WASHINGTON, Aug. 19 (Andrew V. Pestano) — President Barack Obama will travel to New Orleans, La., next week to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people.
Obama will visit The Big Easy on Aug. 27, where he will speak on “the region’s rebirth and what’s possible when citizens, city and corporate leaders all work together,” according to a White House official.
Hurricane Katrina made landfall Aug. 29, 2005, and as New Orleans’ levees failed, about 80 percent of the city flooded.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu will accompany Obama as he travels through different neighborhoods to meet with residents who have rebuilt their lives since the disaster.
Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will join also join Obama during the visit. Fugate was a leader in coordinating much of the $120 billion in FEMA aid after the hurricane.
In commemorating the fifth anniversary of Katrina in 2010, Obama said it was a “natural disaster, but also a man-made catastrophe — a shameful breakdown in government that left countless men, and women and children abandoned and alone,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
“In the years that followed, New Orleans could have remained a symbol of destruction and decay,” Obama said. “Instead this city has become a symbol of resilience and of community and of the fundamental responsibility that we have to one another.”
