Go inside this abandoned theme park, 'frozen' since Hurricane Katrina
The Weather Network's Mark Robinson spoke with Jake Williams, director of a documentary examining the impact of Hurricane Katrina and the lingering scars almost 20 years later.
The roar of the wind and the crash of unseen debris is a memory that hasn’t left me in the full 19 years since Hurricane Katrina’s right eyewall tore over me just outside of New Orleans. The storm would go on to become one of the most famous hurricanes in history as its storm surge overwhelmed the levees around the city, flooding vast swathes of it.
The cleanup from Katrina began almost immediately, but given the overwhelming level of the catastrophe, repair and rebuilding took longer than expected (to put it mildly). Still, given the amount of resources poured into the region over the past two decades, one would expect to find very little, if any, evidence that the hurricane had ever happened.
However, that isn’t quite true.
On the east side of New Orleans lies one last scar—the remains of a place once known as Jazzland and then Six Flags New Orleans.
Jake Williams is the creator of the Bright Sun Films YouTube channel, and he’s been documenting the rise, fall, and abandonment of iconic companies and places across North America. However, the abandoned amusement park in New Orleans became his Mecca—a place that few had been allowed into, let alone been able to document the destruction that Katrina had wrought. He managed not only to do both but also created a documentary he called “Closed for Storm.”
I met up with Jake on a hot, late summer day in Hamilton, Ont., an almost polar opposite weather pattern to what I’d experienced almost twenty years ago in the deep south of the US.
On a behind-the-scenes video that Jake sent me, he tells the audience, “Closed for Storm is my directorial debut, an extension of my YouTube channel, and it's on one of the most interesting topics to me at least, an abandoned theme park.”
We’d discussed the connection I had to the event that had destroyed the park, so my first question had to be how he dealt with the storm in the doc.
“Six Flags New Orleans is THE reminder remaining of the storm, and I think that’s a sore point for a lot of people.”
“Katrina is kind of the antagonist behind New Orleans, the park, and the film. Everyone has Katrina stories that lived in southern Louisiana. Everyone experienced it; it touched most of the state and definitely New Orleans. Six Flags New Orleans is the last monument to Katrina. New Orleans is a different city because of the storm.“
I’m fascinated by places that have been left to slowly decay, and Jake is the same way. I asked what it was like to wander through the overgrown park.
“That’s the intriguing thing about abandoned places. You have something that used to be so popular, so filled with life and joy, and then you have the stark contrast of what’s there now. It’s an experience that not many people ever get to see. That’s what’s so interesting about this park.“
“It was like walking through a photograph of summer 2005. Life was supposed to go on; life was going on, and it just stopped one day. It’s like you could pick up the pieces and start again, but it’s a strange and eerie feeling.“
In a different universe, the storm didn’t hit and life continued, but would the park have kept going?
“I think if it wasn’t for Katrina, Six Flags New Orleans would certainly be open today.” Jake tells me, but also points out that there’s a long and interesting history of what might have happened in the documentary.
One of the main aspects of the documentary, moreso than the history, were the deep emotions that people of the area held for the park. I asked Jake about the residents, and he thought for a moment and then replied, “The perseverance of the people of New Orleans cannot be understated. These people were given the worst possible scenario, I mean genuinely, and they picked themselves up and rebuilt.”
I asked Jake what he saw as the future of what remains of the park, and he was hopeful, which was interesting given the myriad of failed attempts.
“We featured a gentleman in the film named Troy Henry, who was a former mayoral candidate turned developer. He submitted a plan to redevelop the Six Flags property, and he succeeded. He now leases the property from the city. His plan is to demolish it and redevelop it into a water park, a film production type place. Troy and his company are pretty experienced with Katrina-damaged buildings, so I’ve got a pretty good feeling this time. “
Given that it’s been almost twenty years since Katrina ravaged the north Gulf Coast, everyone involved is hoping to put this last reminder of the storm to rest.
