Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Houston” Is A Heartbreaking Tribute To The Victims Of Hurricane Katrina, Which Hit New Orleans 20 Years Ago Today

How has it already been 20 years?

If you were around in 2005, chances are you remember watching the horrifying images of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans twenty years ago today, on August 29, 2005.

The storm, which was projected to be a Category 5 by the time it made landfall in the Big Easy, had actually weakened to a Category 3 when it hit. But New Orleans is below sea level, basically a giant bowl, and the intense storm surge pushed water into the canals and waterways and caused the floodwalls protecting the cities to fail, sending massive amounts of water flooding much of the city and leading to the worst natural disaster to ever hit the United States.

We all know what happened from there: Thousands of people were stranded at the Superdome or in their flooded houses without food and water while waiting to be rescued, and left over 1,300 people dead across multiple states.

The devastation destroyed entire neighborhoods in New Orleans and displaced thousands of people, many of whom were evacuated from their homes and never returned.

I used to live in New Orleans, and even after I moved there in 2012, there were still signs of Katrina in parts of the city: Blue tarps on roofs of homes that had long been abandoned, spray painted X’s on doors that indicated how many bodies were found inside, and Charity Hospital sitting unoccupied all these years later after being forced to evacuate patients as the waters rose.

The storm cut the population of New Orleans nearly in half, and though the city has managed to recover, the population of New Orleans is still smaller today than it was before Katrina.

Many of those displaced by the storm were evacuated on buses to the Houston Astrodome, which took in over 30,000 refugees who had sought shelter at the Superdome. And many of them never returned to New Orleans again.

On her 2007 album The Calling, Mary Chapin Carpenter included a song called “Houston,” a heartbreaking tribute to those survivors as told through the lense of someone who had been evacuated to Texas after the storm:

“Mama’s got her babies sleeping in a grocery cart
Daddy’s eyes are hazy wondering where they are
Waiting for the buses, waiting on some Providence
Once we get to Houston maybe it will all make sense

Praying to the Father and calling for the cavalry
Look at all this water and somehow not a drop to drink
Now did you ever hear of nightmares coming in the light of day
Once we get to Houston maybe they’ll just wash away

Roll on Mississippi, goodbye Crescent City
Le Bon Temps New Orleans, never coming back to stay”

It’s an all-too real reflection that unfortunately, too many of our fellow Americans had to suffer through after the storm. And of course there’s plenty of finger-pointing to go around over who was at fault, but at the end of the day, the human toll that the storm took on so many, and the resilience of the people of New Orleans, should be the real story of Katrina.

Here’s to remembering all those who were affected, twenty years ago today.

The post Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Houston” Is A Heartbreaking Tribute To The Victims Of Hurricane Katrina, Which Hit New Orleans 20 Years Ago Today first appeared on Whiskey Riff.