New Orleans remembers Katrina

Five years ago Sunday, the water rushed in, the lights went out and, for thousands of Gulf Coast residents, nothing was ever the same.

The milestone was marked by vigils, tears and reflection on what was, what came after, what still remains to be done and what, if anything, we have learned from Hurricane Katrina.

A number of events were planned in New Orleans, Louisiana, and elsewhere to commemorate the anniversary of the landfall of Katrina, the costliest and one of the five deadliest storms ever to strike the United States.

President Barack Obama was scheduled to visit New Orleans on Sunday and speak at Xavier University of Louisiana.

The hard-hit parishes of Plaquemines and St Bernard were holding commemorative community events, and a third commemoration was planned in New Orleans' Jackson Square.

Katrina left more than 1,800 dead in its wake. It slammed into the Gulf Coast near the Louisiana-Mississippi state line early on August 29, 2005. Most of the dead were in and around New Orleans, where more than three-quarters of the city was flooded after its protective levees failed. Nearly 300,000 people were displaced.

After the storm, "We were a city that had no people in it," Ray Nagin, who was mayor of New Orleans when Katrina struck.

"Now, we're a city that has over 80 percent of its population back. Lowest unemployment in the country. Construction everywhere. I think we're on our way to success," Nagin told CNN's Don Lemon as the storm's anniversary approached.

Still, it is widely agreed that more work remains to bring New Orleans and the Gulf Coast back from Katrina's devastating blow. Some say that little has improved, and entire neighbourhoods in Louisiana and beyond have not rebounded.

"Nothing's really changed," said Conrad Wyre III, 35, of New Orleans. Some regions are still "in shambles," he said, and some residents still feel helpless and without support, as if they are "floating in the wind."

About 6,000 families own homes that cannot be rebuilt. One-third of New Orleanians say their lives are still disrupted by the storm, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation Poll. In New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward neighbourhood - seen as ground zero for Katrina's wrath - only 4,000 of 18,000 residents have returned.

Recovery continues

"I have really been moved by the spirit of the people in New Orleans in the Gulf, and their rebuilding, and the optimism in progress that I have seen. More than 90 per cent of the population is back in the New Orleans area, and there is still much ahead of us," said Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan yesterday.

When Obama took office, 40,000 families remained in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers or were using emergency housing vouchers, "and literally tens of thousands of them were at risk of losing their homes within weeks of us coming in," Donovan said. "Today, 98 percent of the families are in permanent housing."

Katrina made its initial landfall in Florida, where 14 people were killed. But fuelled by the warm waters of the Gulf, the storm had grown into a monster Category 5 hurricane, although experts later said its intensity had decreased and it was a strong Category 3 storm when it, the coasts of Mississippi and Louisiana.

-CNN