Twenty Years Later, Katrina Still Haunts the Gulf from New Orleans to Houston

Editor’s Note: Join us Wednesday evening for a joint event sponsored by Mother Jones, the Texas Observer, and Capital B. “The Lingering Storm” will revisit one of the nation’s deadliest storms and how to prepare for the future—in downtown Houston or online via motherjones.com/stream.

Twenty years ago, when the nation’s most deadly modern hurricane approached New Orleans, Eva Kinnard didn’t have a car or the money to leave her apartment on her own. She was still recovering from surgery—limping around on a foot with a healing cut. Like others in the Crescent City, she figured she could ride out the storm with her teenage children. The eldest was pregnant. 

“We lived in Uptown on Hickory in an apartment. I had four children—at the time they were in 9^th, 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th grade,” she recalled in an interview with the Texas Observer. “Our whole house flooded.”