As National Guard members roll into New Orleans to help with safety measures ahead of New Year's celebrations, city officials are still seeking permanent security solutions nearly a year after a truck attack on Bourbon Street left 14 dead.

The rampage, in which a man drove around a police blockade in the early hours of Jan. 1, revealed security vulnerabilities surrounding a famous street filled with boisterous bars, brass bands playing on cobblestone corners and a steady stream of partygoers carrying cocktails.

While Louisiana officials say the tourist site is safe as they implement additional measures to crackdown on potential threats ahead of the attack anniversary, families of deceased victims say not enough has been done to ensure similar tragedies won't happen again.

Asking for permanent solutions

The attack happened when Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a pickup truck down Bourbon Street, plowing into crowds celebrating New Year’s Day, killing 14 people and injuring dozens of others. Police shot and killed Jabbar, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran who had proclaimed his support for the Islamic State militant group on social media.

Among the victims were Nikyra Dedeaux, an 18-year-old about to start college who was on Bourbon Street with friends. Her mother, Melissa Dedeaux, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that while many will ring in 2026 with fireworks and merriment, she will be grieving. She believes the tragedy could have been prevented and “my baby would have been here.”

In the wake of the rampage, city officials, state agencies and law firms representing victims’ families launched investigations into whether the attack could have been prevented. The investigations focused on the street's bollard system of steel columns designed to block cars from entering the thoroughfare. The bollards were being replaced at the time.

Questions still swirl around the barricade system, which is a patchwork of bollards, strategically parked police vehicles and 32 large steel barriers that officers push into place every night to form pedestrian zones.

“They are not meant to be utilized in the fashion they are,” Samuel Palumbo, the 8th District New Orleans Police Department Captain, said of the barriers that can withstand only low-speed collisions. He stressed to the New Orleans Governmental Affairs Committee this month that the system is a “temporary solution to a permanent problem.”

“We need to learn from what happened," Morris Bart, whose law firm is representing victims and their families, told reporters Tuesday. “It’s kind of ridiculous ... that a year after this tragedy nothing has been done to resolve this situation.”