“”I’m a survivor,” said Viola Washington, in a thick New Orleans drawl.”
Okay, right off the bat the reporter is making things up. There no such animal as a “thick New Orleans drawl”. I suppose the claims made in the rest of the article are as accurate. HAH!
Well, the reporter is probably a Yankee, to whom any Southern accent is a "thick drawl". But some parts of NO definitely have their own distinct accents (and yes, I'm from Louisiana with kinfolk in NO)--some of them quite different from "Southernese". The "Ninth Ward" accent sounds more like Brooklynese than Southern.