Hurricane Katrina Floods New Orleans

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the United States as a high-end Category 3 hurricane, driving an immense storm surge across coastal Louisiana and Mississippi. Originating near the Bahamas six days earlier, the storm had crossed southern Florida before undergoing rapid intensification over the unusually warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It briefly reached Category 5 strength with peak sustained winds of 175 miles per hour before slightly weakening as it approached landfall near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana. While coastal Mississippi faced a storm surge of about twenty-four to twenty-eight feet, southeastern Louisiana bore the brunt of destructive winds, rising waterways, and heavy rainfall.

The most severe flooding came in New Orleans, where roughly eighty percent of the municipality was inundated. This flooding was not merely the result of natural rainfall or overtopping waves, but of widespread mechanical failures in the municipal flood defense system. Levees and floodwalls in the New Orleans area failed or were breached at about 50 locations, including catastrophic failures along the 17th Street Canal, the London Avenue Canal, and the Industrial Canal. Within hours, deep water inundated the majority of the low-lying city, stranding many residents who had not evacuated.