Christian Groups Helped Millions After Hurricane Katrina

(ANALYSIS) Twenty years after Katrina’s landfall on Aug. 29, 2005, the hurricane remains one of the biggest disasters in American history: 1,392 deaths, and damage of about $200 billion (in 2025 dollars).

This will be a week of remembrance in New Orleans. We’ll probably hear a lot about the scope of the loss and the failures in response, including how journalistic credibility suffered damage.

While the Los Angeles Times cited “snipers and armed mobs” terrorizing “seething crowds of refugees” and CNN anchor Paula Zahn spoke of “bands of rapists, going block to block,” none of that was true.

Author Michael Lewis, a longtime New Orleans resident who did what reporters are supposed to do, said he “covered much of the city, along with every inch of the high ground” and checked out specific stories to correct the fictions.

While journalists became hysterical when the category-5 storm hit, many Christian volunteers kept their heads and exercised their hearts.

The work of church groups, rarely on the press call list, often ended up overlooked. Only later did stories emerge like that of Travis Maynard, 66, a Southern Baptist who had survived a massive heart attack and chemotherapy and radiation to treat cancer.

In the hurricane aftermath, he headed up a 24-person crew that served 10,000 or so meals a day, saying, “I’m here to serve. This is my calling.”

You can read the rest at Christianity Today.

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Marvin Olasky is Christianity Today’s executive editor for news and global and the author of The Politics of Disaster: Katrina, Big Government, And a New Strategy for Future Crises.