Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the Louisiana governor whose single term in office was overwhelmed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when she earned a mix of criticism and praise for her response to it, died on Sunday at a hospice in Lafayette. She was 76.
As The New York Times details in its obituary on the former governor, Blanco’s gubernatorial term—fairly or not—was almost universally defined by Hurricane Katrina.
After Katrina ravaged large parts of Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, killing 1,833 people and putting roughly 80% of New Orleans underwater after the city’s levee system failed. Blanco, a Democrat and Louisiana’s first female governor, took a share of the blame and was criticized for not ordering an evacuation of New Orleans until 19 hours before the storm hit, despite “adequate warning 56 hours before landfall.”
In the days following the storm, Blanco came under heavy criticism for her public appearances, in which she often appeared shaken, writes The Times. Former Gov. Buddy Roemer described her performance as “very mixed.”
Other assessments, The Times notes, were more generous. “The historian Douglas Brinkley wrote that Blanco had done ‘absolutely everything she could to help the storm’s victims.’ He gave her high marks for improvising solutions and standing up to a Republican White House that he said was trying to ‘pin the blame’ on Blanco and state officials. ‘I think Kathleen Blanco was a true hero of Katrina,’ he said in an interview in April.”
Indeed, in the months before her death, much of the criticism directed at her had ebbed, replaced by a wave of sympathy as Blanco publicly shared details of her battle with cancer. There was an outpouring of gratitude for her service.
Blanco learned she had an incurable cancer, first detected in an eye, in 2017. In December, speaking at a civics group luncheon, she said the cancer had spread to other parts of her body, adding that there was “no escape.”
Blanco was born the settlement of Coteau in the heart of Cajun country, the daughter of Louis and Lucille Babineaux. Prior to becoming governor, she had raised six children, taught high school, served as state representative, public service commissioner, and lieutenant governor under Gov. Mike Foster. At her inauguration on the steps of the State Capitol, she took her oath of office in both English and Cajun French.
After leaving office, Blanco largely retired from the public eye. In December 2017 she wrote an open letter to Louisianians, in which she discussed her cancer. She asked for their prayers and thanked those who carried the storm’s most vulnerable victims to safety. Read the full story.
