Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana 16 years to the day after a storm named Katrina arrived on these same shores.
While every storm is unique in its trajectory, wind speed, storm surge and other meteorological markers, the primary difference between the impacts on New Orleans from Ida versus Katrina lay not in nature, but in preparation — from individual action to municipal and federal investment.
Although the city is still recovering from significant damage wreaked by Ida, New Orleans was spared the far more catastrophic flooding and widespread loss of life it experienced with Katrina, as our levees withstood Ida’s storm surge — their strongest challenge since Katrina. Once an emblem of the deadly results of infrastructure neglect and indifference, New Orleans is now an example of how investments made today can reap huge returns in the future — dividends as precious as human life and as critical as economic security.
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