A category three hurricane landed in New Orleans, Louisiana, almost twenty years ago. Her name was Katrina, and on August 29, 2005, she hit the bustling city and breached the levees meant to withstand her 100-mile-per-hour storm-surge winds—and they shattered under her weight.
After hours of grueling force, Katrina dissipated and left the city of New Orleans destroyed, flooded, and without power. It would take weeks for them to get back on their feet enough to assess the damage, and nearly twenty years later – they’re still barely recouping.
According to the National Weather Service, around 80% of New Orleans and its surrounding neighborhoods were underwater. Casualties were in the hundreds, and many more were yet to be discovered. The word devastation was an understatement, as due to the destruction of the levees surrounding the “fishbowl,” about 20 feet of water was allowed to accumulate and stand for weeks on end in the sweltering end-of-summer heat.
The damage done to federal infrastructure, housing throughout the entire city and neighborhoods, roads, parks, docks, and much more totaled over $193.5 billion in damages, making Hurricane Katrina the most financially devastating natural disaster in United States history.
However, during initial coverage of the aftermath of the destruction Katrina left in her wake, amongst the images and videos of those who were stranded on rooftops or entire suburbs underwater were aerial views of New Orleans’s cemeteries – wholly submerged.
When the waters evaporated, horrifying photos emerged of caskets lodged in trees – miles from their original interment – or burial accouterments stranded in the middle of yards and roads. Katrina took nearly 1,400 lives but also displaced over 1,500 dead from their resting place.
All over the city and surrounding areas, cemeteries were uprooted, with some being described as “a desk emptied of all its drawers” or “empty graves that [looked like] spaces between teeth.” Suffice it to say, the cemeteries of New Orleans and its neighbors were utterly gutted. Recovery efforts focused not only on retrieving the remains of the recently deceased but also on those who had been deceased for a long time.
However, that was nearly twenty years ago – how have New Orleans’ cemeteries recovered?
It’s been about twenty years since coffins were sent sailing miles from their original sites.
At the time of the disaster, surrounding Parish coroners, medical examiners, and forensic pathologists had their hands full, not only in the recovery of Katrina’s dead but also those who have long since been buried.
A coffin had even washed up on the lawn of the then-medical examiner of St. Bernard Parishes, Dr. Bryan Bertucci, who had already been deeply involved in the recovery efforts. It was then that many realized the level of catastrophic damage their city had been put through.
But how do you even go about this recovery effort? With so many victims, whose recovery do you prioritize? The answer was not as simple, as due to the complicated amount of remains, the recovery team was left to solve the macabre puzzle of determining which remains were Katrina victims and which were priorly deceased. In some instances, those disinterred remains ended up in the morgue with other recent Katrina victims.
Luckily, the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team stepped in to assist when the floods cleared.
During the recovery effort, remains of the disinterred could be identified through the use of dental records, DNA sampling, coffin scrolls, which contained their identities, and more. However, it was not as easy as it seems on paper, as many of the coffins and remains had been monstrously damaged by the harsh weather conditions.
Some caskets didn’t contain scrolls or any amount of identification within, while some of the remains had been decomposed further due to the flooding and sun-bleaching. This hurt the recovery effort as DNA and dental artifacts were damaged beyond recognition for many disinterred.
Another obstacle was the records themselves—many were destroyed in the flooding of Katrina. Even for the living, things like birth certificates, dental records, and social security forms were destroyed or washed away.
Although all of these challenges were presented to DMORT, their ultimate goal was to recover the remains, reinter them in their “homes,” and provide closure for the decedents’ loved ones.
The exact number has yet to be fully known through careful organization and precise data analysis, but it is speculated that hundreds of remains were reburied in the decades-long aftermath of Katrina.
Despite the winds of Katrina blowing almost twenty years ago, her impact is still felt today.
When I went to New Orleans a few Tuesdays ago (March 26, 2024), I saw that the older infrastructures of downtown were crumbling. There were still lines along some buildings that showed the flood waters that had long since passed. Some neighborhoods surrounding the bridge to get into the central city still had some foundations exposed – homes that were toppled in Katrina’s wake. The behemoth that was Six Flags New Orleans still stands, rusting.
Some of the main cemeteries that were affected – especially Merrick Cemetery in the neighboring area of Violet, LA – still have exposed graves from which their original interred remain missing to this day. Locations like the historic Sacred Heart Cemetery and Charity Hospital Cemetery have mostly recovered but still have waterlines and cracked stones.
Cemeteries are historical sites. They are made of love and memory and are meant to display the personhood of decades past. Their purpose is to inter loved ones and preserve their memory as a permanent fixture—but Hurricane Katrina is only one of many examples of natural disasters destroying that permanence. There is no way to stop the marching of time for these stones, but there must be a better way to preserve them, right?
As we approach Hurricane Katrina’s 20th anniversary in 2025, it’s important to understand that cemeteries are historical sites and must be preserved as much as possible.
The entire mortuary infrastructure can be decimated in a natural disaster. Hurricane Katrina was a blueprint for many undertakers and federal lawmakers for the destruction and cost of restoring these historical sites.
After Katrina made landfall, the pre-existing “cultural risk resource management for cemeteries” went from acting only as a policy to moving into forthright action. According to PreventionWeb.net, the State of Louisiana and the Federal Emergency Management Agency collaborated to create the Louisiana Cemetery Response Task Force in 2018. Before the disaster, the group assesses the preventative measures and needs for cemeteries. FEMA representatives will assist the Louisiana Cemetery Board, cemetery managers, and family members in the aftermath of the weather event.
However, this program only assists those in Louisiana. Luckily, states have access to the FEMA Disaster Assistance Recovery Grants to restore their local cemeteries in the event of a natural disaster. Despite this, the process can be lengthy and not always successful, so there are other means to protect these historical sites.
For example, in Louisiana specifically, there is an organization called “Save Our Cemeteries,” which focuses on restoring historical cemeteries throughout New Orleans and surrounding parishes. Their work started in 1974, and they’ve since restored several cemeteries, secured historic designation for the St. Louis Cemeteries No. 1 and No. 2, introduced successful legislation for a national trust fund for cemetery preservation, and in the aftermath of Katrina has cleaned up hundreds of gravesites and mausoleums that had been damaged.
Locally, our cemeteries did not go unscathed by recent natural disasters. In 2017, Hurricane Sally damaged the historic St. John’s Cemetery downtown, but as of 2024, most of the damages have been repaired.
The same could not be said for the historic Black Pensacola cemeteries of AME Zion and Magnolia Cemetery – where hundreds of enslaved people had been buried during the era of the Civil War and more. According to the Pensacola News Journal, UWF’s Department of Anthropology has paired up with the owners of both cemeteries to restore them to their former glory and preserve the past – but only as of February 2024 did they receive the funds to repair the damages incurred from Hurricane Sally in 2017.
Luckily, learning from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina and Pensacola’s own history of hurricanes like Ivan of 2005 and Sally of 2017, the Historic AME Zion Burial Association and UWF are working together to establish policies to preserve these historic cemeteries and protect them from future damages from hurricanes.
Pensacola has never seen damages to our cemeteries like New Orleans saw from Katrina, but her impact and devastation know no bounds.
Almost twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina decimated Louisiana – and we still are learning from her decades later.
