Nader Khouri

Picture Stories: Katrina Aftermath

With least 1,836 people dead and $81 billion in damages Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf coast in late August 2005, was the most costly and one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. History. About 80% of the city of New Orleans was flooded as a result of 53 levee breaches.

K-9 handler Angela Batten and NOPD Det. Mike Dalferes search for bodies with K-9 cadaver dog, Dede, in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans as the search for bodies continued more than two months after the hurricane.
  
Clothes still hang in the closet of one of the hurricane-damaged homes in the upper portion of the Lower Ninth Ward.
   
Pictures covered with mud in the home of Susie and Edward Sparks, Sr. in the Lower Ninth Ward. The husband and wife died as a result of Hurricane Katrina along with their son, Edward Sparks, Jr., and the aunt of Sparks Sr., Marjorie Edwards.
     
  
The devastation caused by the northernmost of two levee breaks as a result of Hurricane Katrina in the Lower Ninth Ward
   
Jocelyn Robinson sits outside her trailer at the FEMA "transitional housing" trailer park in Baker, La. Robinson was rescued from her home in the Ninth Ward during the hurricane. The park, which has a total of 573 trailers, is meant to help evacuees get back on their feet within 18 months.
   
Signs advertising various home repair services compete for attention on the side of the road in the Lakeview area.
     
  
Shrimp fishing boats sit bunched together at the overpass of Highway 23 in the town of Empire in Plaquemines Parish, La. The fishing town suffered great devastation to its boats as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Plaquemines is the southernmost parish in Louisiana where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico.
  
Two fishing ships sit on Higway 23 as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the town of Empire in Plaquemines Parish, La.
  
Alvin Pettigrew, center, carries the casket of his grandfather, Levie Simmons, Jr., 69, during Simmons' funeral in Westwego, La. Simmons, who had a heart condition, died after not wanting to leave his home in the Lower Ninth Ward during Hurricane Katrina.
     
  
NOPD officers question a man who they found disobeying the curfew in the Algiers area of New Orleans.
   
A statue of the Virgin Mary sits with water marks up to its head outside the home of Prosper Flint, 77, in New Orleans. Flint used to have rosaries outside of his home. He died on Interstate 10 as a result of the hurricane.