After Katrina: houses are still empty, but the Big Easy weathers the latest storm

Tourists in New Orleans’ French Quarter and Garden District would be hard pressed to see Hurricane Katrina damage if they didn’t go looking for it. On a recent visit to attend a wedding between a Glaswegian brewer and a Louisiana law professor, I ate gumbo, swayed to jazz and paraded behind a brass band between the ceremony and the reception. Not so different from a wedding I attended eight years ago in the same town. But you don’t have to venture far to see the lasting impact of the storm.

Four years after Katrina flooded most of New Orleans, killed 1,464 people and caused billions of dollars in damage, about 75 per cent of the 454,000 residents who were there before Katrina have returned. The areas that have not recovered are also the poorest. Houses in those areas — the Lower 9th Ward, for example — are away from most tourists’ eyes and many still remain largely empty.