Hurricane Katrina – 4 Years Later
She came in the early morning, with a wind that made grown men cry, and her fury was the end of 1,836 people.
As can be seen in Times-Picayune photographer John McCusker‘s image to the left, Katrina made a point about sticking around longer than she was welcome, leaving New Orleans a different place than it was before.
On August 28, 2005, Hurricane Katrina was in the Gulf of Mexico where it powered up to a Category 5 storm on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, with sustained winds at nearly 175 mph. Oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico recorded 100-foot waves, some causing these mammoth structures to collapse under the weight of the storm’s tremendous water load.
At 7:10 a.m. EDT on August 29, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southern Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, just south of Buras, as a Category 3 hurricane. Maximum winds at landfall were estimated near 125 mph to the east of the center — crossing just south of New Orleans, then turning north toward Bay St. Louis, Mississppi, where she made a second landfall.
View Times-Picayune coverage here.
The New York Times article on President Obama‘s promise to continue rebuilding New Orleans.
And another website dedicated to the victims of Hurricane Katrina here.
The best book on the subject is by Tulane University professor Douglas Brinkley, titled The Great Deluge.
Four years later, and the Crescent City still stands — albeit with a population only 70% of what it was on that fateful weekend. But it will never be the same. Hopefully, it will be better.
“We’re not even dealing with dead bodies. They’re just pushing them on the side.”
— New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, regarding rescue crews trying to locate and save hundreds, if not thousands, of people who, in the days after Katrina struck, were still stranded on roofs and in attics.
