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However, with renewed hope in the rebuilding process, people were filled with a greater sense of anxiety knowing that all of their progress could be halted by what may become one of the worst hurricane seasons in Gulf Coast history.
Christopher Flynn, director of Cook Counseling Center, said that when people saw a second storm approaching they gave up.
Flynn lived in New Orleans at the time of Katrina; he was employed at Loyola University, New Orleans Campus as the director of the on-campus counseling center.
"I had been there for 17 years ... After Katrina I saw a lot of good friends and coworkers lose their homes and jobs," Flynn said. "People were just unable to return after they evacuated."
Flynn said that after Katrina most students were transferred to other universities. He mostly worked with other faculty members then.
"It was mostly the faculty that had lost the most, mostly their homes," Flynn said. "There were raised levels of anxiety everywhere."
Though Flynn saw mainly faculty reactions to Katrina, at least one student at Tech was directly affected by the super storms.
Sophomore Trey Stewart lived in Luling, La., a town 30 miles outside of New Orleans, during Katrina.
"My family evacuated to Baton Rouge during Katrina," Stewart said. "There was a lot of wind damage in my neighborhood; two trees got uprooted in my yard ... I think the hardest part was probably that a lot of my friends moved away to Texas and other places."
Stewart was not in New Orleans for Gustav.
"It was weird not being there; it was different being on the outside looking in," Stewart said. "It was weird being there for Katrina, but not for this one."
Tech has started to prepare for hurricanes, showing that Katrina not only took a toll on Louisiana, but also the rest of the country. According to a statement released by the university, "Virginia Cooperative Extension is working to educate citizens about what they can do before, during and after a major storm hits the East Coast."
Even with the evaluations of the psychological impacts devastating hurricanes have on the Gulf Coast, some people still rise above the statistics.
"The population is almost back to where it was ... it's at about 75 percent, and it's still rising," Flynn said.
As the numbers indicate, many families remain and more have returned to New Orleans, slowly rebuilding their lives and hoping for a return to normalcy.
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"The population is almost back to where it was ... it's at about 75 percent, and it's still rising," Flynn said. So when can we expect the residents of the 9th Ward to return to being the upstanding citizens they were prior to storm? Oh wait, that's right... they were a bunch of drug-addled, sub-human savages well before Katrina.
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I dont think the population is coming back at the rate reported. Many people are leaving now because they realize that statistically there is as much chance for another Katrina this year, or next year, as there was in 2005. Reasonable people will continue to leave when the opportunities are right.
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hokie_alum... that was a pathetic example of some obviuosly deep seeded racism. I am ashamed to call you an Alumni of Virginia Tech. The 9th Ward, even as it was a lower income community, gave birth to some of America's Jazz greats, flourished as a place of mixing cultural genres, and stands as a symbol of American history. Please do not forget that it is also located mere blocks from the French Quarter. The word "savages" is horribly offensive and I hope that you are not this igrnorant in your every day life. You should respect that the people of the 9th Ward have been through a tragedy that you could not begin to comprehend, and do not deserve to be lumped into a category of "drug-addled" or "sub-human." The only "sub-human" behavior I see is your lack of compassion for your fellow man, and your obvious display hatred. You should be ashamed of yourself.
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The capital of Louisiana is Baton Rouge not New Orleans. How could the editor not catch that? It's the second sentence!
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