New Orleans Now
3 August 2011 | Author/Destination: North America / Nordamerika | Rubric: General Reading Time: 14 minutes
New Orleans Montage - From top left: A typical New Orleans mansion off St. Charles Avenue, a streetcar passing by Loyola University and Tulane University, the skyline of the Central Business District, Jackson Square, and a view of Royal Street in the French Quarter © Gonk/Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
Hurricane Katrina was the greatest natural disaster in the history on the United States. The Women of the Storm, an organization formed by the women of New Orleans gathered the following statistics. 80% of New Orleans flooded, that’s an area equal in size to SEVEN Manhattan Islands. 1,500 people died; 134 were still missing two years after the storm. 204,000-plus homes severely damaged. Over 800,000-plus citizens were forced to live outside of their homes, the greatest diaspora since the Dust Bowl of the 30’s. Tens of thousands New Orleanians still reside outside of Louisiana. 81,688 FEMA trailers were originally occupied, many of which are shown to have unsafe levels of formaldehyde toxicity. 1.2 million families received Red Cross assistance. 33,544 persons were rescued by Coast Guard. 34 years worth of trash and debris was spread around New Orleans alone. There were 900,000 insurance claims at a cost of $22.6 billion. read more…
