Francine is traveling a path similar to the one Cat 4 Ida followed in 2021, where many are barely recovered.
But for the part of the state most likely to bear the brunt of Francine, it was Ida that inflicted the most trauma. Ida caused flooding and shredded homes, and had left a destructive path that reached New York.
In Louisiana, much of the damage was concentrated in and around New Orleans, particularly in Jefferson Parish, which is just west of the city. The disruptions included weeks without trash pickup in some parts of New Orleans, giving way to a putrid stench and the proliferation of maggots.
But perhaps the most enduring consequence has been the soaring cost of insurance, stoking a crisis with the industry that exploded after the storm. Insurance providers went bankrupt or left the state, and the ones that remained raised their prices — so high in some cases that homeowners simply could not afford coverage, leading to foreclosures.
The population in those areas has declined. New Orleans and the surrounding area had the steepest population drop of any metropolitan area in the country between 2020 and 2023, according to census estimates. Experts attributed the decline to the storm and its financial impacts.
Twenty years ago I was certain that New Orleans* would be the first US city taken out by global warming’s sea level rise. Then it became clear that cities immediately on the Atlantic coast (Boston, New York, Miami, etc.) and especially barrier island cities (Galveston, Miami Beach, Atlantic City) would suffer more directly from SLR. Furthermore, sea walls need to be tougher than levees due to the direct impact from storms at sea, and it is more expense to add new sea walls and levees and drainage pumps to established cities that never needed them before.
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*Paradoxically, the levee and pump upgrades made after Katrina gave it a major boost in terms of adaptation.