Sunday, August 30, 2015

New Orleans Marks Hurricane Katrina Anniversary With Defiant Celebration

On Saturday, residents marked 10 years since the infamous storm devastated their city by holding festive and proud celebrations of just how far they’ve come.

NEW ORLEANS — Thousands of people took to the streets of New Orleans to mark the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina Saturday, singing, dancing, drinking, and hugging one another in a cathartic show of defiance against the storm’s destruction.

John Stanton/BuzzFeed News

Part elaborate funeral procession and part moving block party, many in the Crescent City worried that in the storm's aftermath these marches, known as Second Lines, would go extinct as the city's population was scattered across the country.

But the tradition has remained.

Marchers from across the city began gathering early Saturday morning under the grey, imposing levee, the site where the old levee collapsed in 2005, sending a wall of water into this poor, largely black neighborhood, and ultimately filling much of the city in as much as 17 feet of water.