From New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward to the Mississippi coast, people hit hard by Hurricane Katrina are paying homage to those killed by the storm’s devastation.

Sunday marks the fifth anniversary of the storm, which hit on Aug. 29, 2005.

Services were planned at memorials to the hurricane’s dead in Shell Beach in St. Bernard Parish, where all but two buildings flooded, and the hard-hit Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans. Residents there have been able to rebuild fewer than 1,300 of the 5,400 homes that stood before the storm.

In the afternoon, President Barack Obama was to speak at Xavier University. The college, like 80 percent of New Orleans, was flooded by the storm.

Obama will recall those who died and reassure those who have returned that he is committed to rebuilding.