Though not a native New Orleanian, I occasionally receive honorary local status, having resided and reported here since 1999. This recognition also stems from giving birth to our son, Hector, at Touro Infirmary in New Orleans twenty years ago, precisely the day before Hurricane Katrina.
Hector’s expected arrival was September 11, but he arrived prematurely. My initial labor contractions began on August 28, 2005, at Mattassa’s Market, a corner store on Dauphine Street. It was a scorching Saturday, and I had popped in for popsicles. A friend, coincidentally there for cigarettes, escorted me home and remained with me until his father, trumpeter ‘Kid Merv’ Campbell, concluded his brass-band performance that day.
My son was born Sunday morning, roughly a day prior to Hurricane Katrina’s landfall. However, Katrina, striking New Orleans on August 29th as a Category 3 storm, was not the city’s ultimate undoing—the subsequent flooding was.
Late Sunday night, while we rested with our newborn at the hospital, a scream erupted from a new mother across the corridor. She had received a call from relatives in the Lower 9th Ward, who had hastily ascended to their attic as floodwaters had already engulfed their ground floor. The initial levee breach at Jourdan Avenue had unleashed 20 feet of water into the area, all before my son’s first full day of life.
By Wednesday, our family had evacuated, settling in Phoenix, Arizona, for eleven months, a period during which I recall virtually no rain. The rugged landscape of rocks and cacti occasionally made it feel like an alien world as we established temporary residences there, initially with my sister, and subsequently aided by a local Presbyterian congregation that embraced us alongside Jeffrey Hills’ family, a New Orleans tuba player.
Individuals relocating to a new city comprehend the heartache of separation from a beloved place. Yet, post-Katrina displacement carried a distinct emotional weight. Perhaps artist-dancer Michelle Gibson, a New Orleans native, best encapsulated this feeling during her solo performance, where she entered the audience, selectively moving individuals from their seats to different rows. When an audience member attempted to bring her purse, Gibson instructed her to leave it behind.
During such moments, the sole comfort lies in being surrounded by loved ones.
Thus, in July 2006, upon loading a U-Haul trailer to depart Phoenix, I journeyed in a caravan with the Hills family. They separated from me in Texas, where they remained for an additional year before they, too, could relocate nearer to home. Hector’s father would similarly return independently at a later time.
Shortly before the hurricane, we had settled into an apartment bordering the French Quarter, which remained dry. In the immediate aftermath, a friend whose area had flooded resided there until our return. For the subsequent year, a succession of family and friends utilized our front futon, commuting weekly from Texas or Tennessee to aid in the city’s reconstruction. This pattern emerged: individuals found a shared temporary dwelling while working towards their more permanent return home.
The process of returning was arduous. Homeowners sought contractors or undertook repairs themselves. Renters faced challenges in securing affordable housing, given the rapid escalation of living costs in New Orleans.
Occasionally, even during difficult periods, stepping into the city’s humid atmosphere felt inherently correct. Tranquil. It conveyed a sense that all the effort was justified.
However, these moments were tempered by the understanding that numerous former neighbors could not return, frequently due to financial constraints, declining health, or unemployment.
The forthcoming 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina evokes a similar bittersweet emotion. There is a profound sense of tragedy concerning the events and those who perished in the storm or could not return from displacement. We lament the escalating costs in our city, once renowned for its affordability. My monthly mortgage payment now predominantly consists of home insurance premiums, a consequence of residing in a designated disaster zone.
Yet, truthfully, we are content to remain. As Hector reaches his 20th birthday, he offers me a kiss before heading to his role as a senior lifeguard at the Andrew P. Sanchez Rec Center in the Lower 9th Ward. Earlier this summer, in an incident that became a significant local story, his team rescued a man from the water and, employing CPR, successfully revived his breathing and pulse.
There’s a poignant full-circle quality to my hurricane-born son safeguarding swimmers in the Lower 9th Ward from deep water. Upon leaving work, he drives by vacant lots overgrown with grass and isolated stoops, remnants of homes that once floated. When he returns home, several other neighborhood children born around the time of Katrina often gather, filling the front room with laughter.
As young children, all of them resided in various other cities: Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, and Arizona. However, they now traverse these streets in thick, humid summer air. And in their current conversations, their New Orleans accents are distinctly pronounced.
This autumn, our local football coach observed a shift in his team roster, he informed me.
For close to two decades, the majority of his players were born outside of New Orleans, often in cities such as Houston, Little Rock, Dallas, and Atlanta—locations where their families had been displaced following Hurricane Katrina.
However, this season, most of the player documents he received indicated New Orleans hospitals as birthplaces.
For the New Orleans community, such trends signify two decades of recovery since Hurricane Katrina’s devastation. For me, it suggests that New Orleans families may at last be achieving a sense of permanent stability—at home.