‘Now Are We Safe Enough?’: A Man’s Ongoing Fight for Survival After Katrina Lifted His Home Away

Nearly 21 years after Hurricane Katrina, Robert Green still calls New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward home.

The neighborhood where he grew up looks different from what it did before the storm. A majority of residents never returned. Vacant lots stretch where family homes once stood, and many of the replacement houses built after Hurricane Katrina are already falling apart.

Now, Green has done work with countless volunteers and has been part of several documentaries, exhibits and articles commemorating what happened to New Orleans in August 2005. He continues speaking with visitors from around the world about the Lower Ninth Ward and the community he has spent decades fighting to preserve.

“I cried the first time. I cried less the second time. I cried even less the third time. Basically, telling this story thousands of times, I don’t cry anymore,” Green said. “Talking about it and experiencing all the help that we got made it possible for us to see things in a brighter light.”

Green was also among the homeowners who challenged the Brad Pitt-backed Make It Right Foundation after many of the homes built following Katrina began deteriorating years after construction. Today, a worn-down sign still stands in his front yard, sharing his story with Make It Right; however, he did not speak about it when interviewed.

But Green’s story begins long before he became an advocate.

On Aug. 29, 2005, he and his family were simply trying to survive.

“We wound up facing the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina on August the 29, Monday morning at four o’clock,” Robert Green said. “We had to get from inside our house into the attic, thinking that we would be safe high enough out of the water.”

Even inside their attic, Green, along with his mother, brother, cousin and three granddaughters, ages two, three and four, had not escaped the storm. The family ended up having to kick a hole in their roof so that they could climb on top of the house. They wondered, “Now are we safe enough?”

As the storm waters continued to rise and slosh through the streets, Green’s house lifted off the foundation and began to float away. The house glided all the way up the street before it began to fall apart.

Green and his family realized they were going to have to get off their roof if they wanted to have any hope of surviving. In the chaos of getting from one roof to another, Green’s three-year-old granddaughter vanished into Hurricane Katrina’s violent waves.

“She slipped off the roof behind my back in 25 feet of water and disappeared,” Green said. “She died about 4:30 in the morning.”

The struggles to stay afloat for the Green family did not end there.

“My mother literally got pulled under the water three times by the current, drowned,” Green said, “we resuscitated her and put her up on the roof of the house.”

Green and his family were not alone on that rooftop. Other people, who had swum to the rooftop and escaped from another rapidly deteriorating home, survived Hurricane Katrina alongside them. However, not everyone in Green’s family lived to see a post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.

“When the hurricane was over, and the sun finally came out, my mother lay dead on the roof,” Green said.

Divided into two cars, Green and his family had tried to evacuate the city before 10 a.m. on August 28 to Nashville. One carload successfully left New Orleans. The other had to turn around.

“My mother was so sick, we decided the road trip could kill her,” Green said. “We turned around.”

After returning to the city, the family tried to take cover in the Superdome, but were unable to get in, due to Green’s mother’s health condition, according to Green. So, they returned to their home in the Lower Ninth Ward.

Green was born in New Orleans in 1955 and moved to the Lower Ninth Ward in 1969. He shared about what the neighborhood was like, prior to much of it being washed away by Hurricane Katrina.

“The Lower Ninth Ward, contrary to the way it was portrayed, was a black community that had 99% black ownership,” Green said, “the community has been around a long time.”

He explained that parents would pass on property to their children, and each generation did just a little bit better than the one before it.

“Everybody prospered. Everybody looked out for one another,” Green said. “This was a really strong, productive community, contrary to being painted as a welfare, poor community. We weren’t that.”

Before Hurricane Katrina, there were about 3,000 people living in the Lower Ninth Ward, and “everybody knew everybody.” People could live 12 blocks away, and still be considered a neighbor, according to Green.

“You could be disciplined by your neighbors, and when your neighbors told your parents, you would be disciplined again,” said Green, recalling memories from his youth. “So, it really was a tight-knit community.”

After Hurricane Katrina, only about 700 people were able to return to the Lower Ninth Ward, according to Green.

“It doesn’t matter whether we have 3,000 neighbors or 700 neighbors; the community sense, the community bonds, the community relationship still are the same,” Green said. “They’re just not as strong in numbers.”

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This story is part of a semester-long investigative reporting project into New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward nearly 21 years after Hurricane Katrina. It was created by an immersion journalism student in the Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies program at UW-Milwaukee. Other stories from the project are available on The Storm That Never Left: Inside New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward Nearly 21 Years After Katrina.

This work was made possible through the support of MPC Endowment Ltd., the philanthropic affiliate of the Milwaukee Press Club, and a private donor.