Effects of Hurricane Katrina in New
Orleans
Hurricane Katrina
2005 Atlantic hurricane season
General
• Timeline
• Meteorological history
• Preparations
• New Orleans preparedness
Impact
• Economic effects
• Political effects
• Criticism of government response
• Social effects
• Effects by region
• Effects on Florida
• Effects on Mississippi
• Effects on New Orleans
• Levee failures
• Infrastructure repairs
• Reconstruction
Relief
• Disaster relief
• International response
Analysis
• Fringe theories
• Historical context
• Media coverage
Other wikis
• Commons: Katrina images
• Wikinews: Katrina stories
• Wikisource: Katrina sources
The effects of Hurricane Katrina in New
Orleans were shattering and long-lasting. As
the center of Katrina passed east of New Or-
leans on August 29, 2005, winds downtown
were in the Category 3 range with frequent
intense gusts and tidal surge. Though the
most severe portion of Katrina missed the
city,
hitting nearby St.
Bernard
and
Plaquemines parishes,
the storm surge
caused more than 50 breaches in drainage
canal levees and also in navigational canal
levees and precipitated the worst engineer-
ing disaster in the history of the United
States.[1]
By August 31, 2005, eighty percent of
New Orleans was flooded, with some parts
under 15 feet (4.5 m) of water. Most of the
city’s levees designed and built by the United
States Army Corps of Engineers broke some-
where, including the 17th Street Canal levee,
the Industrial Canal levee, and the London
Avenue Canal
floodwall. These breaches
were responsible for most of the flooding, ac-
cording to a June 2007 report by the Americ-
an Society of Civil Engineers.[2]Oil refining
stopped so the price of petrol increased all
over the world.
Ninety percent of the residents of south-
east Louisiana were evacuated in the most
successful evacuation of a major urban area
in the nation’s history. Despite this, many re-
mained (mainly the elderly and poor). The
Louisiana Superdome was used as a desig-
nated "refuge of last resort" for those who re-
mained i