On Her Way Back: New Orleans Continues to Rebuild After Hurricane Katrina
No one feels a stronger connection to a home city than the residents of New Orleans. They refused to let their city die after the pounding it took from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
“It’s the soul of the city,” says David F. Bienvenu, a partner at Simon, Peragine, Smith & Redfearn who chairs the ABA Special Committee on Disaster Response and Preparedness. “So many people who live here have an inherent belief that this is the center of the universe.” In Katrina’s aftermath, “many of them would go to incredible lengths to stay here or come back.”
Click here to view the After Katrina in New Orleans gallery.
No one feels a stronger connection to a home city than the residents of New Orleans. They refused to let their city die after the pounding it took from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
“It’s the soul of the city,” says David F. Bienvenu, a partner at Simon, Peragine, Smith & Redfearn who chairs the ABA Special Committee on Disaster Response and Preparedness. “So many people who live here have an inherent belief that this is the center of the universe.” In Katrina’s aftermath, “many of them would go to incredible lengths to stay here or come back.”
Robert Lynn Green Sr. typifies the spirit that helped save New Orleans. He was one of the first residents of his neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward to come back home after flooding pretty much wiped it out.
Green remembers what the neighborhood was like before Katrina. “There was no open land around here,” he says. “There was nothing but houses, nothing but families raising their children. A vacant lot was unusual to see.”
Click here to read the rest of “On Her Way Back” from the March issue of the ABA Journal.
