Katrina to COVID: New Orleans' Black community pounded again

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Levee breaches from Hurricane Katrina dumped six feet of water into the New Orleans home of Mary Duplessis and her husband in 2005. The house was uninhabitable. Rebuilding meant piles of paperwork in a mountain of bureaucracy. She didn't return to the city for a year.

But as the 15th anniversary of the storm approaches, and as another monster storm narrowly missed the city, it's not memories of Katrina that weigh on Duplessis' mind. It's the coronavirus.

The Black community of New Orleans, already economically lagging behind white residents before Katrina, was pummeled by the Category 3 storm that made landfall Aug. 29, 2005 and by the lengthy rebuilding process. Images of residents, mostly Black, on top of roofs, cars and at the Superdome stadium became the most iconic of a storm that revealed to the world a city starkly divided into haves and have-nots.

Today, the city is still majority African American but has nearly 100,000 fewer Black residents than it did before Katrina. Many couldn't imagine the community taking a bigger hit than it did from Katrina, but in some ways, that's happening with the coronavirus pandemic. Data show New Orleans' Black residents dying at greater rates — a trend mirrored nationally — and finding themselves less able to bounce back economically .

After Katrina, Duplessis' husband, Barrett, was back at work as a Sheraton Hotel maintenance mechanic within weeks. Now, he’s been out of work for nearly six months. They visit food banks and use disability checks and retirement saving to get by.

She fell ill with the virus in March, she said, was hospitalized for seven days. The list of people she knows who've died of COVID-19 is growing — a sister-in-law, two close friends.

“Every night I go to sleep, I say, ‘Is it going to ever be the same?’" Duplessis...