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- This article is about the 2005 hurricane. For other storms with this name, see Hurricane Katrina (disambiguation).
Hurricane Katrina was the eleventh named storm, fourth hurricane, third major hurricane, and first Category 5 hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It first made landfall as a category 1 hurricane just north of Miami, Florida on August 25, 2005, then again on August 29 along the Central Gulf Coast near New Orleans, Louisiana, as a category 4 storm. Its storm surge soon breached the levee system that protected New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain. Most of the city was subsequently flooded by the lake's waters. This and other major damage to the coastal regions of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama made Katrina the most destructive and costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States.
| Duration | Aug. 23 - 31, 2005 |
|---|---|
The official death toll now stands at 1,080 and the damage higher than $200 billion, topping Hurricane Andrew as the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history. Over a million people were displaced — a humanitarian crisis on a scale unseen in the U.S. since the Great Depression.
In Louisiana, the hurricane's eye made landfall at 6:10am CDT on Monday, August 29. After 11:00am CDT, several sections of the levee system in New Orleans collapsed. Mandatory evacuation of New Orleans had been ordered by mayor Ray Nagin before the hurricane struck, on August 28. The order was repeated on August 31. By early September, people were being forcibly evacuated, mostly by bus to neighboring states.
Federal disaster declarations blanketed 90,000 square miles (233,000 km²) of the United States, an area almost as large as the United Kingdom. The hurricane left an estimated five million people without power, and it may take up to two months for all power to be restored. On September 3, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff described the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as "probably the worst catastrophe, or set of catastrophes" in the country's history, referring to the hurricane itself plus the flooding of New Orleans.
For a timeline of events leading up to Hurricane Katrina through the aftermath of the hurricane, see Timeline of Hurricane Katrina.