Less than 48 hours after the Wednesday morning attack on their city’s iconic French Quarter neighborhood, New Orleanians are trying to find a way to move forward.
It’s something they’ve had to do countless times in the Crescent City’s 307-year history. In the past two decades alone, residents and businesses have bounced back from a series of disasters, including record-breaking oil spills, the public health disaster of being one of the nation’s first coronavirus hotspots and, of course, Hurricanes Ida and Katrina.
This latest disaster – which the FBI has labeled a terrorist attack – struck the city at 3:15 a.m. on New Year’s Day, when 42-year-old US citizen Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a white pickup truck through three blocks of Bourbon Street. Gave, in which 14 people were killed. And many people were seriously injured.
As the city mourns, local restaurateur Ralph Brennan believes his fellow residents will respond in their uniquely New Orleans way: with defiance in the face of a challenge and love for their shared home.
“We have been through Covid and Katrina before,” he said. One of Brennan’s restaurants, Red Fish Grill, was ground zero of Wednesday’s attack. It was allowed to reopen along with the rest of Bourbon Street on Thursday afternoon.
“Every time a disaster strikes,” Brennan continued, “our goal is to get back as quickly as possible. We want to show the world that New Orleans is safe, and this tragedy is just a blip in the history of a planet. But one of the most special cities.”
grief processing
Go to the corner of Canal and Bourbon streets and the first things you’ll see are reporters, police officers, traffic barriers and caution tape. Look closely, and you’ll see a city carefully determining how to move forward. Nearby a jazz trumpeter plays the national anthem. Staff from neighborhood restaurants serve free meals to first responders. Tourists pass by on their way to the Sugar Bowl, which has been postponed until Thursday due to the attack.
But this is not just a matter of the city. In every corner of New Orleans, residents are grappling with trauma.
Tom Ramsey is a former city chef who now supports large-scale catering efforts after disasters and at the US-Mexico border. When he woke up Wednesday morning, there were dozens of missed calls and text messages asking if he was OK.
“I didn’t know what they were talking about until I checked the news and saw what happened,” Ramsey said.
His first reaction was to contact everyone he knew in the French Quarter that night. He said, whatever happens, the news is not allowed to come in between.
“Then, finally, everyone was accounted for,” Ramsey said. “I looked at my wife, I took my face in my hands, and I cried – the kind of crying where my chest was heaving, and I was making noises. The kind of grief I felt for New Orleans , I never felt like that moment when I was in New York on 9/11.”
sustained shock
Mental health experts, such as Erin Stevens, executive director of Ally Mental Health Louisiana in New Orleans, said she is concerned that residents with so much past trauma may have difficulty dealing with the incident.
“When you’ve already experienced significant trauma, it can make you feel new and future stressors more intensely,” she said. I’m particularly concerned about people who are isolated – who have no support system.”
However, Stevens says that if handled correctly, past trauma can enable you to handle future stressors more effectively, because resilience is something that is built.
It appears some people in New Orleans have learned a lesson from past challenges. For example, many mental health professionals have decided to help their community by providing free mental health services. And Alison Bullach, a local photographer, is offering free headshots to anyone who gives blood in support of the victims of the attack.
“I think we just wanted to find our own way to help, and I had read that there was a huge need for victims to donate blood,” Bullach told VOA.
“I’m only one person,” she added, “but if I can find a way to encourage three or four or five more people to help, I should do it.”
Should the program go on?
The past year has been a big one for New Orleans tourism. In addition to a successful Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, a three-day stop on Taylor Swift’s Eraz Tour led to an increase of 2,024 visitors.
The beginning of 2025 was looking equally promising. The Sugar Bowl, Super Bowl LIX and the carnival season culminating in Mardi Gras are big news for the local economy which is heavily dependent on tourism.
As a result, the timing of the attacks is a concern for Crescent City businesses.
“Of course, it’s sad to close during one of our busiest times of the year,” said Brennan, owner of Red Fish Grill. “We understand why it was necessary, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”
“But I became really concerned,” he added, “about how this affects tourism leading up to Carnival season and the Super Bowl. New Orleans businesses depend on tourism from these big events.”
However, for some businesses, every day matters. Coming off a challenging December, that’s certainly the case for Tara Francolini, owner of the popular sandwich shop Francolini.
“More than anything, I want to give my employees a day to mourn for their city,” she told VOA. “But the losses we suffered in December were tremendous, and we need … stable business so we can do basic things like pay our bills and pay our employees. I’m concerned that staying open will hurt the families of the victims. The atrocities that take place will diminish the feeling, and it all makes me feel like a terrible human being.”
Flexibility, a loaded word
On Wednesday night, less than 24 hours after the attack, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry ate dinner in the French Quarter, steps away from Bourbon Street. He posted a photo from outside the restaurant, a message to prospective visitors that this “resilient city,” as he and many others call it, is safe and “open for business.”
The word “resilient” gets associated with cities during any disaster. Many residents recognize this, which is proof that they can overcome anything.
However, some people say that the term is absoluting leaders of their failures. One such critic is Andrew Stephens, owner of Sports Drink, a coffee shop in New Orleans’ Irish Channel neighborhood.
“That they call us resilient while shirking our responsibilities to the public is deceitful,” Stephens said. I don’t want us to be flexible. I want us to be safe.