President Obama on Thursday hailed New Orleans’ recovery from the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina 10 years ago, calling the city’s robust turnaround “unique in my lifetime.”
Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29, 2005, killing 1,800 people on the Gulf Coast. In New Orleans, which has an average elevation about six feet under sea level and is completely surrounded by water, levees built by the Army Corps of Engineers were wiped out by the storm surge, and most of the city flooded.
“The project of rebuilding here wasn’t a project of rebuilding what had been, but instead building a city that should be,” Obama said at the city’s Andrew P. Sanchez Community Center.
Obama, at the time a freshly elected senator from Illinois, recalled the bleak aftermath of “an American city, dark and underwater.” He then made a veiled allusion to the failures of predecessor George W. Bush’s administration.
“What started out as a natural disaster, turned out to be a manmade disaster. A failure of government,” he said. “I made promises when I was a senator that I’d help, and I’ve kept those promises.”
Still, Obama did not dedicate the majority of his speech to criticism of Bush, whose handling of Katrina is seen by many as the low point of his presidency.
Instead, he focused more on what has been accomplished since then. He emphasized his goal of continuing to build a New Orleans that could welcome back any resident displaced in 2005. “Everyone who wants to come home, can come home,” he said.
He touted his administration’s focus on housing vouchers and training programs, in high tech, but also in water management, as critical for New Orleans’ success and sustainability.
He also thanked his director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying: “I love me some Craig Fugate.”
Critics say FEMA was particularly incompetent during Katrina, under different leadership.
Obama also touted his administration’s accomplishments and national trends as being critical to New Orleans’ comeback — 65 consecutive months of private-sector job growth and an increase in the availability of healthcare, including mental health.
He cautioned, though, that New Orleans still had a long road ahead. “Our work here won’t be done when almost 40 percent of children still live in poverty in this city.”
