![]() ![]() Efforts began to collect and identify corpses. The next day, military convoys arrived with supplies and the National Guard was brought in to bring a halt to lawlessness. The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Michael Brown, resigned amid the ensuing controversy.įinally, on September 1, the tens of thousands of people staying in the damaged Superdome and Convention Center begin to be moved to the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, and another mandatory evacuation order was issued for the city. Bush were roundly criticized for what was perceived as their slow response to the disaster. The federal government and President George W. As news networks broadcast scenes from the devastated city to the world, it became obvious that a vast majority of the victims were African American and poor, leading to difficult questions among the public about the state of racial equality in the United States. Reports of looting, rape and even murder began to surface. In the meantime, the stranded residents suffered from heat, hunger, and a lack of medical care. Frustration mounted as it took up to two days for a full-scale relief effort to begin. The situation in both places quickly deteriorated, as food and water ran low and conditions became unsanitary. Tens of thousands of people sought shelter in the New Orleans Convention Center and the Louisiana Superdome. Soon, 80 percent of the city was flooded up to the rooftops of many homes and small buildings. The surges overwhelmed the levees that protected New Orleans, located at six feet below sea level, from Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River. Katrina caused record storm surges all along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The storm brought sustained winds of 145 miles per hour, which cut power lines and destroyed homes, even turning cars into projectile missiles. But an estimated 150,000 people, who either did not want to or did not have the resources to leave, ignored the order and stayed behind. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city on August 28, when Katrina briefly achieved Category 5 status and the National Weather Service predicted “devastating” damage to the area. In addition to bringing devastation to the New Orleans area, the hurricane caused damage along the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama, as well as other parts of Louisiana. The levee and flood wall failures caused widespread flooding.Īfter briefly coming ashore in southern Florida on August 25 as a Category 1 hurricane, Katrina gained strength before slamming into the Gulf Coast on August 29. In the wake of the storm, there were over 50 failures of the levees and flood walls around New Orleans and its suburbs. Despite being only the third most powerful storm of the 2005 hurricane season, Katrina was among the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States. ![]() Hurricane Katrina makes landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana, as a Category 3 hurricane on August 29, 2005. ![]()
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