New Orleans marks 20 years after Hurricane Katrina

Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina crashed into the Gulf Coast, New Orleans is set to commemorate the anniversary Friday with memorials, performances and a parade to honor those who were affected.

Katrina, which was a Category 3 hurricane when it made landfall in southeast Louisiana on Aug. 29, 2005, remains the costliest U.S. storm on record, with damage estimated at upward of $200 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. About 1,400 people died in five states.

The failure of the federal levee system inundated about 80% of the city in floodwaters that took weeks to drain. Thousands of people clung to rooftops to survive or waited for evacuation in the sweltering, under-provisioned Superdome stadium.

Survivors and city leaders are set to gather in the Lower Ninth Ward, a predominantly Black community where a levee breach led to devastating flooding.

 Thousands of attendees are expected to join a brass band parade known as a second line. The beloved New Orleans tradition has its roots in African American jazz funerals, in which grieving family members march with the deceased alongside a band and trailed by a second line of dancing friends and bystanders.

A parade has been staged on every Katrina anniversary since local artists organized it in 2006 to help neighbors heal and unite the community.

Other commemorations include a wreath-laying ceremony at a memorial for dozens of unidentified storm victims and a minute of silence, to be observed at 11:20 a.m.

City leaders are pushing for the anniversary to become a state holiday.

The city’s population, nearly half a million before Katrina, is now 384,000 after displaced New Orleanians scattered across the nation. Many ended up in Atlanta, Dallas and Houston.

In the aftermath, the levee system was rebuilt, public schools were privatized, most public housing projects were demolished and a hospital was shuttered. About 134,000 housing units were damaged by Katrina.