Former U.S. President Bill Clinton is scheduled to visit the southern U.S. city of New Orleans Saturday to attend ceremonies marking the 10th anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina, which flooded 80 percent of the city and killed 1,800 people.

 

Traditional New Orleans brass bands and church bells will mark the day when the extreme storm broke through protective levees and flooded the city. The storm and the flooding destroyed 100,000 homes, displaced a million people and made “Katrina” a word synonymous with “disaster.”

New Orleans officials plan to lay wreaths at the sites of some of the worst damage, including the poverty-stricken Lower Ninth Ward where a crucial barrier ruptured and let in the seawater that pushed homes off their foundations, drowning many residents and trapping others inside their homes or on their roofs.

Ten years later, the historically black neighborhood is still struggling to rebuild.

Clinton is scheduled to appear at an evening ceremony featuring music and prayer honoring the survivors of the flood as well as the first responders who struggled to bring residents to safety and curtail violence in the desperate, panicky days following the storm.

City leaders are expected to praise the city’s economic resurgence.

The cost of the storm eventually mounted to $150 billion. Thousands left the city and never returned. Many homes have yet to be rebuilt. Yet the city’s famous French Quarter, where tourists flock for food, drink and music, has bounced back. Political leaders — including President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush — boast of the resilience of the people of New Orleans.

Bush, who was in office when the storm hit in 2005, made a visit to the city on Friday. The initial federal government response to Katrina is seen as one of the biggest blights on his legacy as president.

On Friday, Bush visited Warren Easton Charter High School, the same school he visited on the first anniversary of the catastrophic storm. He was accompanied by his wife, Laura, whose library foundation helped rebuild what is the oldest public school in New Orleans.

The two met with students at the school’s gymnasium, where he was also greeted by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and former Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco, who was in office during Katrina.

Bush addressed a packed crowd at Easton, quoting a local teacher who told him, ‘We teach our kids to be resilient.’

His administration was roundly criticized in the days following the storm for a slow emergency response to the thousands of people needing shelter, supplies and security amid the flooding. The Bush administration, however, later sent considerable aid to the devastated city and the region.

Local officials, especially former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin and former governor Blanco were also blamed for a bungled response.

On Thursday, President Obama hailed the southern city’s revival. Speaking to city residents at a newly built community center in the Lower Ninth Ward, he said, “You are an example of what is possible when, in the face of tragedy and in the face of hardship, good people come together to lend a hand. And brick by brick, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, you build a better future.”

“The project of rebuilding here wasn’t simply to restore the city as it had been, it was to build a city as it should be,” Obama told a crowd of 600. “A city where everyone, no matter who they are or what they look like or how much money they’ve got, has an opportunity to make it.”

 

The president began his remarks marking the anniversary of Katrina by noting the fast, steady and strong recovery of the U.S. economy.

 

Obama said despite a volatile few weeks around the world with the swing in global stock markets, “the United States of America, for all the challenges we still have, we continue to have the best cards — we just have to play them right.”

 

President Obama, on his 10th visit to the coastal city, remarked that New Orleans’ recovery is a model for the nation in urban innovation and disaster response and resilience. More than $14 billion has been spent to reinforce levees that failed to protect New Orleans.

The president also noted the importance of making communities more resilient to natural disasters.

Much of the U.S. Gulf Coast was heavily damaged by the storm, resulting in billions of dollars in federal assistance spent to help coastal communities rebuild.
…