Three years ago this weekend, the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded made landfall in southeast Louisiana and at the Louisiana/Mississippi state line. Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge ravaged the Gulf Coast, essentially washing away many coastal communities and breaching New Orleans levees. What followed is well known.
I was there a year later, when New Orleans was still a literal ghost town. As the Big Easy remembers Katrina’s 3-year anniversary, and evacuates in the face of perhaps the biggest storm to ever hit the U.S. (Hurricane Gustav), I have put together some clips of video I took while I was there. Like the Crescent City itself, the following clips are random, stitched together, checkered with the historic, the scarred, and the downright charming.
I got a call yesterday from my friend, Rhonda Buie, in Slidell. She was preparing to evacuate, and is certainly gone as of this writing. I wish her and her family well.
Track Hurricane Gustav here.
Read the rest of my Gulf Coast dispatches:
Part 1- Post-Katrina New Orleans
Part 2- Palm Trees and the South
Part 3- First Night In NOLA and Slidell Cemeteries
Part 4- The Honey Island Swamp
Part 5- Waveland to Pensacola
