Katrina's wrath and rebuilding marked on 10th anniversary
NEW ORLEANS -- Mississippi and Louisiana marked the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on Saturday by ringing church bells, laying wreaths and celebrating the resiliency of a region still recovering from a disaster that killed more than 1,800 people and caused $151 billion in damage.
Addressing dignitaries at New Orleans' memorial to the unclaimed and unidentified dead, Mayor Mitch Landrieu spoke of the dark days after the monstrous storm and how the city's residents leaned on each other for support.
"We saved each other," the mayor said. "New Orleans will be unbowed and unbroken."
In Mississippi, churches along coastal Hancock County tolled their bells in unison Saturday morning to mark the 10th anniversary of the day that Katrina made landfall in the state.
Eloise Allen, 80, wept softly into a tissue and leaned against her rusting Oldsmobile as bells chimed at Our Lady of the Gulf Catholic Church just across a two-lane street from a sun-drenched beach at Bay St. Louis.
She said her home, farther inland, was damaged but livable. Her daughter lost her home in nearby Waveland. Many of her friends and neighbors suffered similarly.
"I feel guilty," she said. "I didn't go through what all the other people did."
In Biloxi, Mississippi, clergy and community leaders gathered at a newly built Minor League Baseball park for a memorial to Katrina's victims and later that evening the park will host a concert celebrating the recovery.
During a prayer service at a seaside park in Gulfport, former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour praised volunteers who worked on the Katrina recovery. He said more than 954,000 volunteers came from around the country to Mississippi in the first five years after the storm, and many were motivated by faith.
"They thought it was God's command to try to help people in need," Barbour said.
Katrina's force caused a massive storm surge that scoured the Mississippi coast, pushed boats far inland and wiped houses off the map, leaving only concrete front steps to nowhere.
Glitzy casinos and condominium towers have been rebuilt. But overgrown lots and empty slabs speak to the slow recovery in some communities.
In Louisiana's St. Bernard Parish, more than 100 people gathered Saturday morning for a memorial service to honor the 164 parish residents who died during Katrina.
Patricia Noote lost her husband shortly after the storm hit.
"I've been through so much, so many people dying that I knew, different things like that," Noote told CBS affiliate WWL. "So many people lost their homes, everything, business and all."
"My friend Marian Sterns got killed when she was trying to climb in her attic and the floodwater tore apart her house," Fran Bourgeois told the station.
Former St. Bernard Parish President Junior Rodriguez said the death toll could have been a lot higher had the flooding occurred at 10 o'clock at night, rather than 10 o'clock in the morning.
"Had that water came up at night, when people were sleeping, when people were watching TV and the power had gone off, it was darkness, let me tell you something, we would have needed 8,000 body bags in this parish," Rodriguez said.
All but two homes in the parish of 68,000 people 10 years ago were either damaged or destroyed during Katrina. Only 43,500 residents returned to the parish after the storm.
St. Bernard's current president, Dave Peralta, said everybody lost something during Katrina.
"Whether it be a photo album, a car, a family heirloom or in more than a few cases, your home," Peralta said. "We have all shared the sense of loss."
"The loss of homes, the greater portion of St. Bernard Parish and the loss of a whole way of life have tested our faith profoundly," said Catholic Archbishop Emeritus Alfred Hughes. "The painstakingly slow progress in rebuilding has tested our hope."
In New Orleans, wide scale failures of the levee system on Aug. 29, 2005, left 80 percent of the city under water.
New Orleans has framed the 10th anniversary as a showcase designed to demonstrate to the world how far the city has come. In a series of events in the week leading up to the actual anniversary, the city has held lectures, given tours of the levee improvements and released a resiliency plan.
Many parts of the iconic city have rebounded phenomenally while many residents -- particularly in the black community -- still struggle.
In New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward, residents and community activists gathered Saturday at the levee where Katrina's storm waters broke through and submerged the neighborhood.
After several speeches, a parade snaked through the neighborhood while music played from boom boxes and people sold water from ice chests under the hot sun.
Wilmington Sims watched the parade from his front porch. He helped build the porch before Katrina, then had to re-do the work after flooding from the levee break damaged the first floor.
He said the outpouring of support was "uplifting" but many people still need help and the Lower 9th Ward needs economic development.
In the evening, former President Bill Clinton headlined a free concert-prayer service-celebration at Smoothie King Center in New Orleans. In addition to the former president the event featured performances by the city's "Rebirth Brass Band," award-winning journalist Soledad O'Brien and Chief Monk Boudreaux and the Wild Magnolias.