Nearly 20 years of visiting Katrina, the director of New Orleans visited. Everyone told her the same. star-news.press/wp

A visitor to New Orleans may be wandering around the French neighborhood, discovering Mardi’s culture or lost in the performance of the blues. When trying to track down the tone Jumbo, it is easy to forget the trauma that means the Mississippi. But for the population, there is no escape from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, which is still chasing the city for two decades.

Director Traci A. Curry visited the Essence Festival in 2023, a giant of black American culture that was hosted annually in the city. Soon, an amazing truth, which everyone in New Orleans pronounces – from drivers to drivers to backed.

“What was interesting was that all of them said some of the same thing, which is that for those of us who come to New Orleans as visitors, it looks and feels that it is New Orleans that we all know. One of our imagination.

Curry told “Corrie Newsweek In an interview in the London movie in advance of the next five -part documentary Hurricane Katrina: Race over timeFor the first time on July 27 on National Geographic and Streaming July 28 on Disney+ and Hulu.

Soon it became clear that the city’s recovery at some extent. Carrie-Five-part documentary series-Returning the post-Katrina New Orleans to detect scars.

A human disaster

Most Americans remember the chaos when Catrina fell from Louisiana on August 29, 2005. broadcasts broadcast a seal of people trapped in SuperDome, upper shots of the submerged streets, and looting of groceries. Now, the memory of the storm is commemorating as a “man -made” catastrophe, noting that the failure of the emergency situations and the maintenance of the aging dam system that was supposed to protect the low neighborhoods from being completely collapsed.

Curry said Newsweek: “Many of the things that occurred during Katrina and the story we narrated were not the things that the storm created. It was things that were revealed and aggravated by the storm,” noting how it affected the poor black societies in an impartial way.

A mandatory evacuation order was placed in place; Tens of thousands of city population fled 480,000, but more than 100,000 shadow are trapped. Many made their way to SuperDome, who descended into a failed chaos where the survivors were left without a way to survive.

“When you talk about separation and race, as you know, all these things – so many people who left a lot of people behind them is that they cannot evacuate … so just because you are a working class and do not have money, it is more likely that you perish during Katrina.”

Personal stories

Carrie and her team took off hundreds of hours of clips to reformulate Katrina’s narration with humanity.

“I used to be a news producer, and I understand how things go. If you are at a time -time, you will get the shot and go.

But she believes that something more intense is happening.

She said: “There is a novel that is pre -found about blacks in the United States – violence and diseases – which can tend to the media easily. News courses do not stimulate a precise human story,” she said.

The director of the Oscar nominated faced this with personal and individual footage.

“You can either take a look at clips, look at hundreds of hours and see like black men without a shirt running and saying like,” This is a criminal, “or says” This is a person who is trying to survive “and allow this to inform the story of the stories, which the team and the team did.” “You must look as a member of the audience in the eyes of man.”

Personal stories include the story of Lucres, a mother besieged in the attic with her children. Her daughter wrote their names on the walls, believing that they will die. They were rescued by the boat, but they were forced to face its painful reality, an immersed city.

“There is a point where you see the body of a dead child in the water. She says:” Stop the boat, we have to get it. “

The lessons learned?

Speed 20 years and New Orleans is a city that has a catastrophe forever. The bottom ninth wing has been moved completely by Katrina, and today the area inhabited by the black -class population is still largely vacant.

“It seems just happened,” Carrie said. “There are footage in the fifth episode that we launched last year: a block after a mass of concrete steps that lead anywhere – no longer exists. This neighborhood has never recovered.”

Meanwhile, the improvement may “turbo – charged” the displacement of the original community, as the high cost of housing converts a rifle to Airbnbs with increased rents.

Natural disasters still have devastating effects. Before wrapped in production, Hurricane Helen achieved a decline in September 2025, causing severe floods in Atell, North Carolina.

“There were different weather events – fires in Hawaiian and Los Angeles. All are completely different. Katrina was single in several ways, but we saw the same landmarks: the weather is exacerbated by the environmental impacts of man -making, and the infrastructure that is still not suitable for continuing to do so more than others, as the needs are more than others. The storm,” Carrie warned.

Curry added that although the effect of Katrina is New Orleans-Tarkt, similar inequality affects other societies-often black “cancer alley”, as the blame has been blamed for upper cancer rates on the medium pollution, or neighborhoods filled with intense heat data “and servant water”.

“The story of Katrina has a lot to teach us about the relevant issues that are still happening today. I hope people will wake up.”

The highlight of this point is footage of President George W. Bush, who flies over the horrific scenes in New Orleans. The series cuts semi -sophisticated clips of a 1965 hurricane – when the ninth wing was overwhelmed similarly – at that time President Lindon Johnson came immediately, and emergency operations began simultaneously.

Carrie notes that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which has been largely criticized, has since learned from Katrina and its amendment policies to serve more vulnerable before the storm. But today the agency faces significant financial discounts, and its survival remains suspended in balance, as political pressure threatens to dismantle the regime completely.

However, the biggest story that Carey wants to tell – from a disaster – is one of the society.

“Even in the most inhuman circumstances, when all these systems failed and civil society collapsed, these people did not lose their humanity. They adhered to it, and expressed it by caring for each other, and they used any agency that they had to maintain the narrow ties of kinship and society that distinguishes New Orleans.”