How Much Money Did It Take To Repair Hurricane Katrina

Early in the morning on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the The states. When the storm made landfall, it had a Category three rating on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale–it brought sustained winds of 100–140 miles per hour–and stretched some 400 miles across.

While the storm itself did a groovy deal of harm, its backwash was catastrophic. Levee breaches led to massive flooding, and many people charged that the federal government was deadening to meet the needs of the people affected by the storm. Hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were displaced from their homes, and experts approximate that Katrina caused more than $100 billion in damage.

Hurricane Katrina: Before the Storm

The tropical depression that became Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas on Baronial 23, 2005, and meteorologists were before long able to warn people in the Gulf Coast states that a major storm was on its manner. Past August 28, evacuations were underway beyond the region. That day, the National Weather condition Service predicted that after the storm hit, "most of the [Gulf Declension] area will be uninhabitable for weeks…mayhap longer."

New Orleans was at particular hazard. Though near half the city actually lies above sea level, its average elevation is about vi feet below sea level–and it is completely surrounded by water. Over the course of the 20th century, the Regular army Corps of Engineers had built a system of levees and seawalls to keep the city from flooding. The levees along the Mississippi River were stiff and sturdy, but the ones congenital to concord back Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Borgne and the waterlogged swamps and marshes to the metropolis's east and west were much less reliable.

Levee Failures

Before the tempest, officials worried that surge could overtop some levees and cause brusque-term flooding, but no one predicted levees might collapse below their designed height. Neighborhoods that sat below sea level, many of which housed the city'southward poorest and most vulnerable people, were at not bad hazard of flooding.

The twenty-four hour period before Katrina hitting, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued the city'south first-e'er mandatory evacuation order. He also declared that the Superdome, a stadium located on relatively loftier ground near downtown, would serve every bit a "shelter of last resort" for people who could not go out the metropolis. (For example, some 112,000 of New Orleans' nearly 500,000 people did not accept access to a motorcar.) Past nightfall, near 80 percent of the city's population had evacuated. Some ten,000 had sought shelter in the Superdome, while tens of thousands of others chose to await out the tempest at home.

By the fourth dimension Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans early in the morning on Monday, August 29, it had already been raining heavily for hours. When the storm surge (every bit high as 9 meters in some places) arrived, information technology overwhelmed many of the city's unstable levees and drainage canals. H2o seeped through the soil underneath some levees and swept others away altogether.

By 9 a.m., low-lying places like St. Bernard Parish and the Ninth Ward were under so much water that people had to scramble to attics and rooftops for safe. Somewhen, nearly 80 percent of the city was nether some quantity of water.

Hurricane Katrina: The Aftermath

Many people acted heroically in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Declension Guard rescued some 34,000 people in New Orleans alone, and many ordinary citizens commandeered boats, offered food and shelter, and did whatever else they could to help their neighbors. Yet the authorities–particularly the federal government–seemed unprepared for the disaster. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) took days to plant operations in New Orleans, and even then did not seem to take a sound plan of action.

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Officials, even including President George W. Bush, seemed unaware of but how bad things were in New Orleans and elsewhere: how many people were stranded or missing; how many homes and businesses had been damaged; how much food, h2o and help was needed. Katrina had left in her wake what one reporter called a "total disaster zone" where people were "getting absolutely desperate."

Failures in Government Response

For one thing, many had nowhere to go. At the Superdome in New Orleans, where supplies had been express to begin with, officials accepted fifteen,000 more refugees from the storm on Mon before locking the doors. City leaders had no real plan for anyone else. Tens of thousands of people desperate for food, water and shelter broke into the Ernest Due north. Morial Convention Center complex, merely they found nil there merely chaos.

Meanwhile, it was nearly incommunicable 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 Metropolis Connection bridge to the nearby suburb of Gretna, just police officers with shotguns forced them to turn back.

Katrina pummeled huge parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, but the agony was nearly concentrated in New Orleans. Before the storm, the city's population was mostly black (about 67 percent); moreover, nearly 30 percent of its people lived in poverty. Katrina exacerbated these conditions and left many of New Orleans's poorest citizens even more than vulnerable than they had been earlier the storm.

In all, Hurricane Katrina killed nearly 2,000 people and afflicted some 90,000 square miles of the The states. Hundreds of thousands of evacuees scattered far and wide. According to The Data Heart, an independent inquiry system in New Orleans, the storm ultimately displaced more than than 1 million people in the Gulf Coast region.

Political Fallout From Hurricane Katrina

In the wake of the storm's devastating effects, local, state and federal governments were criticized for their slow, inadequate response, as well every bit for the levee failures effectually New Orleans. And officials from different branches of authorities were quick to direct the blame at each other.

"We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and h2o," Denise Bottcher, press secretary for and then-Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana told the New York Times. "They wanted to negotiate an organizational chart."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin argued that in that location was no clear designation of who was in charge, telling reporters, "The state and federal regime are doing a two-step trip the light fantastic."

President George Due west. Bush had originally praised his director of FEMA, Michael D. Brown, just as criticism mounted, Brown was forced to resign, every bit was the New Orleans Police Department Superintendent. Louisiana Governor Blanco declined to seek re-election in 2007 and Mayor Nagin left function in 2022. In 2022 Nagin was convicted of bribery, fraud and money laundering while in role.

The U.S. Congress launched an investigation into government response to the storm and issued a highly critical study in February 2006 entitled, "A Failure of Initiative."

Changes Since Katrina

The failures in response during Katrina spurred a series of reforms initiated by Congress. Chief amidst them was a requirement that all levels of government train to execute coordinated plans of disaster response. In the decade following Katrina, FEMA paid out billions in grants to ensure better preparedness.

Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers built a $14 billion network of levees and floodwalls around New Orleans. The agency said the work ensured the metropolis'due south safety from flooding for the time. Simply an April 2022 report from the Ground forces Corps stated that, in the face of rising body of water levels and the loss of protective barrier islands, the system will need updating and improvements by as early on equally 2023.