When was hurricane katrina facts

The following day, Katrina weakened to a tropical storm, but severe flooding inhibited relief efforts in much of New Orleans. An estimated 80 percent of the city was soon underwater.

By September 2, four days later, the city and surrounding areas were in full-on crisis mode, with many people and companion animals still stranded, and infrastructure and services collapsing. The city of New Orleans was at a disadvantage even before Hurricane Katrina hit, something experts had warned about for years , but it had limited success in changing policy. The region sits in a natural basin, and some of the city is below sea level so is particularly prone to flooding.

Low-income communities tend to be in the lowest-lying areas. Just south of the city, the powerful Mississippi River flows into the Gulf of Mexico. During intense hurricanes, oncoming storms can push seawater onto land, creating what is known as a storm surge.

Those forces typically cause the most hurricane-related fatalities. As Hurricane Katrina hit, New Orleans and surrounding parishes saw record storm surges as high as 19 feet. Levees can be natural or manufactured. They are essentially walls that prevent waterways from overflowing and flooding nearby areas. New Orleans has been protected by levees since the French began inhabiting the region in the 17th century, but modern levees were authorized for construction in after Hurricane Betsy flooded much of the city.

The U. Army Corps of Engineers then built a complex system of miles of levees. Yet a report by the. Corps released in concluded that insufficient funding, information, and poor construction had left the flood system vulnerable to failure.

Even before Katrina made landfall off the Gulf, the incoming storm surge had started to overwhelm the levees, spilling into residential areas. More than 50 levees would eventually fail before the storm subsided. While the winds of the storm itself caused major damage in the city of New Orleans, such as downed trees and buildings, studies conducted in the years since concluded that failed levees accounted for the worst impacts and most deaths.

An assessment from the state of Louisiana confirmed that just under half of the 1, deaths resulted from chronic disease exacerbated by the storm, and a third of the deaths were from drowning. Hurricane death tolls are debated, and for Katrina, counts can vary by as much as Collected bodies must be examined for cause of death, and some argue that indirect hurricane deaths, like being unable to access medical care, should be counted in official numbers.

Hurricane Katrina was the costliest in U. Oil and gas industry operations were crippled after the storm and coastal communities that rely on tourism suffered from both loss of infrastructure and business and coastal erosion. Evacuees crowd the floor of the Astrodome in Houston on September 2, The facility housed 15, refugees who fled the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. A neighborhood east of downtown New Orleans remains flooded on August 30, A woman gets carried out of floodwaters after being trapped in her home in Orleans Parish, Louisiana, on August 30, Police watch over prisoners from Orleans Parish Prison who were evacuated to a highway on September 1, Daryl Thompson and his daughter Dejanae, 3 months old, wait with other displaced residents on a highway to catch a ride out of New Orleans on August 31, Thousands were looking for a place to go after leaving the Superdome shelter.

Residents of Saucier, Mississippi, line up to get gas on August 31, Hanging from her roof, a woman waits to be rescued by New Orleans Fire Department workers on August 29, People seek high ground on Interstate 90 as a helicopter prepares to land at the Superdome in New Orleans on August 31, A woman cries after returning to her house and business, destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, on August 30, , in Biloxi, Mississippi.

People search for their belongings among debris washed up on the beach in Biloxi on August 30, People try to get to higher ground as water rises on August 30, , in New Orleans.

Meanwhile, it was nearly impossible to leave New Orleans: Poor people especially, without cars or anyplace else to go, were stuck. For instance, some people tried to walk over the Crescent City Connection bridge to the nearby suburb of Gretna, but police officers with shotguns forced them to turn back.

Katrina pummeled huge parts of Louisiana , Mississippi and Alabama , but the desperation was most concentrated in New Orleans. In all, Hurricane Katrina killed nearly 2, people and affected some 90, square miles of the United States.

Hundreds of thousands of evacuees scattered far and wide. According to The Data Center , an independent research organization in New Orleans, the storm ultimately displaced more than 1 million people in the Gulf Coast region. In the wake of the storm's devastating effects, local, state and federal governments were criticized for their slow, inadequate response, as well as for the levee failures around New Orleans.

And officials from different branches of government were quick to direct the blame at each other. President George W. Louisiana Governor Blanco declined to seek re-election in and Mayor Nagin left office in In Nagin was convicted of bribery, fraud and money laundering while in office. The U. Congress launched an investigation into government response to the storm and issued a highly critical report in February entitled, " A Failure of Initiative.

The failures in response during Katrina spurred a series of reforms initiated by Congress. Chief among them was a requirement that all levels of government train to execute coordinated plans of disaster response.

The agency said the work ensured the city's safety from flooding for the time. But an April report from the Army Corps stated that, in the face of rising sea levels and the loss of protective barrier islands, the system will need updating and improvements by as early as But a lot of the blame also falls on local, state, and federal officials who, already facing a lot of chaos and panic due to the impact of Katrina, echoed wild claims about the Superdome that helped foster even more chaos and panic.

And this additional panic came with a real cost: In the aftermath, officials focused resources on supposedly restoring order in the Superdome — leaving fewer resources for some of the rescue and reconstruction work that was left to be done.

So officials helped create unnecessary panic, and then they dedicated resources to address that panic. US Census Bureau. A decade after Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans metro area still hasn't recovered from the storm. Although the area has grown since , it holds , fewer residents, more than 39, fewer housing units, and nearly 2, fewer business establishments since Katrina hit.

Again, much of this damage was likely unavoidable in the face of a storm as strong as Katrina — but the harms could have been at least mitigated by better government preparation and a stronger response, based on the many reports that have reviewed the situation since Katrina. Despite the massive damage left behind by Katrina, another storm like it could still decimate the region again.

A report from the Lens, a local news outlet in New Orleans, and Politifact found that the anti-flooding system built after Katrina couldn't handle another storm like it.

The system could endure a year storm — a storm with a 1 percent chance of happening on any given year — but Katrina was considered a much stronger year storm.

Still, the new system is certainly much stronger than what existed before it, so it could diminish a lot of the damage that Katrina caused. Another report by the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council concluded that levees and flood walls can never be large or sturdy enough to fully protect New Orleans from another disaster similar in scope to Katrina.

In fact, this is perhaps the most lasting, dangerous public policy failure after Katrina: The report noted that the new structures built around the city give a false sense of security, leading the public to believe that they will be protected if another storm like Katrina comes.

But the reality is the nature of New Orleans — mainly, its status as a city largely below sea level — will always leave it exposed to these kinds of storms and floods.

Ultimately, the report concluded that voluntarily relocating people from areas exposed to floods should be considered as a viable public policy option — otherwise, the same problems may repeat themselves in the future. This is perhaps the most disheartening fact about Katrina: 10 years later, something like it could happen again.

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