Snapshots of NOLA after Katrina

You can’t go to New Orleans, or NOLA as some friends refer to it, without thinking or talking about Hurricane Katrina. The hurricane’s presence is everywhere from the horizontal clay colored water stripe on the highway walls to indicate the 7 feet of water stewed the city for weeks, to the house shells that continue to litter the Lower Ninth Ward.

I particularly enjoy Boston in the early mornings when the city hums with a quiet energy. By 8:30 the city teems with people. In NOLA, you keep waiting for the crowd, but the crowd doesn’t come. There’s a ghost like quality to walking around the French Quarter or the Garden District. The New Orleans Index estimates that about 71.5 percent of the preKatrina population has moved back into the city. The levee walls that now protect the Lower Ninth Ward aren't guaranteed to protect the area against another category 5 hurricane such as Katrina.