LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — It's been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina, and Channel 13 is reflecting on how Las Vegas locals stepped up to help Louisiana in the aftermath. Some valley residents went to New Orleans to support recovery efforts. Others organized supply drives. The support came in a variety of forms.
For Crystal Webb, her way of helping is by shining a light on communities in need of help and by holding the powerful accountable. She discovered the calling after Katrina.
I sat down with the former KTNV producer and Las Vegas resident as she returned to the Channel 13 studio to reflect on the 20-year mark since Katrina devastated her hometown.
She grew up in New Orleans' lower Ninth Ward. She said she was just about to begin her first year of college at Loyola University New Orleans when she was forced to evacuate due to Katrina.
"We did not expect to be gone so long. We expected to be back that week," Webb said.
She says the water rose all the way to the second floor of her beloved family home, which had to be gutted. Everything that was once so familiar to her suddenly became unrecognizable.
"It was about four or five years on the road, different cities, different places, no stability, and when I finally came back, it was like there was nothing to come back to," Webb said. "My friends weren't there. The neighborhood was changed. The culture of the city had changed."
Katrina's impact was undeniable, and even to this day, when she goes back to visit, it's still inescapable.
"20 years later, the streets are still bumpy from a lot of those army tanks traveling up and down them. 20 years later, there's still markings on a home, there's still numbers signaling how many dead bodies were in that house, how many people were found. And then sometimes you walk past them and you see a zero and you say, 'Oh my God, thank God.' But then other times you see an 8, or you see a 6," Webb said.
It's that devastation that put her on a much different path from her original aspirations of becoming a lawyer. Katrina's impact and her community's struggle to recover lit a fire within her to uncover the truth, hold the powerful accountable, and shine a light on communities like hers that need help, but are seldom heard.
"The moment that we're faced with calamity, the moment that we're faced with these storms in life, we have to find a higher purpose. I believe God has a higher purpose for everything. It's in finding the purpose inside of our pain, we find the power to move forward. For me, that was becoming a journalist," Webb said.
