A ceremonial groundbreaking for the National Katrina Museum was held Sunday evening.
One day after the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina there were new plans for a permanent museum to pay tribute.
The National Katrina Museum will be located in the 9th Ward. A nearly 12,000-square-foot warehouse will be turned in to the museum, designed to tell the story of the worst natural and manmade disaster in American history.
"This museum will have a timeline not only of what happened, but really how people fought the bureaucratic intransigence and the natural disaster to get back in their homes and did it with little help from government, just individuals coming together," said Christopher Tidmore, of the National Katrina Museum.
It's that coming together that helped New Orleanians overcome the devastation and loss and from which the museum's director said a great city rose
"We've recreated our education system," Tidmore said. "We've recreated our governmental system. We've redone so much that it's now a model for the rest of the country. God help us that we had to go through the largest natural disaster in history to do it, but these are stories to be told."
Ultimately, the museum is designed to be a place of healing and a place where those who face recovery can get assistance from the National Legal Center for Disaster Defense.
"(It's) a non-profit that will help people in future natural disasters go through the bureaucratic tangles, get answers, information on how to deal with FEMA and basically take the lessons that were learned here," Tidmore said.
The museum is looking for people to tell their Hurricane Katrina stories. They would like to record them and archive them for future generations.
Anyone who would like to have his or her story recorded should call the museum at 504-301-4599.
The museum is scheduled to open on the 5th anniversary of the storm.
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