Commemorations are underway to mark the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a Category 3 storm that struck New Orleans on August 29, 2005, causing approximately 1,000 deaths, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, and over $1 billion in damages in the Gulf Coast states of Louisiana and Mississippi.
Live and virtual events, some organized by New Orleans Katrina Commemoration Inc. (NOKCI) aim to honor the lives lost in the hurricane’s aftermath. One organizer with NOKCI told The Final Call that Hurricane Katrina caused the community “to see how America feels about Black people.”
F“My sadness is that we all watched the Weather Channel, MSNBC, FOX and CNN. We watched Katrina grow from a Category 1 storm and come into the Gulf and build from a 1 to a 3, and paused.
It was moving quite slowly. When it was understood that it was going to be a category 4 and then a 5, that was the time that FEMA should have been activated and trucks should have been sent to the area,” Minister Farrakhan said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“Most of the people who could not get out was not because they did not want to, but because they did not have the means to get out. But if those trucks had been there in a timely fashion, we might have been able to save many, many, many more lives,” he said.
“We’re still hurting, 20 years later,”
