Children of Katrina

Destroyed neighbourhoods are ‘the new normal’ for many New Orleans youth

It’s been two years since Katrina. Two years since my family evacuated, driving off for a weekend and never really coming back. Everyone in New Orleans experienced different consequences from Katrina — for us, the most immediate result was that my wife, a pediatrician, lost her job. We made a painful decision: We sold our house, which didn’t flood, and moved with our two children to Illinois.

Yet we continue to return for visits … We return because our close friends live there. We also return because I believe that New Orleans must be part of my children’s future as well as their past. New Orleans is a teachable moment. What can happen when the safety and well-being of 500,000 people are neglected?…

Unlike so many New Orleanians, we had options. We lived in Uptown New Orleans, on relatively high ground. We did not have to spend months gutting our house and fighting our insurance company. Nor did we mourn family members who drowned.

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Instead, we are more acquainted with Katrina’s collateral damage. We have lost friends to suicide. We’ve seen other friends’ marriages crumble. We listen to stories about depression and sudden tempers. We watch as our friends make the best of it in a city that is still unprotected from the next bad storm.

In New Orleans, the term for all this is “the new normal.” For many children growing up there, it is now normal to live in a city still decimated. “We’re living in Lakeview right now, all the houses have Xs on them,” said Paulette Carter. “My children are 2 and 3; they don’t know anything different…”

Excerpted from a piece by Michael Tisserand. LA Times, August 29