Hurricane Katrina made landfall 20 years ago today. This devastating storm cost more than 1,800 lives and as much as $125 billion in damage in the Gulf Coast, especially New Orleans.

Broadcasters in New Orleans went to historic lengths to keep their city connected as water rose and infrastructure collapsed. As a Primary Entry Point station in the Emergency Alert System, WWL-AM had a unique role to play. “I just remember thinking we cannot stop,” WWL-AM host Dave Cohen told the BCC later. “We have to save as many lives as we can.”

“Covering Katrina” from New Orleans TV station WDSU includes interviews with journalists who covered the storm and its aftermath, along with never-before-seen footage and documents.

“Nothing in my experience as a journalist… had I ever dealt with the kind of feelings that I experienced,” longtime WDSU Anchor Norman Robinson said. “You begin to fight with, how am I going to hold it together? I am sitting here on this news desk and people are depending on me for information.”

“Good Morning America” host Robin Roberts, a Gulf Coast native who covered Katrina after just three months at GMA, is hosting a special looking back at the storm’s legacy and her own experience covering it.

“It’s one thing if you shed a tear, but I was boo-hooing,” Roberts said. “I was delighted that in the end people were touched by that in a way that I wasn’t expecting, that it was authenticity. That was proof that they just want you to be real in the moment.”

The profound devastation of Katrina had personal stakes for many of the journalists and broadcasters covering the storm, but their commitment to their beloved community did not waver.

“Many of our radio family members lost everything they owned. Many didn’t know the fate of their spouses, parents, brothers, sisters, friends,” WWL-AM Program Director Diane Newman told the Federal Communications Commission after Hurricane Katrina. “But, we did the work. We do the work.”