Ten years ago, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast, devastating coastal areas and flooding roughly 80 percent of New Orleans when the city’s levee system failed. More than 1,800 people were killed, some 1.3 million lost their homes and livelihoods and many opted not to return to the area once floodwaters receded. At an estimated cost of $81 billion, it’s the costliest natural disaster the United States has ever seen — though many remember Katrina not for its natural power, but for the failures of the federal and local governments to protect the city with proper flood controls and provide aid to its residents as they held on for dear life in the days after the rains stopped.
