubs she's wearing are stiff with dried sweat and about three shades darker than they were when she first put them on five days ago. Along with hundreds of patients and other staff, she's been stranded here at Charity since Hurricane Katrina hit the city in the early morning hours of Monday, August 29th. Keeping her patients alive under these conditions has been the hardest challenge of her life.
She glances up at the military helicopters evacuating Tulane Medical Center, the private hospital across the street from Charity. It didn't surprise Kurtzberg, or her patients, that the fancier hospital with wealthier and predominantly white patients was the first to get evacuated. But the National Guard is finally here, and now the evacuation of Charity can begin.
This way. We have 1,200 people total. 450 patients, 46 critical.
They should be the first to be taken out. But the National Guardsman doesn't budge. Sorry, ma'am. We're being ordered to leave the area. I know you've been waiting for help and all, but we'll be back tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. Kurtzberg stares at him, wondering if her sleep-deprived brain has misunderstood. What do you mean? You're right here and we're ready to go now. It won't be dark for hours.
Let's get our most vulnerable patients out at least. The guardsman shakes his head. No can do, ma'am. We've heard reports of rampant violence in this area. It's too dangerous. We'll be back tomorrow at 9 a.m. Kurtzberg starts down the ramp. She can't let him leave. I've been here for days. I can assure you, those reports are wrong. There's no violence. Look over there, at Tulane Medical Center. They're being evacuated just fine.
Why not us? Why not charity? I don't know what to tell you. Our reports say this area is not safe. Kurtzberg can't believe what she's hearing. She never imagined that the United States military would base life and death decisions on unfounded rumors. They're leaving sick, helpless people to fend for themselves for longer than necessary because of bad intelligence. It's infuriating.
The man looks at her helplessly. Kurtzberg closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
The guardsman isn't the problem. It's bigger than that. The problem is a system bigoted against the city's poorer, mostly black residents. The same people that make up much of Charity Hospital's patient base. She turns back inside. The sound of helicopters thunders in her ears. Helicopters working overtime to evacuate the private, more affluent hospital across the street. Mina
Meanwhile, here at Charity, she has no choice but to do everything in her power to get her patients through yet another night. In our fast-paced, screen-filled world, it can be all too easy to lose that sense of imagination and wonder.
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From Wondery, I'm Cassie DePeckel, and this is Against the Odds. Four days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, roughly 50,000 residents were still seeking refuge at the Superdome and Convention Center. Thousands more remained stranded on their rooftops as 80% of the city remained underwater. And city, state, and federal agencies had failed to mount an effective relief effort. Across the city, people were growing desperate.
When the government response finally kicked into gear, it was too late for many. And the ramifications of the disaster will be felt for decades to come. This is Episode 4, We Were Here.
Gregory Richardson hesitates outside a convenience store. Its floor-to-ceiling front window has been smashed, and inside, people are gathering armfuls of food and drinks. Richardson's heart thuds against his ribcage. He's never stolen anything in his life.
It's Thursday afternoon. Roughly 24 hours ago, Richardson arrived at the convention center after two harrowing days trapped on the roof of his flooded home. He'd expected to find food, water, and medical aid at the convention center. But instead, he found disorder and chaos. Yesterday, he had managed to scrounge up some barbecued chicken from some men who had looted it from a nearby store. He didn't mind that. He was grateful. But stealing food himself...
He's not sure if he can go through with it. He finds himself frozen, unable to enter the store. He spent much of the day trying to find his father, but at this moment, he's glad his father isn't here to see this. Richardson wasn't raised to break the law, but he doesn't have another option.
Behind him, a man yells in frustration. "D'oh, I'm hungry. Move out the way if you not going in." Richardson considers walking away, but his parched throat and empty stomach are impossible to ignore.
He steps over the threshold, careful to avoid the jagged shards of glass that line the frame of the window. Most of the store has been picked clean, but he finds an open case of water and grabs an armful of bottles. His hands shake as he snatches whatever food he can find off the shelves.
As he steps back through the window, he runs straight into a pair of police officers. Richardson's eyes go wide and the stolen items tumble from his arms. One of the officers bends down and rifles through the scattered water bottles and food packages. Richardson watches him, petrified. The officer stands up. This it? This all you took? Yeah.
Yes, sir. Let's make sure of that. The officer frisks him. Richardson closes his eyes and endures the pat-down. Finally, the police officer steps back. All right, then. Pick this stuff up and get going. Richardson looks at him, confused. Really? As long as all you're taking is food, you're fine.
Richardson doesn't ask any more questions. He gathers up the food and water he dropped and hurries away. He just wants to get to Atlanta, where his wife is, where he can sleep in a bed and pay for groceries like normal. But he has no idea when that will be. And until then, he has to do whatever it takes to survive.
Sally Foreman scratches her ankle. The skin is red and irritated. A wave of fear washes over her.
Yesterday, a doctor in the Superdome warned her that the water filling the streets was swarming with infectious bacteria. She's been walking through it several times a day as she shuttles back and forth between the Superdome and the mayor's emergency command post at the Hyatt. She hopes she hasn't contracted some terrible disease from the filthy, germ-infested water. It's Thursday afternoon, four days since Katrina made landfall.
Foreman and her boss, Mayor Ray Nagin, are at the Hyatt. They just returned from their daily flyover of the city. People are still trapped on their roofs and fire escapes. But there seems to be some progress since the rescue effort was taken over by a new commander, Lieutenant General Russell Honore. There are certainly more helicopters in the sky. Still, she's overwhelmed by all that needs to be done.
She hears heavy footsteps echo down the hall, and soon Honoré strides into the mayor's command post, his signature black beret on his head. He takes a seat and begins giving an update. Mr. Mayor, we have begun evacuation of the Superdome. Foreman sits up straight. This is one of the first significant bits of progress she's heard in days. Really? You have?
Foreman jots all this down. When she looks up, Honoré is squinting at her. That's correct.
Folks are going to have to wait in line to get on the buses and it's going to be a time consuming process. We need to keep them happy. I want you to find some
local bands or musicians to play some music. Maybe get some big screens to project movies on, anything to entertain them. - Foreman struggles to keep her face neutral. She has no idea where she would find large screens and projectors to set up, let alone bands. The city is in complete meltdown, but she's a professional, and this isn't the first time she's been faced with what seems like an impossible task.
She politely nods and gives him a tight-lipped smile. "I'll see what I can do." "We'll have everyone out of both the convention center and the Superdome by Saturday." Foreman writes Saturday down in her notebook and underlines it: 48 more hours. That doesn't sound like a very long time, but Foreman knows that for the desperate people still waiting to be evacuated, it will seem like an eternity.
Gregory Richardson chugs one of the bottles of water he took from the convenience store a few moments ago. As he drinks, water runs down his chin and onto his chest. He doesn't mind. It's a small bit of relief from the relentless heat.
It's Thursday afternoon. Gregory Richardson is walking down Canal Street back toward the convention center. As he brings the bottle down from his lips, he sees a familiar figure up ahead. Richardson walks faster to catch up and calls out, "Hey, excuse me!" The man turns and looks at him, confused. "Hi, I didn't mean to startle you.
"I'm Gregory Richardson. I think you live on the same block as my father." The man's face lights up in recognition, and then his expression falters. Richardson clocks the change but pushes forward, ignoring what it could mean. "I'm trying to find my dad. Did you see if he got rescued? Any clue where they took him? I haven't spoken to him since Monday morning." The man lowers his eyes. Richardson leans forward, an uneasy feeling brewing in his stomach.
The man looks up, his eyes glassy. Son, I'm so sorry. I don't think he made it. What are you talking about? I was one of the last people rescued. I never saw your father on his roof. If he wasn't up there, I... He probably didn't make it out of his house. Richardson is silent for a moment. It feels like the world is suddenly moving very fast around him, and his brain can't keep up.
Richardson nods and continues down Canal Street. But he's in a daze. His mind fights against what he just heard.
Maybe this man simply missed his father getting rescued. Maybe he was asleep when it happened or delirious from the lack of food and water. There are all sorts of explanations why he didn't see Richardson's father on his roof. Richardson's not about to give up hope just yet. His father is a strong and resourceful man. But as he continues to walk, he feels hot drops hitting his shirt.
He realizes that tears are streaming down his face. Dr. Kirsta Kurtzberg stands on the ambulance ramp outside the emergency room entrance. She scans the block for any sign of the National Guard. But so far, the flooded streets are empty.
It's Friday morning. Last night, the Code Grey team received confirmation from FEMA that the National Guard would arrive this morning to finally evacuate Charity Hospital. Hospital staff worked through the night making preparations. They handwrote multiple copies of each patient's medical chart. They filled baggies with three days' worth of the patient's medication. And they turned doors and conference tables into backboards to stabilize patients during the move.
It was hard work, but the promise of evacuation had rallied the team to make the final push. But as Kurtzberg stands on the ramp with no boats or trucks in sight, a sick feeling stirs in her stomach.
She hears a door open behind her and turns to see her husband walking out from the emergency room. He surprised her yesterday, returning to New Orleans from Baton Rouge, where he'd evacuated just ahead of the storm. To reach the hospital, he talked his way past checkpoints and somehow convinced police and National Guardsmen to give him rides to charity in their high-water trucks. Kurtzberg looks at him and shakes her head. She can't hold back the feeling of dread.
Her husband wraps her in his arms, rubbing her shoulders. There's a rumble in the distance. Kurtzberg glances up to see a fleet of swamp boats, powered by large fans on the back, rounding the corner.
As the boat gets closer, the driver of the lead boat waves to her. "We're here to evacuate you!" Kurtzberg can feel a wave of gratitude rush through her and tears springing to her eyes. But there's no time for emotion. She sizes up the small boats and estimates that most of them will only hold two patients. It's going to take hours to evacuate the entire hospital.
Thank God. Pull in here, we'll start bringing down patients. Kurtzberg runs back inside to alert the staff that the boats are here.
They're already lined up in the stairwell, along the hallway and through the emergency room, ready to relay the patients off each floor and out onto the ramp. They're here. Let's start moving, folks. The first two patients are already in the emergency room, strapped to makeshift backboards. Kurtzberg double-checks the handwritten medical chart pinned on each patient's gown.
Then, she and her husband pick up the first patient, while two other staff members lift a second patient and follow Kurtzberg out the door. She can hear the next few patients being passed down the assembly line. The system's working. As soon as the patients are secured, the driver motors off and the next boat pulls forward. Kurtzberg pauses for a second, watching the first boat drive away. It's really happening. They're getting their patients out of charity.
Then she squares her shoulders and turns back inside. That's only two patients. They have hundreds more to go. When you're hiring, time is of the essence. That's why more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide use Indeed to find exceptional talent fast. Indeed's powerful matching engine works quickly. So quickly that, according to Indeed data worldwide, every minute, 23 hires are made on Indeed.
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It's the morning of Friday, September 2nd. Just past dawn, Foreman's BlackBerry received its first call in days. It was an official from the White House informing her that President George W. Bush was flying into New Orleans and wanted to meet with Mayor Nagin. Now, Foreman is on her way from the Hyatt to City Hall to prep the mayor.
Foreman hears a heavy rumble in the distance. She stops and looks around anxiously, hoping this isn't some new catastrophe. Then she locates the source of the sound and breaks into a smile. A long line of buses is sputtering down the street toward the Superdome. She stands and watches for a second.
It's a motley parade of school buses, Greyhound coaches, and city transit buses. And it's a glorious sight to behold. After a moment, Forman continues on her way, the smile still on her face. For the first time in close to a week, she has a positive feeling about the day ahead.
Dr. Kirsta Kurtzberg sprints up the stairs of Charity Hospital, trying to reach the fifth floor as fast as she can. Her husband races behind her. She's breathing hard. After five days of limited food and sleep, the physical effort is more exhausting than usual, but she doesn't slow down.
It's late afternoon on Friday, September 2nd. The evacuation is over, or at least Kurtzberg hopes it is. Just as she was about to board the last of the National Guard boats, she'd been overcome with terror that she'd forgotten a patient. There was no one in particular she was worried about, but her imagination ran wild as she envisioned one of her patients all alone in the abandoned hospital. Panicked, she begged the boat captain to wait while she double-checked.
Kurtzberg reaches the fifth floor and swings the door open. She and her husband methodically check each room. The room that held her patient with the gunshot wounds, empty. The one that housed her patient with a brain tumor, empty. The stroke victim's room, empty. The quadriplegic's room, empty. She keeps going, checking each room. She even searches all the bathrooms. She has to be sure.
After several minutes, she is satisfied that no one has been left behind. She knows she should head back downstairs, but she can't make herself leave. Her husband rubs her shoulder. You okay? She nods, but the truth is, she's not. Standing there in the empty hospital, everything she's been through over the past five days hits her. The stress, the frustration, the fear.
but also the moments of victory, like when her gunshot wound victim walked, the way staff stepped up to take care of each other. Kurtzberg had never been to war, but she feels like she's been in the trenches. Her husband shifts on his feet. We should go. The boat is waiting. But Kurtzberg feels like she has to do something to acknowledge what the 1,200 people stranded at Charity Hospital went through. Hang on one second.
She walks over to the nurse's station and finds a pen and piece of paper. She thinks for a moment, then begins to write. We were here. We survived. Katrina. Her husband reads it over her shoulder and puts an arm around her. Then, before Kurtzberg knows what's happening, she bursts into tears. Charity was her home. It was the only place she'd ever wanted to work.
She had envisioned a long career in this hospital. But now, she's not sure when or if she'll ever be back. Gregory Richardson shuffles forward. He's surrounded on all sides by a sea of evacuees headed toward a line of motor coaches. National Guardsmen urge people to keep moving forward.
It's Saturday afternoon outside the convention center. After three miserable days here, Richardson can't wait to get out. Last night was maybe the worst night yet. He and his neighbor Charles decided to try sleeping outside, hoping it would be less stressful than the chaos they had experienced inside the center the past two nights. But outside, he felt exposed and uncomfortable.
and one of the men camping near them had dislocated his hip. He was in excruciating pain, and there was almost nothing the EMTs could do to help him. It had been a relief when he'd woken up to find police and National Guard's men directing people toward buses. But the relief was short-lived.
Richardson can't get a straight answer on where the buses are headed. He's heard some people are being bused to the airport. That's where he wants to go. He wants to get on the first available flight to Atlanta, so he can be reunited with his wife. The bus he's being funneled toward looms in front of him. Next to it, he sees a National Guardsman, keeping people from fanning out.
Richardson pushes through the crowd, trying to get his attention. Hey, excuse me. Excuse me? Members of the crowd protest as he weaves his way through. Eventually, he makes it. Richardson approaches the young guardsman who's watching the crowd, stone-faced.
"Excuse me, can you tell me where this bus is headed? I'm trying to get to the airport." "Just keep moving towards the bus." "But I need to know if this bus is going to the airport. My wife is in Atlanta." "Sir, just please move forward and get on the bus. I won't ask you again." Richardson shakes his head in frustration. Ever since his arrival at the convention center, all he's seen is chaos and poor communication. No one's made the slightest effort to treat the evacuees like human beings.
He doesn't know why he thought this part of the evacuation effort would be any different. He rejoins the line of people. When it's his turn, he climbs aboard the motor coach and settles into a window seat. The plush chairs and air conditioning are a luxury after the past three nights at the convention center, not to mention the nights he spent sweltering in his attic.
His body begins to relax. He may not know where he's going, but he's getting out of New Orleans. He's safe. Wherever the bus drops him, he'll figure out a way to get to Atlanta and back to his wife. And then he'll find his dad. He's not giving up hope that his father might still be alive.
Richardson watches out the window as the bus pulls away. The floodwaters have started to recede, but the damage that's been done to the city is catastrophic. It doesn't look at all like the city he's called home his entire life. He wonders if it ever will again. We're here with breaking news in regards to... Sally Foreman stands on a street corner watching as Fox News reporter Geraldo Rivera broadcasts live from outside the convention center.
He's lit up with a bright light, holding a microphone. The mayor and a few other city officials stand with Foreman, watching as Rivera points to where the last refugees from the convention center are climbing aboard the bus. It's late Saturday night, and Foreman has had another busy day. She spent most of it accompanying the mayor to his meeting with President Bush, then to the joint press conference held prior to the president's departure.
Just before dusk, she and the mayor did their daily flyover of the city. For the first time, they'd seen no one stranded on their rooftops. The pilots at the heliport proudly reported that 150,000 people had been rescued either by air or boat from around New Orleans. Foreman's not sure where they got that number from, but even if it was an exaggeration, there's no question the pilots had done heroic work.
Foreman gazes up and down the street, marveling at how empty it is. Yesterday, it was so crowded here, you could hardly move. Then, something catches her eye. A big wooden crate, sitting on a nearby street corner. What's that? Over there. The mayor and the others shrug. Foreman walks over to it. When she sees what it is, she can't help but let out a cynical laugh.
She walks back over to the group. The mayor looks at her. So, what was it? Provisions. Food and water. Mayor Nagin shakes his head. Where were those three days ago? No clue. The bus doors shut, and the driver starts the engine. He pulls onto Convention Center Boulevard, cruising right past where Foreman and the others are standing.
Through the windows, Foreman can see the faces of many of the passengers. They look devastated, tired, and terrified. Foreman wonders where they'll end up. She hopes wherever they land, they'll be taken care of. Across the street, Geraldo Rivera wraps up his news report. Foreman looks around.
There's still water in the street, but the city's pumps are working, moving it out. Thousands of people's homes and countless businesses are destroyed. It's going to be a huge effort for the city to recover. The mayor is next to her. He's staring out at the street, too. We have a big job ahead of us. Have you considered stepping down? Foreman bristles, shocked at his suggestion. Excuse me, ma'am.
Foreman looks him in the eye. This is her city, and she's going to do everything she can to nurse it back to health, no matter how long it takes.
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Jabbar Gibson paces back and forth in the parking lot outside the Astrodome in Houston, searching the faces of people shuffling off a bus that just arrived from New Orleans. His mom is supposed to be on this one, but he doesn't see her.
It's early September 2005, several days since Gibson drove a stolen school bus full of residents from the Fisher Housing Project to the Astrodome. His bus was the first to arrive from New Orleans. But since then, hundreds of other buses have come, and the Astrodome has filled up with thousands of refugees. But now, the arrivals are down to a trickle. Gibson wouldn't be surprised if this bus was the last one. It's been a whirlwind few days for Gibson.
The press pounced on his story, a kid from the projects who did what the federal government couldn't, get people out of New Orleans.
He's given interviews and posed for photos. It's been exciting to be seen as a hero. But hanging over all the celebration has been a cloud of worry about his mom, still back in an apartment with no power in a flooded city. Gibson's mom, Bernice, refused to leave Fisher with him. She claimed it was because he didn't know how to drive a bus and she didn't trust him on the road. But he suspects it runs deeper than that.
She didn't want to leave her home, but he'd heard from other storm refugees that U.S. Marshals were now going through Fisher and forcing everyone to leave. He watches as the last people come off the bus. And then there's no one. The doors are open. He can see the driver filling out some kind of paperwork on his steering wheel, but the bus appears empty. Gibson shakes his head. Where is his mother?
He turns to head back to the Astrodome. His younger siblings are there, and he doesn't like leaving them alone for too long. Suddenly, a voice calls out behind him. "Jabbar! Jabbar!"
He turns to see his mom standing just in front of the bus. His face lights up. He rushes over to her. Mom! You made it! Oh, thank God you made it out! Well, they didn't give me much of a choice. Gibson escorts her inside the Astrodome. It's packed with people, many of them lying on cots spread out on the turf. I'm going to get us out of here soon. We'll find a safe place to stay until we can go home.
You suddenly got a job I don't know about? Not yet. But Oprah wants to interview me. Can you imagine that? Oprah! And guess what? Some guy in Hollywood said he wants to make a movie about me. Bernice shakes her head incredulously.
"All that for driving a bus?" Gibson smiles. His mom might be giving him a hard time, but he knows deep down she's incredibly proud of him. Now that she's safe, he can focus on rebuilding his life. And thanks to his quick actions, it looks like he's got options. Gregory Richardson parks his car in front of his father's home in the Lower Ninth Ward.
The house is still standing, but the neighborhood looks nothing like it did when he was growing up here. The floodwaters have receded, but the damage left behind is immense. Old cars are washed up onto the front yards, and some houses are completely collapsed. Fallen trees and debris litter the streets.
It's October 2005, and Richardson is only now being allowed to visit his father's house for the first time since the storm hit nearly two months ago. The bus Richardson boarded at the convention center took him to Arkansas and dropped him at a military base. From there, he hitchhiked to the airport and caught a flight to Atlanta, where he was finally reunited with his wife. It was a joyful moment, but it didn't last long.
As the days passed with no word from his father, Richardson began to fear the worst. Soon, he received the devastating news: official word that his father's body had been recovered. Now he's back to see the flood's aftermath firsthand. The neighborhood has been under a quarantine for the past six weeks, as rescue workers searched the homes and made sure they were safe to re-enter.
Today, all Richardson is allowed to do is what's known as a look and leave. Just a quick tour of the house to assess the damage. He slams his car door shut and approaches the house. Spray painted on the wall is a large X. Each quadrant of the X holds information, including the name of the rescue squad that searched the house, the date they looked, and what they found.
The X on his father's door indicates they found one body. Richardson swallows hard, tightness forming in his throat. He already knew, but it's still a blow to see his father's death announced right on the side of the house.
He still hasn't been able to locate his father's body, but he assumes rescue workers took it to one of several temporary morgues up near Baton Rouge. He pushes open the front door and steps inside. The place smells dank and musty. He moves through the house slowly, taking in the waterlogged and muddy furniture. All the possessions accumulated over his father's lifetime, his family heirlooms, all destroyed.
He decides to look upstairs, hoping there might be a few possessions up there he can salvage. But halfway up the stairs, he lets out an anguished yell. Lying at the top of the steps is his father, flies buzzing around his rotting body. Richardson averts his eyes in horror, then sprints down the stairs and out the door. On the muddy sidewalk, he puts his hands on his knees and gulps in air.
The soldiers who discovered his father's body should have removed him. Richardson had thought his father was safely in a morgue, not lying on the floor of his beloved home decomposing. His shock gives way to a surge of outrage. Of all the indignities he suffered at the hands of the U.S. government since Katrina struck, this one is the worst.
Trina Peters carefully climbs over the pile of rubble that used to be her house. The ceiling of the first floor collapsed, crushing the foundation. The second-story apartment where Trina lived sits on top of the collapsed first floor, now just a few feet off the ground. Through the busted-out window, Trina can hear her daughter Kia and one of their cousins looking around inside. It's spring 2006, more than six months since Katrina hit.
The insurance company declared their home a total loss. So Trina and her family have settled about an hour outside New Orleans. A week from now, this house, where Trina spent nearly her entire life, will be torn down. This will be her last chance to salvage any of her belongings.
Trina balances herself against the window frame and closes her eyes. Memories of the storm replay through her mind. She remembers climbing to the roof as the storm winds raged and the Superdome with all its heat and chaos.
She remembers the feeling of relief when she was placed on a helicopter to go to the hospital, and how quickly that relief turned to dismay when instead the helicopter dropped them on the side of the highway. For hours, she and Kia waited for help before medical workers finally put them on a plane to Texas. Trina squeezes through the window into what was once her living room, coming face to face with her destroyed furniture.
Just weeks before the hurricane, she had redone their whole apartment, picking out new couches, beds, appliances, a dining set. Now it's all worthless, and her insurance has refused to cover her losses. Just then, Kia emerges from one of the bedrooms. Look what I found. She holds up a leather-bound book with gold writing across the front that reads, National Dean's List, 2001 through 2002.
Kia flips to a page about one-third of the way through and points to her name. "It was on a high shelf in the closet where the water didn't get to it. My high school diploma's up there too." Trina looks at Kia's face, clearly proud of her accomplishment and happy to have found the proof of it. "Not all is lost," Trina tells herself.
Searching through the apartment, she finds more items worth saving. A framed photo of her brother, who passed away just a year ago. Her son Daman's basketball trophies. A lockbox containing her GED and secretarial degree. And a beloved painting that once hung in her church. She holds the precious items in her hands. She feels blessed to still have these few objects. And more importantly, to still have her family.
She knows so many who lost loved ones in the storm. But despite her best effort to remain positive, the feeling of loss hits her like a freight train. She misses this house. She misses her church. She misses her city. She misses the life she used to have.
Hurricane Katrina and the flooding that occurred after the levees broke resulted in the deaths of nearly 1,400 people in New Orleans. Some estimates put the death toll much higher. Over a million other residents were displaced, many of them permanently. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in United States history, but it was also a man-made disaster.
In February 2006, a bipartisan congressional committee released a report on their investigation into the response to Hurricane Katrina. They concluded that failures at all levels of government, from city and state officials to FEMA, resulted in excess deaths. The ramifications of these failures have resonated for decades.
It took Gregory Richardson over seven months to get his father's remains, even after the government failed to remove the body from his home. In spring 2006, Richardson's family was finally able to give his father a proper burial. Just a few weeks later, Richardson started moving tenants back into some of his rental properties, but not the units he owned in the Lower Ninth Ward, all of which had been slated for demolition.
Charity Hospital never reopened fully. Instead, they set up clinics around the city to provide emergency services. Dr. Kirsta Kurtzberg volunteered at one. But without a centralized public hospital in downtown New Orleans, low-income residents had far less access to care than they did before the storm. Kurtzberg predicted more New Orleans citizens would die from the closure of Charity than did during Katrina itself, as medical problems went untreated.
A movie was never made about Jabbar Gibson's heroic bus ride. After the media attention wore off, he struggled to find work. In the years after Katrina, he was arrested several times for drug possession. Gibson's home, the Fisher Housing Project, was demolished in January 2008 and replaced with a mixed-income neighborhood of cottages and garden apartments. For the rest of his life,
Four other low-income housing projects were also leveled, despite the fact that many of them had suffered only minor storm damage. Because of the loss of so much affordable housing, many of New Orleans' poor and working-class Black residents never returned.
Trina Peters did return, but today she lives in the upper Ninth Ward, on the side of the levee that was spared from flooding. She advocates for mothers who have lost sons to gun violence, in honor of her son Daman, who was tragically shot and killed in 2010 at the age of 19. In
In 2018, LaToya Cantrell was elected the mayor of New Orleans. She ran, in part, on a promise to improve the city's drainage infrastructure to help reduce the risk of flooding. And she has started to implement these changes, turning abandoned lots and the wide avenues of the low-lying wards into water gardens and wetlands. But even Cantrell acknowledges that as climate change raises the sea levels and
bigger, more intense storms form in the warming Gulf of Mexico, these additions won't be enough to stop the next catastrophic flood from wreaking havoc on New Orleans. This is episode four of our four-part series, Hurricane Katrina. A quick note about our scenes. In most cases, we can't know exactly what was said, but everything is based on historical research.
If you'd like to learn more about this story, we recommend Breach of Faith, Hurricane Katrina, and the Near Death of a Great American City by Jed Horn. The Great Deluge, Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Douglas Brinkley. Disaster, Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security by Christopher Cooper and Robert Bloch.
and Eye of the Storm, Inside City Hall During Katrina by Sally Foreman.
Thank you.
Produced by Alita Rozanski, Olivia Richard, and Emily Frost. Managing producer is Matt Gant. Senior managing producer is Ryan Lohr. Senior producer is Andy Herman. Executive producers are Jenny Lauer-Beckman, Stephanie Jens, and Marsha Louis. For Wondery...
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