Hurricane Katrina

Abstract This entry focuses on Hurricane Katrina, a powerful storm that made landfall on August 29, 2005. The hurricane generated one of the most deadly and destructive disasters in US history, and it still stands as the most costly natural catastrophe on record. Katrina affected approximately 90,000 square miles of land and inundated 80 percent of New Orleans after the levee system surrounding the city failed. Residents of coastal communities and cities all along the US Gulf Coast were placed under mandatory evacuation orders, and some 1.5 million persons fled the threatened region before landfall. Upwards of 120,000 more had to be rescued and evacuated following the storm. A decade after Katrina, tens of thousands of persons remained permanently displaced. The mental and physical health impacts, as well as the environmental and economic damages, have been enduring. Katrina is perhaps most telling, however, in terms of the racial, social class, age, and gendered disparities that it so clearly revealed in terms of who was most affected and who has faced the most challenges in recovering.