When was katrina released

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, The historically low-income, African American area boasted a 14,strong population back in , but the community was hit the hardest by the storm. During the hurricane, a barge broke into the levee protecting the ward, causing the area to be overrun with 12 feet of water, which destroyed homes in a matter of minutes.

Army Corps of Engineers, which built the city's levees, of failing to build strong enough. Ten years after the Hurricane , the Corps finally acknowledged, following numerous studies conducted by experts, that there had been flaws in the flood protection system it had built for the city. Thus, residents were not only ill-prepared for when the hurricane hit, but they were also not required to have flood insurance.

Flood insurance is regulated by the National Flood Insurance Program and required for those who are living in areas that are deemed prone to flooding. Because most of New Orleans's residents were not required to have flood insurance, the monetary impacts of the disaster were only further exacerbated. Indeed, updated federal flood maps released in moved more than half of the population of the city out of the high-risk zone, which releases them from having to purchase flood insurance and creates a false sense of security.

They also received the least amount of funding in the rebuilding process. Not only was the area ill-prepared for a massive storm, but funding afterwards was often unreliable and inadequate for the damage the hurricane inflicted. And along with national attention went the public support to try and piece back together the remains of the Lower Ninth Ward. But reports since the hurricane have also exposed another culprit: shoddy engineering. More than six months after Katrina hit, the US Army Corps of Engineers released a report in which they took blame for the levees breaking, flat-out admitting that the levees were built in a disjointed fashion based on outdated data.

Much of this, the report revealed, was due to a lack of funding — resulting in a flawed system of levees that was inconsistent in quality, materials, and design. Engineers also failed to account for the region's poor soil quality and sinking land, which created more gaps in barriers. The federal government was largely culpable for this mess, since it was largely on the Corps — a federal agency — to oversee the construction of the levees after Hurricane Betsy flooded New Orleans in As the New York Times's Campbell Robertson and John Schwartz reported, a report placed some of the responsibility for the levees' failures on dysfunctional interactions between local officials and the Corps.

But a new paper published in the journal Water Policy this year — and penned by one of the authors of the report — put the blame more squarely on the Corps, which allegedly made poor decisions during the construction of the levees to save money.

The result was some short-term savings for taxpayers and the Corps, but ultimately a bigger disaster through Katrina. This is just one of the many ways the federal government failed to prevent a disaster in the lead-up to Katrina. Even though there were always serious concerns about how a hurricane could destroy New Orleans, the federal agency in charge of building better levees and flood walls was at times more worried about money than about building proper protections, and relied on outdated data to build what turned out to be deeply flawed structures.

About 1. But as the New York Times's David Gonzalez reported as the storm battered the region, tens of thousands of people remained in the city — not necessarily by choice, but rather because they were too poor to afford a car or bus fare to leave. It was common during and after Katrina to hear people asking why everyone didn't just leave New Orleans.

But the truth is that many of them couldn't leave — as the Times reported — and the government did little to nothing to help them get out of Katrina's path before the hurricane hit.

This is one of the reasons Kanye West infamously said that "George Bush doesn't care about black people. And while New Orleans has reportedly made improvements in its evacuation plans since , the inadequate response at the time of Katrina led to more deaths and pain that could have otherwise been avoided — particularly among impoverished, minority communities.

President George W. After the response to Katrina proved to be its own kind of unmitigated disaster, the Bush administration attempted to shift some of the blame to local and state officials — particularly Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. Some media outlets, going by information from administration officials, claimed Blanco didn't declare a state of emergency.

In fact, Horne noted in the Washington Post , Blanco declared a state of emergency on August 26 — a day before Mississippi and the White House did, and three days before the storm made landfall. And while President George W. Bush vacationed in Texas as the storm hit, Blanco pleaded for the administration to send more aid. At one point, the Louisiana National Guard asked FEMA for buses — but, days later, the agency sent only , and it took a week to evacuate flood survivors. This was just one of the many ways FEMA fell short even as local and state officials pleaded for help and issued warnings to federal officials.

Staffed by political appointees with little to no experience in dealing with disasters, the agency bumbled its response to Katrina, causing unnecessary deaths and chaos across Louisiana and Mississippi. The horrible response would eventually help tank Bush's approval ratings , with his administration's response to Katrina consistently viewed poorly by a majority of Americans.

A series of flood walls, levees, and flood gates buttress the coast and banks of the Mississippi River. Simulations modeled in the years after Katrina suggest that the storm may have been made worse by rising sea levels and warming temperatures. Scientists are concerned that hurricanes the size of Katrina will become more likely as the climate warms.

Studies are increasingly showing that climate change makes hurricanes capable of carrying more moisture. At the same time, hurricanes are moving more slowly, spending more time deluging areas unprepared for major flooding.

All rights reserved. Timeline of a Storm Katrina first formed as a tropical depression in Caribbean waters near the Bahamas on August 23, I flew to New Orleans two days before the storm made landfall. The National Guard arrived in force on September 2 with aid from the outside and a convoy of trucks to distribute food, water, and supplies to those still at the convention center.

This was the day the tide started to shift psychologically, as proper relief appeared. People had been stranded in the city for four or five days, many stuck in the Superdome or the convention center. The stench and heat were overwhelming and unforgettable. September 2, I flew to New Orleans two days before the storm made landfall.

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