New Orleans: A Tale Of 2 Cities Since Katrina
By Paul Newberry
In this Jan. 31, 2013, photo, damaged houses sit vacant in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, a neighborhood that was hit hard by floodwaters from a levee break after Hurricane Katrina. The glittering party in the French Quarter is going stronger than ever. But as revelers celebrate the ultimate comeback from those dark days in 2005, there are still areas of New Orleans that do not look much different than they did right after Hurricane Katrina swept through. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
NEW ORLEANS (AP) – While a blimp hovered not too far in the distance, circling over tens of thousands of Super Bowl revelers, Christopher Weaver looks around at the neighborhood where he was born and raised and almost died.
He loves this place, probably more now than he did back in 2005, before Hurricane Katrina tried to wash it all away.
But it’s not much to look at, that’s for sure.
“You can see it for yourself,” Weaver moaned to a reporter, staring at all the vacant lots, overrun with weeds that are taller than he is, at all the abandoned shells of former homes, many of them still marked with the spray-painted “X” that became the grim symbol of a great American city nearly wiped off the map.
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