When Hurricane Katrina made landfall 20 years ago, New Orleans East was especially hard hit. This part of the city is home to a large Vietnamese population, many of whom had experienced fleeing their home in the aftermath of the Fall of Saigon. Yet the Vietnamese community bounced back, in larger numbers, and at a faster rate than many other enclaves.
Cyndi Nguyen is a New Orleans East resident and former city council woman who currently serves as the community outreach strategist for New Orleans Regional Transit Authority. She tells us more about how this community recovered.
In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, thousands of displaced people were looking for their missing relatives. Queries popped up on various websites, like Craigslist and Yahoo, but the posts were too scattered to be useful. That’s when a group of tech-savvy volunteers came in, led by David Geilhufe. They compiled the information to create one centralized database to find the missing, called PeopleFinder. David joins us from California to discuss PeopleFinder and his work in the aftermath of the storm.
Many people displaced from Hurricane Katrina came to Baton Rouge en masse. Faith groups of all kinds took the call to help their needs both spiritually and physically.
Report for America corps member Alex Cox spoke with retired interfaith federation executive director Reverend Robin McCullough-Bade about how Katrina weighs on people’s spirits to this day.
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Today’s episode of Louisiana Considered was hosted by Bob Pavlovich. Our managing producer is Alana Schreiber. We get production support from Garrett Pittman and our assistant producer Aubry Procell.
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