NEW ORLEANS -- When Reginald Washington returned to the Lower Ninth Ward months after the storm, he could barely find his daughter's home. All he could see was a 200-foot long barge with a steel hull. 
 
 "This is the very first time," he said. "Haven't been back here since." 
 
 Even though he lives just a few streets away, he still avoids this block. 
 
 "All they had was a barge there and they were cutting it up," he said. "It made me think about my child, what she went through. The way she drowned made me feel that I wasn't there for her." 
 
 The infamous barge and a relentless flood flowed through a massive breach in the Industrial Canal Levee, inundating the Lower Ninth Ward not far from where Pam Washington and her fiance, Darryl Milton, rented a brick single-story house on Jourdan Avenue. 
 
 "I can't really say why she didn't want to leave," Washington said. "But I told her I was staying. I really thought I'd come get her and bring her by my house. At least we had an upstairs." 
 
 Like thousands of others, Washington and his daughter chose to ride out Hurricane Katrina. 
 
 The 61-year-old said he'd spend three days with no food or water trapped at home until a boat came. He'd end up at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome with only $275 in his pocket and a cell phone. He'd go to Texas to stay with family. 
 
 Only to return, nine months later, when the heartbreaking call lit up his cell phone. 
 
 "I'm calling to inform you that they found your child through DNA," he said. "At first I thought it was a hoax, then she said she was mailing me something. Papers and information." 
 
 Pam's dad says her body was found five blocks away from her home on Lizardi Street. Family members confirm it took about eight months for DNA tests to come back confirming her identity. 
 
 But not all of the victims who've recovered have been identified 10 years after the storm. 
 
 "I just thought we should honor our dead in a better way than putting them in Potter's Field," said former Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard. 
 
 On the fifth anniversary of the storm, Minyard sat down with Eyewitness News to talk about the Katrina memorial, where 80 bodies were laid to rest. It's an eerily quiet place on Canal Street designed, as the engraving says, to "evoke" the shape of a hurricane. These victims were either unclaimed by relatives or never identified. 
 
 Minyard said more extensive DNA testing is needed, but money allocated by FEMA to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals dried up. 
 
 So back in 2005, Minyard confirmed 40 people still remained. 
 
 "It's been five years, maybe it'll go 10 years, 15, 20. I mean it's ludicrous in this day and age to have people unidentified," he said. 
 
 Now a decade after the storm, an Eyewitness News public records request to current coroner Dr. Jeffrey Rouse reveals a total of 30 victims who still remain unidentified. 
 
 Autopsy reports show locations across the city where some of these men and women were found, many with little to no personal belongings or distinguishing marks. 
 
 One man identified as an unknown black male had his body recovered at Interstate 10 and Elysian Fields Avenue. He was wearing black Nike tennis shoes, black warm-up pants, a dark polo shirt, along with a black necklace adorned with a wooden African pendant and black swatch quartz. 
 
 At S. Prieur Street in Central City, an autopsy report says the body of an unknown female was discovered dressed in a multi-colored skirt, blue knit t-shirt and wearing a yellow metal earring with the letters "RMJ" on it, a single curler still in her hair. 
 
 Back in the Lower 9th Ward at 5113 St. Claude Ave., an unknown black man with a beard and moustache dressed in black low-top shoes, black jeans, and in a blue, vertical-striped t-shirt was found with keys in his front pocket and one nickel to his name. 
 
 "Heat lamps as you see in the studio, and horrific, no running water except hoses we could run in there. Extremely decomposed bodies with very harsh conditions," said Dr. Louis Cataldie. 
 
 Identifying more than 1,000 bodies was a complicated task. Cataldie ran the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, which worked out of this temporary morgue in St. Gabriel. The team of medical professionals had no choice, since the Orleans Parish morgue was under water. 
 
 Inside the old warehouse, autopsies were performed, DNA was collected and x-rays taken to try to identify the dead. 
 
 But Cataldie confirms medical records lost to floodwater, badly decomposed bodies and collecting DNA samples from relatives who evacuated made that task cumbersome. 
 
 "We would take DNA from family members and relatives and try and match the family tree," he said. "That's real hard to do when you've got people displaced to Texas and you're trying to get their DNA. That's one of the reasons it took so long to identify these folks. Fingerprints were pretty much useless." 
 
 Cataldie also confirms the funding for more DNA testing ran out. 
 
 So, what about these unidentified bodies honored at this Mid-City Memorial, and their families who never came back, or don't know they're here? 
 
 Cataldie said there is a way. 
 
 "I think at this point in time, if someone was really concerned, they could probably do it privately, but it would probably be cost prohibitive to do it that way," he said. 
 
 Washington said, "There's a bunch of them down here that they didn't find. I couldn't tell you what happened to them." 
 
 Washington said they deserve to be identified. 
 
 A few months short of Katrina's one-year anniversary, Pam Washington was buried in her family's plot at Providence Memorial Park & Mausoleum on Airline Highway. Her fiancé Darryl was never found. 
 
 It's a painful memory for any parent, especially Washington, who said Pam's daughter Whitney is a spitting image of her mom. She evacuated with family before the storm hit. 
 
 In his mind, the teen is part of the next generation that can now set their sights on the future. 
 
 "We weathered the storm, we went through it and we made it," Reginald Washington said. "Now we're trying to go past that and move on." 
 
 Rouse said he did not want to be interviewed for this story. 
 
 State health officials say in an effort to reunite families with the remains of their deceased relatives, the department spent more than $3 million, but only $2.2 million of the funds were reimbursed by the federal government. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://on.wwltv.com/1JlRYIb ||||| Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest hurricanes ever to hit the United States. An estimated 1,833 people died in the hurricane and the flooding that followed in late August 2005, and millions of others were left homeless along the Gulf Coast and in New Orleans. 
 
 Katrina was the most destructive storm to strike the United States and the costliest storm in U.S. history, causing $108 billion in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It ranks sixth overall in strength of recorded Atlantic hurricanes. It was also a very large storm; at its peak, maximum winds stretched 25 to 30 nautical miles (46 to 55 kilometers) and its extremely wide swath of hurricane force winds extended at least 75 nautical miles (138 km) to the east from the center. 
 
 Katrina initially formed about 200 miles (322 km) southeast of the Bahamas on Aug. 23, 2005, as a tropical depression, according to the NOAA. A well-defined band of storm clouds began to wrap around the north side of the storm's circulation center in the early morning hours of Aug. 24. With winds of about 40 mph (65 kph), the storm was named Tropical Storm Katrina. 
 
 By the time it made its way to southern Florida on Aug. 25, Katrina was a moderate Category 1 hurricane. While it caused some flooding and casualties — two people were killed — during its first landfall, it appeared to be just another hurricane in an active hurricane season. Katrina weakened after passing over Florida and was reclassified as a tropical storm. 
 
 But, once over water again, Katrina stalled beneath a very large upper-level anticyclone that dominated the entire Gulf of Mexico, and rapidly gained strength. Katrina re-intensified into a hurricane on Aug. 26, and became a Category Five storm on Aug. 28, with winds blowing at about 175 mph (280 kph). The storm turned north toward the Louisiana coast. The storm weakened to a Category 3 storm before making landfall along the Louisiana-Mississippi border on the morning of Aug. 29 with sustained winds of 120 mph (193 kph). 
 
 Katrina weakened to a Category 1 hurricane after moving inland over southern and central Mississippi. It was downgraded to a tropical storm about six hours later just northwest of Meridian, Mississippi, and became an extratropical low on Aug. 31. It was finally absorbed by a frontal zone later that day over the eastern Great Lakes, according to the NOAA. 
 
 The flooding in New Orleans nearly a week after Hurricane Katrina hit, taken by NASA's EO-1 satellite on Sept. 6, 2005. Credit: NASA 
 
 As Katrina made landfall, its front-right quadrant, which held the strongest winds, slammed into Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi, devastating both cities. A large storm surge ranging from 10 to 28 feet devastated coastal areas across southeastern Louisiana and coastal Mississippi. 
 
 "The surge exposed engineering mistakes in the levees and floodwalls designed and built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, causing extensive flooding throughout the New Orleans region," said Sandy Rosenthal, the founder and director of the advocacy group aimed at educating people about the catastrophic flooding in New Orleans in 2005 and a known critic of the Army Corps. 
 
 Ultimately, 80 percent of New Orleans and large portions of nearby parishes became flooded, and the floodwaters did not recede for weeks. 
 
 The National Guard was called in to help with evacuations. Thousands sought refuge in the New Orleans Convention Center and the Superdome, which were overwhelmed. It was one of the largest displacements of a population since the Great Depression, according to the NOAA. According to The Data Center, an independent research organization in New Orleans, the storm displaced more than 1 million people in the Gulf Coast region. [Infographic: Hurricane Katrina History and Numbers] 
 
 The rescue and recovery efforts following Katrina became highly politicized, with federal, state and local officials pointing fingers at one another. Critics blamed an aging and neglected federal levee system and a slow state and local response following the disaster for the high loss of life and damage. Many residents did not heed initial warnings to evacuate, putting a severe strain on rescue operations. 
 
 After initially receiving praise from then-president George W. Bush, Michael D. Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), was forced to resign, as was New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Eddie Compass. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin came under severe scrutiny for not ordering mandatory evacuations sooner. Blanco did not seek re-election in 2007. Nagin left office in 2010. In 2014, he was convicted of bribery, fraud and money laundering committed while in office before and after Katrina and is now serving a 10-year sentence, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. 
 
 Ultimately, a select bipartisan committee of the U.S. House of Representatives investigating the preparation, response and aftermath of the storm cited failures at all levels of government. The committee's final report was titled "A Failure of Initiative." 
 
 Flooding in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Credit: NWS/Lieut. Commander Mark Moran, NOAA Corps, NMAO/AOC 
 
 Government officials have sought to learn from the tragedy and implement better environmental, communications and evacuation policies. The Army Corps of Engineers has rebuilt the levee system, making the barriers higher and supporting them with steel beams that extend as far as 65 feet (19.8 meters) below sea level. 
 
 On 2006, Congress passed an act to reorganize FEMA. The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act offers grants to help cities revise evacuation plans, includes provisions for better communication with non-English speaking people and those with disabilities and recognizes the evacuation needs of people with pets. The act also increases funding for Urban Search and Rescue teams and requires the establishment of a family registry within six months after a storm. 
 
 The city of New Orleans has improved resident access to evacuation and alert information. For example, they have an e-mail and text message system called NolaReady that 13,000 residents have signed up for. 
 
 Ten years later, the region was still recovering from Katrina. The New Orleans metro area's population had dropped dramatically, from 1.386 million in 2005 to 1.04 million in 2006. By 2014, it had climbed back to 1.252 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The number of housing units and business establishments had also fallen and by 2014 had not returned to pre-2005 levels. 
 
 While many of the tourist areas such as the French Quarter have recovered, there are still neighborhoods just a short ride from the city that are just gone. [Related Article: What If Hurricane Katrina Hit New Orleans Today? 
 
 Additional reporting by Reference Editor Tim Sharp 
 
 Note: This article has been updated to include a quote from Levees.org about structural issues with the levees that were breached.
– Cleaning up after a massive hurricane is a difficult affair, but a decade after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans and claimed what Live Science reports is an estimated 1,833 lives, 30 bodies have yet to be identified. WWL-TV arrived at that number after making a public records request to the current coroner, who did not agree to be interviewed. The data comes from autopsy reports—reports that contain only a few identifying details, like the location of the body and what it was clad in or carried. One unknown black male wore black Nike tennis shoes and a black necklace with a wooden African pendant. An unknown female was wearing a yellow metal earring with the letters "RMJ" on it and a single curler in her hair. State health officials say the department spent more than $3 million trying to reunite families with the remains of the dead; the federal government ended up covering only $2.2 million of that, and there's no more money for further testing, says Dr. Louis Cataldie, who helmed the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team that helped ID the bodies. The condition of the bodies rendered fingerprints largely "useless," and so "we would take DNA from family members and relatives and try and match the family tree," he says of his work. "That's real hard to do when you've got people displaced to Texas and you're trying to get their DNA." Former Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard's take: "It's ludicrous in this day and age to have people unidentified." (Ten years on, these are 10 standout reads about Katrina.)