Wedding photos. Legal documents. Water, and a couple of days' worth of clothing.

These were some of the few items now Indiana Sen. Fady Qaddoura packed when he evacuated New Orleans with his wife and newborn daughter in 2005, just hours before a powerful hurricane would flood streets, destroy infrastructure and take lives.

Hurricane Katrina killed nearly 1,400 people and submerged most of the city after the storm breached vulnerable levees. It exposed leadership failures as the federal government struggled to quickly respond and exacerbated disparities between Black and White areas of the city, which survivors say is not the same as it once was.

Two decades later its impact resonates even in Indianapolis, the city Qaddoura now represents as a Democratic Indiana state senator. The

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