Congress issued $10 billion for disaster relief aid while much of the world began criticizing the U.S. 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. An estimated 80 percent of the city was soon underwater. The following day, Katrina weakened to a tropical storm, but severe flooding inhibited relief efforts in much of New Orleans. The waters would soon overwhelm additional levees. But later that morning, a levee broke in New Orleans, and a surge of floodwater began pouring into the low-lying city. Officials initially believed New Orleans was spared as most of the storm's worst initial impacts battered the coast toward the east, near Biloxi, Mississippi, where winds were the strongest and damage was extensive. Katrina passed over the Gulf Coast early on the morning of August 29. Many sheltered in their homes or made their way to the Superdome, the city's large sports arena, where conditions would soon deteriorate into hardship and chaos. But many stayed, particularly among the city's poorest residents and those who were elderly or lacked access to transportation. At its largest, Katrina was so wide its diameter stretched across the Gulf of Mexico.īefore the storm hit land, a mandatory evacuation was issued for the city of New Orleans, which had a population of more than 480,000 at the time. On August 27, the storm grew to a Category 3 hurricane. Find out when hurricane season peaks, how the storms form, and the surprising role they play in the larger global ecosystem. Hurricanes are the most powerful storms known to man. ( Read a detailed timeline of how the storm developed.) However, the storm then crossed back into the Gulf of Mexico, where it quickly regained strength and hurricane status. Katrina then weakened to a tropical storm, since hurricanes require warm ocean water to sustain speed and strength and begin to weaken over land. The tempest blew through Miami at 80 miles per hour, where it uprooted trees and killed two people. It officially reached hurricane status two days later, when it passed over southeastern Miami as a Category 1 storm. Katrina first formed as a tropical depression in Caribbean waters near the Bahamas on August 23, 2005. As of this writing, the population had grown back to nearly 80 percent of where it was before the hurricane. The population of New Orleans fell by more than half in the year after Katrina, according to Data Center Research. The damage was so extensive that some pundits had argued, controversially, that New Orleans should be permanently abandoned, even as the city vowed to rebuild. The city of New Orleans and other coastal communities in Katrina's path remain significantly altered more than a decade after the storm, both physically and culturally. ( What are hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons?) Ten years after the disaster, then-President Barack Obama said of Katrina, "What started out as a natural disaster became a man-made disaster-a failure of government to look out for its own citizens." Katrina's victims tended to be low income and African American in disproportionate numbers, and many of those who lost their homes faced years of hardship. The devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina exposed a series of deep-rooted problems, including controversies over the federal government's response, difficulties in search-and-rescue efforts, and lack of preparedness for the storm, particularly with regard to the city's aging series of levees-50 of which failed during the storm, significantly flooding the low-lying city and causing much of the damage. An estimated 1,200 people died as a direct result of the storm, which also cost an estimated $108 billion in property damage, making it the costliest storm on record. Because of the ensuing destruction and loss of life, the storm is often considered one of the worst in U.S. It hit land as a Category 3 storm with winds reaching speeds as high as 120 miles per hour. Hurricane Katrina made landfall off the coast of Louisiana on August 29, 2005.
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