Hurricane Katrina displaced millions of people and caused billions of dollars in damages. The federal response highlighted critical failures at all levels of government. 20 years later, the storm has completely reshaped New Orleans.
In late August 2005, Hurricane Katrina swept over the Gulf Coast and shredded communities from Louisiana to Florida. The devastation it left caused around $125 billion in damage, nearly 2,000 deaths, and millions displaced, their homes and personal belongings destroyed.
To make matters worse, the emergency response to the crisis was badly bungled, and the post-storm recovery had some unexpected effects on the area that can still be felt more than two decades on.
As one of the costliest disasters in American history, Hurricane Katrina revealed quite a lot about our priorities, and how American society does — and doesn’t — work. Decades after the storm, as New Orleans and its surroundings have worked to rebuild, reveal even more.
The Destruction Of The Storm Unfolds
Hurricane Katrina began as a tropical depression over the Bahamas on Aug. 23, 2005, according to the National Weather Service. Two days later, it made initial landfall in Florida as a Category 1 hurricane, causing relatively minor damage but tragically claiming 11 lives. As it moved over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, however, it rapidly intensified into a massive and powerful storm.
By August 28, Katrina had grown into a Category 5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds reaching 175 miles per hour and a minimum central pressure of 902 millibars, making it one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico. The storm's eye stretched 30 miles across, while hurricane-force winds extended 120 miles from the center.
Storm surge predictions reached catastrophic levels, with forecasters warning of surges up to 28 feet along the Mississippi river.
As Hurricane Katrina approached the Gulf Coast, it weakened slightly but remained an extremely dangerous Category 3 hurricane at landfall — this time striking near Buras, Louisiana, just after six in the morning on Aug. 29, 2005. A few hours later, the eye passed directly over New Orleans, subjecting the city to the storm's most intense conditions.
Power failed in New Orleans almost immediately, so on-the-ground measurements of rainfall and wind velocity were mostly guesswork. Considering that a Category 2 storm sustains winds of between 96 and 110 mph, even the low estimates were terrifying.
For perspective, imagine yourself blasting down the freeway at double the posted speed limit. Now, without slowing, toss a wheelbarrow full of roofing tiles out the window at pedestrians and spray them down with a fire hose as you drive past. That's what was headed for New Orleans in 2005, except it was 150 miles across.
The storm dropped 15 inches of rain on parts of the state, an amount equal to the average annual rainfall in Montana. Much of the rain fell on already-waterlogged wetlands in the Mississippi delta and over a series of lakes, notably Lake Pontchartrain. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which had been responsible for strengthening the levees around the lake, stopped work on the project in 2003, as 80 percent of its budget was cut to defray the cost of the Iraq invasion.
It was a recipe for disaster — and disaster was what happened.
In The Aftermath, New Orleans Was Hit Even Worse
The destruction wrought by Katrina was unprecedented in both scale and scope. The storm surge, which reached heights of 25 to 28 feet along the Mississippi coast, completely obliterated coastal communities. In Mississippi, the cities of Waveland, Bay St. Louis, and Pass Christian were virtually wiped off the map, with some areas scoured down to bare concrete slabs.
New Orleans, meanwhile, resembled a wet tropical Stalingrad. While the city initially appeared to have weathered the storm relatively well, the real disaster began in the hours after Katrina passed through. The storm surge and rainfall had overwhelmed the city's levee system, causing multiple breaches that led to catastrophic flooding. Around 80 percent of New Orleans was underwater, with some areas experiencing flooding depths of more than 15 feet.
Wikimedia CommonsNew Orleans, still flooded weeks after several levees failed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Water poured through at a rate of around 10,000 cubic feet per second. Most neighborhoods were reduced to waterlogged rubble, with whole blocks swept away where the water had picked up some momentum.
Oil barrels and countless gallons of God-knows-what had tipped into the water, coating every surface in sticky toxic residue. Bodies were floating in standing pools, buried under smashed buildings, and lying in the street to be eaten by the tens of thousands of rats driven up out of the sewer.
About 1,500 New Orleans residents were dead, and recovery of the bodies was so slow that many of the people who died in the heavily damaged east side of the city decomposed to the point they could only be identified by dental records.
Journalists covering the storm, temporarily stirred to action, put a great deal of pressure on the federal government. Officials faced embarrassing questions about nearly every aspect of the emergency management – from the budget cuts that left the city vulnerable, to the competence of various political appointees managing the recovery and the obscenity of restoring power to the Jackson Square neighborhood long enough for the president to give a speech, then cutting it off again when he left.
The economic losses from Hurricane Katrina were staggering. Total damage estimates reached $125 billion in 2005 dollars, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history at that time. It destroyed or severely damaged over 300,000 homes and displaced approximately 1.5 million people from the central Gulf Coast. In New Orleans alone, more than 134,000 housing units were damaged or destroyed.
But these were not the only losses incurred by the storm.
The Human Cost Of Hurricane Katrina
Across multiple states, the official death toll attributed to Hurricane Katrina reached 1,833 people by most counts, with 1,577 deaths in Louisiana alone. While the total number of victims varies and may never be known with 100 percent certainty, these estimates alone show just how devastating the hurricane was.
The majority of deaths occurred in New Orleans, where many victims drowned in the floodwaters that followed the levee failures. According to a report from the Louisiana Department of Health, most of those deaths were among elderly and disabled residents who could not evacuate.
Beyond the immediate casualties, Hurricane Katrina displaced more people than any natural disaster since the Great Depression. The Louisiana Superdome, originally intended to house 800 evacuees, eventually provided temporary shelter to over 30,000 people in deplorable conditions.
The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center also served as an unofficial shelter for another 25,000 evacuees, despite having no supplies, security, or sanitation facilities. Of course, with so many people left without homes, the road to recovery was long and difficult — and given the emergency response, people weren't exactly optimistic.
Emergency Response Failures Highlighted Flaws At All Levels Of Government
The botched emergency response to Hurricane Katrina revealed critical failures across the government. These failures have been outlined countless times, but the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute summarized them well enough: confusion, a failure to learn, communications breakdown, supply failures, indecision, and fraud and abuse.
Despite days of advance warning, for instance, evacuation efforts were inadequate, particularly for the city's most vulnerable populations. An estimated 100,000 to 150,000 people remained in New Orleans when the storm struck, many lacking the means to evacuate.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) faced particularly severe criticism for its slow response. Director Michael Brown, who had no prior disaster management experience, became something of a symbol of federal incompetence — especially after President George W. Bush's praise for him when visiting Louisiana.
CNNPresident George W. Bush and former FEMA director Michael D. Brown.
"Brownie," the president said, "you're doing a heck of a job."
Ten days later, Brown resigned from the position.
A decade later, Brown would defend his actions in a piece for Politico entitled "Stop Blaming Me for Hurricane Katrina":
"Had the mayor and governor fulfilled their responsibilities as elected leaders of their city and state, most if not all of the people crying for help in front of national television cameras would not have been there. They would have been in other locales, safe and secure.
But the blame was not placed on those responsible. The blame was placed on me—the one person who had no authority to do anything at that point except get out the checkbook and start paying the Department of Defense to evacuate people from that hellhole to a place of safety. And that is exactly what I did."
Communication failures also plagued the response effort. Different agencies used incompatible radio systems, preventing coordination between federal, state, and local responders. The 911 system was overwhelmed and eventually failed, leaving residents simply unable to call for help.
Search and rescue operations, while ultimately successful in saving tens of thousands of lives, were initially hampered by jurisdictional confusion and resource shortages. Military assistance was likewise delayed due to bureaucratic procedures and concerns about the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits military involvement in domestic law enforcement.
The U.S. Coast Guard, on the other hand, proved to be highly effective in responding to the disaster, rescuing over 33,500 people.
But even after the initial search and rescue operations, the work was not done.
Long-term Aftermath And Recovery From Katrina
The recovery from Hurricane Katrina proved to be a long and often contentious, heavily politicized struggle that highlighted existing social and economic inequalities.
As NBC News reported at the time, the Bush White House's $51.8 million hurricane relief bill may have had strong bipartisan support, but decisions about what to do with the money weren't as widely accepted across the aisles. Various contractors, advisers, and, unfortunately, conmen swung into action to sweep up as much money as they could before it landed on the people most affected by the storm. A New York Times report from the following June would highlight just how much fraud there was.
The aid that finally filtered down to residents of the area was held up by the very rules and red tape meant to provide relief. Within a few months, it was discovered that at least 24,000 Louisiana homeowners had accepted grants to raise their homes up to six feet off the ground and thus bring their homes into compliance with the new flood-control rules, but were later unable to prove that they'd made the upgrades.
New Orleans homeowners struggled to get insurance to cover any damage from the storm. After all, most insurance policies don't cover flood damage, and the floodwaters tended to wash away any damage that could be provably caused by the wind. To make things even more complicated, federal aid was available but only in the amount equal to the difference between an insurance settlement and the assessed value of a home.
Wikimedia CommonsDebris from Hurricane Katrina scattered across an award-winning front lawn.
Not having insurance made people ineligible for this aid. Even the people who did qualify were put through bizarre bureaucratic torture before they could collect disaster relief; one requirement for getting a standard federal grant to rebuild collapsed homes was that applicants must first apply and be rejected for a Small Business Administration-backed loan.
If you had the misfortune to be a retired person with good credit, then the loan would probably be approved and then no aid for you. If you were poor and disorganized to the point that filing a loan application from whatever shelter you were living in was a challenge, then no aid for you either.
All this sounds bad, but it could easily have been worse. Dennis Hastert, then Speaker of the House, publicly questioned if any federal funds should be used to help New Orleans rebuild at all.
Keep in mind, the New Orleans metropolitan area lost around 29 percent of its population immediately after the storm. By 2010, it had only recovered to about 78 percent of its pre-Katrina population — largely due to the bureaucratic hoops people were required to hop through.
Rebuilding efforts, meanwhile, were complicated by debates over which areas should be rebuilt and how to make them more resilient to future storms. The Road Home program, Louisiana's primary housing recovery initiative, distributed $9.6 billion to help homeowners rebuild or relocate but faced criticism for delays, bureaucratic complications, and formulas that some argued discriminated against minority homeowners.
Lessons Learned And Lasting Impact
Hurricane Katrina fundamentally changed how the United States approaches disaster preparedness and response. The Stafford Act was amended to improve federal disaster response capabilities, and FEMA underwent significant reforms.
The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 enhanced FEMA's authority and resources while establishing new requirements for catastrophic disaster planning — although as of 2025, with President Donald Trump's calls to eliminate FEMA, America's preparedness for future disasters is uncertain.
Previous administrations tried to improve FEMA, learning from past failures. The Trump administration, on the other hand, seems to think scrapping it and starting over is the better approach.
"The president and I have had many, many discussions about this agency," said DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, per NPR. "I want to be very clear. The President wants it eliminated as it currently exists. He wants a new agency."
Wikimedia Commons
Education systems were completely restructured in New Orleans as well, with the traditional public school system largely replaced by charter schools — some of which taught what is known as "Accelerated Christian Education (A.C.E.)."
One such charter school, Lusher, defined A.C.E. as a way for students "to see life from God's point of view, to take responsibility for their own learning, and to walk in Godly wisdom and character."
Children in these charter schools are exposed to intensive religious instruction in every subject. English students are likely to be given examples of interrogative statements such as: "Do you know Jesus as your personal Saviour? Can you ever praise Him enough?"
In science, the Washington Post reported, the curriculum comes unglued. A.C.E. students were taught, for example, that the Loch Ness Monster is probably real, and that this disproves evolution, which was described in the curriculum materials as "impossible."
So, while New Orleans has rebuilt much of its infrastructure and economy, the storm effectively upended the society and culture.
Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans with all the force and finality of a war. When it lifted, people whose loved ones were dead and lost under the rubble came out of their shelters into a world where nobody seemed to know what to do or how to help them.
Two decades later, it remains to be seen if that world ever figured it out.
After this harrowing look back at Hurricane Katrina, learn about the Blizzard of 1888 and how it paralyzed the East Coast for days. Then, see our collection of heartwarming photos of the dogs that survived Hurricane Harvey.
