This story is one of five stories in The Lens’ Embracing Katrina Narratives project.

Artist Lionel Milton, a Lower 9th Ward native, grew up steps away from New Orleans royalty , R&B singer Fats Domino, whose black and yellow house stands on Fats Domino Avenue, not far from Milton’s home at 1429 Flood St. Other musicians and artists also lived nearby, all celebrities within the tight-knit Lower 9.

Usually on a warm New Orleans day, young Lionel could be found skateboarding through the streets looking for a frozen cup, playing football with friends, drawing on paper, or spraying art graffiti on abandoned walls , in the Milton style that is now well-known from Jazz Fest and Mardi Gras posters and art hung in galleries around the world. 

Still, to this day, every skyline he paints is from the perspective of the Lower 9 Mississippi River levee.

The canvas that is Lionel Milton is permanently imprinted by the Lower 9, because both sides of his family are from the area. When he returned to the neighborhood a few weeks after the storm –  once the 9th Ward opened back up –  all he saw was devastation within his Flood Street home. 

“The stoop was all messed up, the ceiling had fallen in, all the wood was exposed, and the stuff was molded,” Milton says, recalling the destruction.

When Milton was a child, a storm swirling in the Gulf of Mexico didn’t automatically trigger plans to evacuate. So Milton’s family, like many other people, planned to ride out Katrina, like every other hurricane. The night before the storm made landfall, Milton suddenly decided to evacuate, after he experienced what seemed to be an omen.

He was at his apartment in the 6th Ward and he had some paint that he wanted to get rid of. He thought, “‘Lemme put this outside.’” At that point, it was raining hard. He grabbed the trash bag anyway and headed to the door.

But as he walked to the garbage can, a lens popped out of his glasses. In the pouring rain, the lens fell into moving water and was pulled down a drain. He phoned a friend for help. “ I was like, ‘Yo, so you gotta come help.’” The friend found the lens. But the idea of Milton staying in the city through the storm was too overwhelming. She got on their knees and cried and screamed at him to leave.

The two of them ended up packing up and leaving the city, ending up in Acadiana. 

Fortunately, no family was left in the house on Flood Street, as Katrina’s massive eye rotated in the Gulf. Less than 24 hours later, the Jourdan Avenue levee broke, submerging his family home up to its roofline. 

Sitting in Lafayette, he watched on television, as Katrina tore through the city. The devastation was crushing; he remembers watching WDSU meteorologist Margaret Orr breaking down on camera, as he watched her report about Katrina and the damage it had wrought.  In the Lower 9, people in attics and on rooftops waited days to be rescued by helicopter or by boats that often ferried people to the St. Claude bridge, leaving them on dry land, but with few options except a walk to the Convention Center – which had opened as a shelter of last resort but had no food or water. 

Even the Lower 9’s royalty was in trouble. Surrounded by floodwaters, Fats Domino was airlifted out of his home – but his fate was unknown for a few weeks, as false rumors spread that he had passed during the storm.

The Lower 9 was no longer his carefree childhood stomping ground. It was a wasteland.

As soon as he could Milton made his way back to his Treme apartment and viewed the city from his second-floor balcony, which is when he realized the magnitude of the storm.

“I broke down right there. It was like, just a big wide foot just – ‘boom!’ – knocked everything over. And I don’t even wanna remember,” says Milton, as he thinks back to the post-storm realization.

He is a trained artist. Someone who sees images and commits them vividly to memory. But the level of damage in front of him was too overwhelming for him to even take in. “It was the whole city, as far I could see,” he said. “I knew it would never be the same. It is where we at now.”

Where we are at now, 20 years later, is discouraging to him. Too many abandoned homes still remain, with spray painted X codes on the front. A 2008 study by PolicyLink found that Road Home rebuilding formulas, which gave grants to rebuild based on pre-storm property values – not cost to rebuild – left the average Lower 9 homeowner with a $75,000 shortfall.

He remembers coming home, seeing the house in its deplorable state, and still having hope. “After all, the inventor of rock’n’roll lived four blocks away,” he said. That’s the way it is for the Lower 9, it’s both tragedy and comedy, down and up, positive and negative, he said. Here was a neighborhood that was, before Katrina, brimming with musicians, athletes, artists and longtime Black homeowners. 

All of this is important for all visitors to understand, whether they’re coming for the Super Bowl or otherwise, Milton said. Because, despite the neighborhood’s rich history and his family’s devotion to the house on Flood Street, the rebuilding process proved too difficult.

An empty lot now stands in its place.