The Flood That Didn’t Have to Happen

In late August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the city of New Orleans. For many, the hurricane is viewed as a catastrophic natural disaster, but Sandy Rosenthal credits the destruction of the city to something else.

According to Rosenthal, the demolition of New Orleans could have been far less disastrous had the city’s levees not broken. Over the past 20 years, Rosenthal has worked to build an organization to bring attention to this.

What is Levees.org?

Rosenthal is the founder and president of Levees.org.

“The mission of Levees.org is making sure that everyone understands that the flooding of New Orleans was not an act of nature; it was an engineering failure on the part of the United States federal government,” Rosenthal said.

Rosenthal further explained how the narrative of Hurricane Katrina within the media and by the federal government was that it was a massive storm that simply overwhelmed the levees. Due to the size of the storm, the damage to the city was unavoidable. However, this isn’t the full story, according to Rosenthal.

“These levees were designed to hold back a storm like Hurricane Katrina, and they did not,” Rosenthal said. “They failed at about half the water pressure they were designed to hold back.”

Levees.org is more than just an organization that wants to shed light on what happened to the levees within New Orleans the day that Hurricane Katrina hit; it also has found ways to document what happened to the city.

The Flooded House Museum and Levee Exbibit, located in New Orleans’ Gentilly neighborhood, was built with the intention to commemorate and inform visitors about what New Orleans residents endured in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The Flooded House museum was described as a “life-size diorama” by Rosenthal. The house reflects the state the houses were left in, following the hurricane.

Inside of the house, visitors will find walls caked with mud and mold, representing how high the water levels were, accompanied by furniture turned upside down.

“It’s gray and bleak and frightening. We felt this was necessary in order to give people an idea of what half a million people came home to,” Rosenthal said. “You know how people have difficulty understanding how large the universe is? This is similar. The water was 10 feet high in many places, or more, and it’s just hard for people to understand.”

The Flooded House Museum is inside a house that was at the site of a levee breach, which had never re-entered the housing stock. At the time, it was uninhabitable and just the shell of a home, according to Rosenthal. She explained that she “scooped it up before it was lost,” purchasing the home herself in 2016. The ribbon cutting for the museum took place on March 23, 2019.

The Levee Exhibit showcases all the breaches that took place across neighborhoods in New Orleans, why the levees failed and what happened to the neighborhoods after the flooding. Rosenthal shared that it is extensive in the way that it is written and organized.

“We challenge everyone who’s gone to it, if there’s a question about Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans that’s not answered in these panels, we want you to tell us,” Rosenthal said. “It’s meant to answer all the questions that people might have.”

Furthermore, Rosenthal explained that it is difficult to find Hurricane Katrina memorials.

“Four of the 10 exhibits in New Orleans were actually built by my organization,” Rosenthal said. “I’m pretty proud of that, considering we’re just a little non-profit.”

The Levees Exhibit is built on property that Levees.org rents from the city of New Orleans for $250 a year, which is very inexpensive, according to Rosenthal. Both the museum and the exhibit are primarily maintained through donations.

In her mission to set the story straight about Hurricane Katrina, Rosenthal has also written a book titled “Words Whispered in Water,” in which she shares how so many of the narratives surrounding New Orleans residents were wrong.

“We’re not just a bunch of dumbos, as we were depicted in the news,” Rosenthal said. “We’ve had a lot of criticism for just not paying attention to our surroundings, which was not true at all.”

Rosenthal’s personal experience with the storm

As far as personal impacts of Hurricane Katrina, Rosenthal considers herself to be “one of the lucky ones.”

On the day that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Rosenthal and her family had already evacuated the city. She explained that her husband lived in New Orleans in 1965 when Hurricane Betsy took place, so “he knew what it was going to be like.”

“He said ‘we’re getting out,’” Rosenthal said. “So, we packed up the dog and my two sons, and we evacuated to Jackson, Mississippi, where we stayed in a hotel.”

When the family returned home, they found that their home had not been flooded. Rosenthal shared that she lives on “the sliver by the river,” an area of New Orleans along the Mississippi River that is higher than the rest of the city. Due to this, there was a natural levee in place, according to Rosenthal.

“I fortunately was not affected and had I been, I would have been busy dealing with my insurance company, FEMA and a contractor,” Rosenthal said. “I wouldn’t have had time to listen to the news, listen to the radio, watch TV and read the news and figure out what happened.”

Which neighborhood suffered the most from the levee failure?

Rosenthal explained that the Lower Ninth Ward was hardest hit by the levee failures for three reasons.

First, the levee that broke in the Lower Ninth Ward was an industrial canal, rather than a drainage canal. According to Rosenthal, this means that the canal was larger, therefore holding more water.

“So, when it breached, the water that was unleashed was like unleashing Niagara Falls,” Rosenthal said. “I’m exaggerating here, but it was enough to push 100 homes off their foundations.”

Additionally, all the neighborhoods surrounding the Lower Ninth Ward flooded, leaving Lower Ninth Ward residents with nowhere to live during a rebuild, according to Rosenthal.

“There were no stores, no post office, no nothing,” Rosenthal said. “So, how do you rebuild?”

Finally, Rosenthal explained that the Lower Ninth Ward was primarily comprised of “lower-class homeowners”, contributing to the hardship to rebuild the neighborhood.

“The lower-class homeowners have less money in savings, and it’s just harder for them, without resources like that,” Rosenthal said.

Recovery in the Lower Ninth Ward is still happening and at a very slow rate, according to Rosenthal.

“I have friends who are living in the Lower Ninth Ward. There are still not enough people, still not enough grocery stores,” Rosenthal said. “It has a long, long, long way to go. At 20 years, it’s quite remarkable how it still looks about the same now as it did 10 years ago.”

The Lower Ninth Ward is not alone in facing issues with hurricane recovery. There are still other neighborhoods in New Orleans with empty lots and houses that are vacant, such as Gentilly or New Orleans East, according to Rosenthal.

Despite the hardship following Hurricane Katrina, Rosenthal explained that the city is closer than ever.

“I’ve lived here 40 years, and the city is closer,” Rosenthal said. “I mean, we always were, but now, we’re even closer. I like that about the city a lot.”

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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.