New Orleans officials want to make Hurricane Katrina anniversary an official holiday (2024)

On the 19th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, as residents and local leaders commemorated the victims of the storm and the devastation it wrought, a group of New Orleans officials called for August 29 to be enshrined as a state holiday to more formally recognize the storm's lasting impact on the region and its people.

Throughout the region, officials and residents on Thursday recalled the trauma of the storm and the federal levee failures from nearly two decades ago, returning again to memorials for public ceremonies.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell joined an annual wreath laying ceremony at the city's Katrina Memorial, a lush installation on Canal Street designed to resemble the storm’s swirling eye, while officials in St. Bernard Parish marked the anniversary with a similar gesture at the Shell Beach Katrina Memorial.

On Saturday, two local groups — the Hip Hop Caucusand the Katrina Commemoration Foundation —will host an annual commemorative second line in the Lower 9th Ward.

And as an August thunderstorm unleashed showers over the city Thursday, state Rep. Alonzo Knox and other area leaders, some choking back tears, gathered at his Baronne Street office for a news conference where they said that an official holiday would open the door for greater recognition of the trauma many people still associate with the day.

Some said a holiday would also help the city and region honor the strides that have been made since.

“The memories will go away sometimes if you don't have something that is concrete that helps people to remember,” said District D City Council member Eugene Green.

District E City Council member Oliver Thomas, who served as an at-large member of the Council in 2005, opened up about the storm's impact on his mental health, describing how he and other residents returned to rebuild without the resources to help them cope with the trauma they'd endured.

Even outside of major anniversaries like the two-decade benchmark New Orleans is set to hit next year, an annual holiday would serve as a reminder, Thomasand others said, of structural repairs left unfinished, racial disparities in the distributionof recovery dollars, the strength of residents who returned and the swell of art and music the recovery inspired.

Knox, a first-term Democrat whose district encompasses New Orleans' downtown area, portions of the 9th Ward and elsewhere, said he plans to file legislation that would create the holiday.

"I think what we're trying to do, in a collaborative way, is talk about 'Where do we go from now,'" Knox said.

Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana just after 6 a.m. on August 29, 2005. The city's federally built levee system collapsed soon after, and storm surge churned into the region from the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Pontchartrain. Some 80% of the city was inundated, igniting a disaster that reshaped New Orleans.

At Thursday's press conference, officials and advocates noted the threats the city still faces from increasingly powerful hurricanes.

When Hurricane Ida struck the state on Katrina's anniversary in 2021 as a devastating Category 4 storm, the levees in New Orleans held. But the storm's punishing winds shredded the region's power grid and destroyed scores of homes from the bayou parishes up to the Mississippi state line, leaving thousands without air conditioning and communication.

"It was one of the many events that showed our city and state we have to fight for climate justice," said Dawn Richard, a New Orleans native and recording artist affiliated with the Hip Hop Caucus.

They also discussed hopes for next year's 20th anniversary and future events marking what they hope will soon be a state holiday.

Thomas said he'd like to see "real people" with stories of recovery centered in those events. And others called for a centering of local artists and musicians who channeled stories of the storm into their work.