An American History

1122 ★ CHAPTER 28 A New Century and New Crises

catastrophe if a hurricane hit the city.

But the federal government ignored

requests to strengthen its levee system.

When the storm hit on August 29 the

levees broke, and nearly the entire city,

with a population of half a million, was

inundated. Nearby areas of the Loui-

siana and Mississippi Gulf Coast were

also hard hit.

The natural disaster quickly

became a man- made one, with inept-

itude evident from local government

to the White House. The mayor of New

Orleans had been slow to order an evac-

uation, fearing this would damage the

city’s tourist trade. When he finally

instructed residents to leave, a day

before the storm’s arrival, he neglected

to provide for the thousands who did

not own automobiles and were too

poor to find other means of transpor-

tation. The Federal Emergency Man-

agement Agency (FEMA) had done

almost no preparation. When the pres-

ident finally visited the city, he seemed

unaware of the scope of devastation. If

the Bush administration had prided itself on anything, it was competence in

dealing with disaster. Katrina shattered that image.

The New Orleans Disaster

For days, vast numbers of people, most of them poor African- Americans,

remained abandoned amid the floodwaters. Bodies floated in the streets and

people died in city hospitals and nursing homes. By the time aid began to arrive,

damage stood at $80 billion, the death toll was around 1,500, and two- thirds of

the city’s population had been displaced. The televised images of misery in the

streets of New Orleans shocked the world and shamed the country.

Hurricane Katrina shone a bright light on both the heroic and the less

praiseworthy sides of American life. Where government failed, individual cit-

izens stepped into the breach. People with boats rescued countless survivors

from rooftops and attics, private donations flowed in to aid the victims, and

neighboring states like Texas opened their doors to thousands of refugees.

Residents of New Orleans, stranded on a rooftop
days after flood waters engulfed the city, fran-
tically attempt to attract the attention of rescue
helicopters.