Hurricane Katrina (2005)

Hurricane Katrina, a record storm that was part of a record hurricane season, was the costliest disaster to strike the United States, and also one of the deadliest when it struck the nation on August 29, 2005. In the United States, the storm most directly affected South Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Other nations, particularly, Cuba, also were affected by the storm. Many communities along the Gulf Coast were severely damaged or destroyed in the storm. In particular, Katrina's effect on New Orleans, Louisiana, stood out to many as emblematic of the severity of the storm and the problems in disaster preparedness and response, as well as some broader social problems it revealed.

Katrina began as Tropical Depression Twelve of the 2005 hurricane season in the Bahamas. It became Tropical Storm Katrina and then Hurricane Katrina before making landfall in Florida's Miami-Dade County on August 25 as a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. As it moved into the Gulf of Mexico, Katrina quickly grew to nearly 200 miles wide. Barometric pressure readings from 915 to 920 millibars, taken while the storm was in the Gulf of Mexico, made Katrina one of the most powerful hurricanes on record. The storm's driving rain and rough water affected Cuba's Pinar del Rio province, particularly the city of Surgidero de Batabano, south of Havana, during this period. The day before Katrina's second and third landfalls, the storm was classified as a Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with predictions of an 18–22 foot storm surge and 175 mph winds.

Katrina made its second landfall on August 29 near Buras, Louisiana, as a strong Category 3 or weak Category 4 storm with approximately 125 mph winds. Katrina made its third and final landfall at the Louisiana-Mississippi border near the mouth of the Pearl River as a Category 3 storm later on August 29. Parts of Mississippi were struck with a 28-foot storm surge. As Katrina moved inland, it was downgraded to a tropical storm near Meridian, Mississippi, and to a tropical depression near Clarksville, Tennessee.

Katrina's effects on coastal communities were exacerbated by a variety of social and political issues. In the proceeding 20 years, the Gulf Coast's population had grown by more than 25 percent. Further complicating the situation was the fact that the most severely affected states—Louisiana and Mississippi—are consistently [Page 323]ranked among the poorest in the United States, making evacuation more difficult, if not impossible, for a large number of residents. The population of New Orleans, affected not only by the storm but also by structural failures of the levee system designed to protect the city, was predominately African American and largely poor. This combination illuminated long-standing racial and class-based tensions.

On August 27, President George W. Bush preemptively declared a state of emergency for areas of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and the National Hurricane Center declared a hurricane watch, then a warning, for all three states and parts of Florida. On August 28, the day before Katrina's second and third landfalls, the Red Cross and governments in Mississippi, Louisiana, and New Orleans opened emergency shelters of last resort.

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