Well, we’ve made it. Almost. It’s been a long, hot summer and this is our last episode as we come up on the tenth anniversary of Katrina. The city is abuzz with journalists and experts and NGOs and politicians. We thought we’d use this last bit of The Debris to explore a word they’re all using to talk about New Orleans: resilience.

Lots of people who visit New Orleans today are surprised to find the city in such good shape. The rebuilding effort has been long, arduous, and largely successful in most areas (with a few notable exceptions, like the Lower 9th Ward ). New Orleans would not be where it is today without the students, church groups, retirees, professional organizations and lone good souls who gave their time and energy to rebuilding. At least a million people, by one count, and likely many millions. Newcomers poured into the city after the storm, and many became new New Orleanians.

This week on Katrina: The Debris, we're exploring the actual debris — the stuff left behind when the winds died down and the floodwaters receded. Katrina changed our relationship with that "stuff" — the tangible things that make up our modern lives. Some things became much more important, while so much else became just trash to be left on the curb for pickup.

The devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the floods that followed is most visible in pictures of ruined houses and people’s destroyed possessions lying out on city streets. But there’s unseen damage that runs even deeper: the collective emotional trauma experienced by the thousands of people who lived through it.

According to numbers from the US Census and the IRS, 236,970 people left Louisiana between the summer of 2005 and the summer of 2006, mostly because of Hurricane Katrina. Census details can’t tell who is a former resident returning and who’s new, but as of last year, the state had only recovered about 100,000 people, less than half of those who left. Whether it's a bandoned houses or empty chairs at the dinner table, New Orleans is rebuilding around a conspicuous absence. This week on The Debris, stories of people and things missing from, and just missing, New Orleans.

Of all the changes New Orleans has seen in the ten years since Katrina, the restructuring of the city's public school system is perhaps the most drastic. In place of a traditional school district, most Orleans Parish schools are now governed by a loose confederation of charter operators. What does this new model mean for students, teachers and parents in New Orleans?

According to a study by the Data Center , the Hispanic population of the New Orleans metro area has nearly doubled since the year 2000. Many people immigrated from Mexico and Central America, or migrated from other parts of the U.S. to work in cleanup and construction after Katrina. The Latino population of greater New Orleans continues to grow and reshape the culture of the city.

Nearly a quarter of a million people evacuated to Houston from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, and in 2006 there were still about 150,000 Katrina evacuees in the Bayou City. As of 2012, 40,000 had resettled permanently from New Orleans to the Houston area.

You don't realize how much you appreciate traffic lights until you have to drive around a city without any. This week on Katrina: The Debris, getting around New Orleans, during and after the storm.

New Orleans is a family city. Grandparents and grandkids, cousins, aunts and uncles often live in the same house, share the same traditions. When Katrina hit, many families evacuated together — three generations crammed into one car.