Twenty years ago in August, the Gulf Coast was struck by Hurricane Katrina. The massive storm destroyed miles of cities and towns, including New Orleans, Biloxi, Mississippi and Pass Christian, Mississippi, the hometown of journalist Robin Roberts.
With her reputation as a prominent reporter in the direct aftermath of Katrina, Roberts and ABC News have released a new short documentary, “Hurricane Katrina: 20 Years After the Storm with Robin Roberts,” which explores the continued effects of the hurricane.
Interspersing footage from Katrina with new footage and focusing mostly on New Orleans, the first half of the documentary addressed racial and economic inequities that led to the ongoing struggles residents face even two decades after the storm hit. Although Katrina did not discriminate whose home it destroyed, low-income and Black families were disproportionately left behind, lacking the personal resources and structural support to leave before the tragedy or recover when they came back.
Roberts’ revisits her own hometown to compare new infrastructure to the devastation she documented in 2005, as well as highlight areas that were never able to rebuild. This struggle is observable even in New Orleans today, with certain locations — mostly historically Black neighborhoods, like the Lower Ninth Ward — still struggling to repopulate and reconstruct.
The second half of “20 Years After the Storm” addresses the impact Katrina had on “Katrina babies,” those who were young children in 2005. The trauma of Katrina altered their lives significantly, forcing them to deal with the fear and uncertainty that came with the storm and the chaotic evacuation once assistance finally came into the city, in some cases days or weeks after landfall.
When communities finally returned, the city was not the same. Mental turmoil was common among this generation of children as they tried to return to normalcy, going to a hastily rebuilt school during the day and returning to a dilapidated carcass of a house they used to know in the evening.
The end of the film explores the ways in which New Orleans recovered — through art and music — things the city is known for. Testimonies from children of Katrina on how art, photography and music helped them recover emphasize how important the culture of the city was to regaining hope. Jazz Fest happened only eight months after the storm, a tradition the people of New Orleans were not willing to give up on.
Katrina also displaced many of the musicians who lit up the city’s streets, leading to the formation of Musicians’ Village, a New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity neighborhood which was intended to provide housing for musicians wanting to come back to the city, and the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, which provides musical education for children and recording spaces for artists, both of which still function today. Through these efforts to support the arts, New Orleans kickstarted its own revival, inviting its life source back home.
Through interviews with people affected and those who helped, “Hurricane Katrina: 20 Years After the Storm with Robin Roberts” crafts an emotional story not only of tragedy but also of hope, highlighting the region’s resilience while not shying away from pointing out the insufficiencies that led to the mass destruction caused by Katrina. The unique perspective of a journalist from the affected area allowed the film to be highly personal without focusing only on her own story.
As someone with family that was affected by Katrina, I found the film profoundly moving. In only 45 minutes, without regurgitating oft-heard death tolls or fixating on racial and economic tensions, “20 Years After the Storm” introduces the gravity of the tragedy to those unfamiliar and examines previously under-discussed aspects of the trauma caused by the hurricane while uplifting the survivors who refuse to back down and continue to improve New Orleans.