Lower 9th after Hurricane Betsy

Betsy was a fast moving Category 3 storm that made landfall at Grand Isle on September 9, 1965. The eye passed 45 miles to the west of New Orleans. New Orleans experienced 105 mph winds.

The levee and a siphon (one of the pumping stations) along the Industrial Canal was overwhelmed and flooded the lower 9'th Ward, Chalmette and St. Bernard. There were of course rumors that the levee had been dynamited. Prompting Mayor Vic Schiro to utter his famous malapropism  "Don't believe any false rumors unless they come from me."  The rest of the city took the usual massive wind damage. It took weeks to restore power but there was no mass evacuation.

Lyndon Johnson was President at the time and America was fighting an unpopular war in Vietnam. He visited New Orleans on 9/10 after Sen. Russell Long told him that a Presidential visit would assure him the state in the next election. He had lost Louisiana to Goldwater by a wide margin in 1964. We'll never know if it worked because he didn't run in 1968. Johnson's tapes show he was moved by the suffering he observed in the aftermath of Betsy and ordered his administration to find ways to "cut the red tape" and get relief to the people of the area.

Lower 9th from Air Force One