NEW ORLEANS: President Barack Obama held out the people of New Orleans as an extraordinary example of renewal and resilience 10 years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, while visiting residents on tidy porch stoops and sampling the fried chicken at a corner restaurant.

Nearly 2,000 people died, most in New Orleans. Video of residents seeking refuge on rooftops, inside the Superdome stadium and at the convention center dominated news coverage as Katrina came to symbolize government failure at every level.

Obama was a new US senator when Katrina’s powerful winds and driving rain bore down on Louisiana on Aug. 29, 2005. The storm caused major damage to the Gulf Coast from Texas to central Florida while powering a storm surge that breached the system of levees meant to protect New Orleans from flooding.

Obama spoke Thursday to hundreds of residents assembled at a bustling new community center in an area of the Lower 9th Ward that was once under 17 feet (5 meters) of water

“There’s something in you guys that is just irrepressible,” he told the crowd. “The people of New Orleans didn’t just inspire me, you inspired all of America.”

Obama held out the city’s comeback as a metaphor for what’s happening all across a nation that has moved from economic crisis to higher ground.

“Look at what’s happened here,” he declared, speaking of a transformed American city that was once “dark and underwater.”

Still, Obama acknowledged that much remains to be done. And after walking door to door in the historic Treme section of a city reborn from tragedy, he cautioned that “just because the housing is nice doesn’t mean our job is done.”