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Historic Event

Hurricane Katrina

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  • Contemporary Era, 2001-present
A child rides past debris in New Orleans

Hurricane Katrina’s Impact

Flooded neighborhoods in New Orleans, August 29

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, bringing severe wind and flooding to parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Katrina caused nearly $125 billion dollars in damage and an estimated 1,392 people died. Gulf communities were devastated. In New Orleans, 80% of the city flooded after the levees broke along Lake Pontchartrain.

New Orleans was particularly vulnerable to the hurricane because of the eroding Gulf coastline and the city’s fragile levee system. High poverty in New Orleans made many residents especially susceptible to the social and financial pressures that followed such a disaster. When Katrina struck, many impoverished New Orleans neighborhoods were predominantly Black—these areas bore the brunt of the disaster. Hurricane Katrina forever transformed New Orleans’s landscape, demographics, and culture.

Flooded neighborhoods in New Orleans, August 29

New Orleans History and Culture

The original home of the Chitimacha and other Indigenous peoples, New Orleans was established by the French in 1718. The area had long been a trade hub because of its location on the Gulf of Mexico and the mouth of the Mississippi River. New Orleans became a center of North America’s slave trade, and thousands of enslaved Africans were sold there. By 1732, enslaved Africans comprised 65% of the population of Louisiana, though New Orleans was also home to a large population of free people of color.

The French ceded control of Louisiana to Spain from 1763–1803. In 1803, France sold New Orleans to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Over the years, Spanish, French, African, Creole, and Indigenous influences in New Orleans created a vibrant culture that continues to attract people to the city today.

Three members of the White Eagles Mardi Gras Indian tribe

Spanish architecture is visible on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter and throughout the city.

Illustration of a slave auction in New Orleans, 1842

Buster Holmes serving his red beans and rice at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, 1976

Lady Sequences Marching Club, 1993

Eureka Brass Band, ca. 1960

Jazz Funeral, 1981

Congo Square, the historic gathering place for free and enslaved Black people in New Orleans, 1942

Interactive Timeline

Hurricane Katrina and Its Aftermath

Hurricane Katrina was a natural and human-made disaster. Katrina’s devastation, combined with insufficient preparation, led to thousands of lives lost and billions of dollars in damage. Much of the destruction we associate with the hurricane was actually the result of faulty levees, preexisting inequalities, and inadequate disaster relief. The emotional, environmental, and economic effects of Hurricane Katrina continue to be felt in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf Coast region.

Color photograph of people walking through flood waters during Hurricane Katrina.

Surviving the Storm

On August 28, 2005, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city. Some nursing homes and hospitals were evacuated while others sheltered in place. However, less than 24 hours before the storm’s landfall, more than 100,000 people were unable or unwilling to leave.

After the storm made landfall and the levees broke, many struggled to survive. High winds and rising waters caused power outages and complicated rescue efforts. As bodies floated down the streets, survivors clung to floating objects, climbed onto cars, rooftops, and elevated highways. First responders evacuated thousands to the Superdome and the Morial Convention Center. Both locations lacked sufficient food, water, baby formula, and medicine for 50,000 stranded people. All faced a lack of power, food, water, and hygiene in sweltering heat that rose over 90 degrees. Some died or watched loved ones die while waiting for rescue.

Many Katrina survivors have recounted their experiences surviving the storm and its aftermath.

Screenshot from "Hurricane Katrina" Divine Intervention

Angela Trahan recalls being rescued by Ronald Hingle

Screenshot from Katrina Kid Shares Dramatic Hurricane Survival

Kenyon Dunbar explains how his family survived.

Screenshot from "Katrina survivors struggle years after hurricane."

Katrina survivors still struggle years after the storm.

Screenshot from "Hurricane Katrina: Superdome Survivor."

Poet Shelton Alexander shares his experience surviving at the Superdome.

Screenshot from video " Man Recounts the Moment Orleans Parish jail flooded during Hurricane Katrina."

Sherman Singleton remembers surviving Katrina in the Orleans Parish Prison.

Screenshot from "Hurricane Katrina: Heroes of Charity Hospital"

Charity Hospital staff explain how they cared for patients while stranded during and after the storm.

Rescuing Survivors

New Orleans residents were the city’s first rescuers. When people signaled for help from attics, rooftops, and highway overpasses, citizens swam or walked through contaminated floodwaters to reach them. Those with boats, including local police and fire departments, rescued the stranded from treetops and roofs. The U.S. Coast Guard airlifted thousands and assisted law enforcement with search and rescue operations.

The local, state, and federal response to Katrina has been criticized. Nine days after Katrina made landfall, Mayor Ray Nagin ordered the total evacuation of New Orleans, despite thousands of people still waiting there to be rescued. The Historic New Orleans Collection documented first responders experiences in its Through Hell and High Water Oral History Project.

United States Coast Guard Rescue Basket

Coast Guard helicopter rescues Katrina survivors

Morgan Archer Remembers Hurricane Katrina

Morgan Archer was 15 years old when her family’s New Orleans home flooded. She kept a diary during the storm and later documented her experiences surviving the flood and evacuating the city.

Hi, I’m scared because they have a hurricane named Katrina coming here to New Orleans and we didn’t leave to go anywhere and now I think we’re gonna drown. The news said that it’s a powerful hurricane and it’s like Betsy or Camille. I don’t want to drown. I’m scared cus I don’t know what’s going to happen. Me, my mom and my dad are going to be tied together so we can hopefully find each other if it starts to flood. My sister is safe because she’s in North Carolina for college. I hope and pray that nothing happens to my family. I don’t want to die, and I don’t want them to die either. I don’t know what I would do without them. Well, I guess I just have to wait and see. I hope we all survive.

Morgan Archer's Diary, August 28, 2005

My family and I were cleaning up small puddles that were left from the rain and I figured everything would go back to normal like after the previous hurricanes. The small puddles soon got bigger. . . The puddles of water never stopped, even after an hour of mopping. My father thought it was a neighbor’s pipe that had burst, but I knew that wasn’t the case because I noticed a stream of water that ran through the front of our brown wooden door. . . . Suddenly the contaminated water gushed in through the front door, and the movie Titanic entered my mind. This began the impromptu decisions my family and I had to make. I saw the apprehensive looks on my father and mother’s faces when they told me to run upstairs.

Morgan Archer, “The Day the Levee Broke”, 2007

That Tuesday morning, I saw that my mother was concentrating on a light pole outside of the window in my room; she was using the pole’s length as a marker for the water. I knew she was really concerned about how high the waters were getting. I started to look out the window until my father came in the room with hiking boots and trash bags. At first, I laughed when I saw my father’s clothing, but then he told me what we were about to do. He said to wear long, old jeans and old shoes because we were going out to look for food and help.

Morgan Archer, “The Day the Levee Broke”, 2007

We walked to a local discount store and saw that the glass was broken in a small square section at the bottom of the wall. Since I was the smallest, I climbed through the square hole and went inside. I could barely see due to the dim light that shone from the fluorescent bulb above my head. I quickly grabbed potted meat, snacks, bottled soft drinks, and water. My mother came in with a trash bag and told me to throw all of the food and drinks in it. I felt like a criminal, but that was our only way of survival. We returned home after our walk and ate our food.

Morgan Archer, “Facing Reality”, 2007

On Wednesday, my mother and father went back into the waters to see if people were still around. . . . After my mother and father came back, they said they saw some people on their roofs and an old lady and her husband down the street. I was pleased that we weren’t the only people in our community, but I was still worried. We stayed in the house for the rest of the day, and I listened to the radio show that let people call in and try to locate and rescue their lost families and pets. The newscasters were still calm and saying that the waters would go down. I didn’t feel too optimistic about the idea. My mother called out the window to the lady down the street; they talked about all the people left in our gated community and who had already left.

Morgan Archer, “Facing Reality”, 2007

The hurricane is over, and it was hell! After we had flooding, and it came up to the middle of the inside stairs. So we stayed upstairs for 5 days then we started to go outside in the water to go find some help. After that we had to find food and water. Then we heard that the water level was going to get higher so we tried to get out but we didn’t know how. So then we heard good news about people fixing the levee so the water wouldn’t drown us. Then we stayed upstairs and listened to the radio. After that we decided it was time to get out of the house.

Morgan Archer, Diary Entry, September 2, 2005

On Thursday we were the only family left, and we knew we had to leave our home. We gathered small amounts of clothing, food, and sanitary products and left before it got dark. …There was a long line of families waiting for the Coast Guard to carry them away in the helicopter [at the local Lakefront Airport]. [My family and I] got onto the helicopter, and the last image of my neighborhood looked like little toy houses in a big puddle of water. We were taken to a bigger airport in New Orleans called the New Orleans International Airport and spent the night there. [The next day we were quarantined in San Antonio, TX.

Morgan Archer, "Facing Reality", 2007

We got out and we were at an airport then we flew to Baltimore so we can be with my family. We are in Baltimore now.

Morgan Archer, Diary Entry, September 4, 2005

New Orleans After Katrina

Photographer Frank L. Stewart captured some of the damage to homes, streets, churches, and other New Orleans locations.

Flooding on Humanity Street

Car floating on a flooded street

Damaged interior of a home

Damaged interior of a church

Flooded neighborhood

Media Response and Collective Memory

While millions of people lived through the disaster, millions more Americans experienced Hurricane Katrina through the media. Media coverage shaped collective views about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

Some news reports described Black and poor survivors using prejudiced language like “looters” and “refugees.” Some media outlets overrepresented, exaggerated, and misreported post-storm criminality and violence. Other media outlets gave voice to candid first-person accounts of trauma, death, and survival. People used live news reports to send messages to loved ones separated by the storm. These stories attempted to humanize and correct the narrative about the unfolding disaster.

Screenshot from "Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise | Media Response to Hurricane Katrina."

Excerpt from the 2016 PBS special “Black America Since MLK” reviewing the media’s response to Black suffering.

Screenshot from "Hurricane Katrina Relived Through Media Footage"

AJ+ examines media footage from Hurricane Katrina.

Displacing New Orleans

New Orleans evacuees at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas

Hurricane Katrina forced one of the largest and most abrupt displacements in U.S. history, affecting over 1.5 million people in the Gulf region. But despite this, only a handful of studies have investigated where displaced New Orleans residents live. In the desperation and chaos after the storm, people boarded buses out of the city without knowing their destination. Most evacuees went to Texas, but others settled elsewhere in Louisiana or other locations around the country. Many who fled the storm did not have homes to return to.

With homes, communities, and social networks destroyed, some chose to stay in new locations or move to other cities. By 2007, only two-thirds of the city’s original population had returned. Black residents were the least likely to return to New Orleans.

New Orleans evacuees at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas

Returning to New Orleans

Gloria Butler and her son Terrance return to their home in the ninth Ward

Returning to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina has been a challenging process.

Federal and state recovery efforts were often disproportionately distributed. Gentrification intensified, pushing Black and poorer residents into more devastated areas or out of the city altogether. Certain programs intended to help residents, like the Road Home program led by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), caused poorer residents to cover more of their rebuilding costs than their wealthier neighbors. Louisiana also sued grant recipients, alleging fund mismanagement, and pursued debts against survivors until the state dropped the lawsuits in 2022.

For the people of New Orleans, these changes have created a stark difference between the city before and after the storm. Despite this, residents remain determined to continue traditions and make New Orleans home.

Gloria Butler and her son Terrance return to their home in the ninth Ward

Learning from Hurricane Katrina

Second line commemorating the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina continues to inform local, state, and national government disaster preparations. In New Orleans, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers updated the levee system. Louisiana and other coastal states changed building codes to require structures to withstand extreme weather. Federal reforms authorized rescue for pets during disasters and emergencies. These reforms also facilitated funding for local pre-disaster mitigation and standardized providing mental health services in disaster recovery efforts.

Second line commemorating the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

New Orleanians Reflect on the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

I suppose that the story of the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is meant to be a heroic one. I struggle to express the expected, uplifting words I know I am supposed to say—how we are rebuilt, resilient and revitalized. We are all of that, but we are tired of hearing it. Black New Orleans withstood the battle. But we are still undergoing the war.

Cierra Chenier, 2025

We are in control of our destiny. This is our neighborhood and no one is gonna tell us what to do in our neighborhood. Nobody.

Hal Roark, on fighting to rebuild the Broadmoor neighborhood, 2008

Sometimes, I feel like resilience is used as a tool because they want people to think, ‘Oh, no, everything is okay. These people are good. They’re strong. Look at how much they’ve overcome.’ It’s for me to say when I’m resilient. It’s for me to say what is resilient. It’s not for you. Even though we are resilient, we can never get back what was lost.

Edward Buckles Jr., Katrina Babies filmmaker, 2022

I still hold on to remnants of Katrina. My St. Mary's gym shorts are now a comfort object. Although I never returned to St. Mary's, I wear the shorts to sleep on nights I'm missing New Orleans the most. Pictures of my friends and family I took with me the day we left are kept in my apartment in a small, clear plastic container with a white lid, similar to the one that floated during the storm.

Maya Jones, age 15 during Hurricane Katrina, 2015

Some city residents say Katrina’s aftermath brought both good and bad things to New Orleans. I will never view as positive anything to come out of Katrina and the flood.

Wilborn P. Nobles III, 2015

Sustaining New Orleans Culture

Mask-shaped sign used in a Black Men of Labor parade, 2013

Despite the hardships of returning, residents rebuilt homes and reconstructed the cultural fabric of their neighborhoods. Local architecture was restored, and community spaces like churches, porches, and social halls reopened as places of healing and connection. Cultural traditions—second lines, brass bands, Mardi Gras Indian parades, and neighborhood festivals—returned to the streets, offering joy, remembrance, and resilience. Music venues reopened, continuing the city’s creative traditions.  

In the Musicians’ Village, the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music in the Upper Ninth Ward nurtures young talent and preserves the city’s musical legacy. New Orleanians’ acts of rebuilding are both physical and cultural, reaffirming the city’s identity and the strength of its people.

Mask-shaped sign used in a Black Men of Labor parade, 2013

Featured Constellation

Voodoo Guitar “Marie”

After Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana musician Don Moser created the Voodoo Guitar to honor New Orleans musical heritage. From foodways to second lines, New Orleanians keep their culture alive through artistic expression.

Explore the Guitar
Painting of a fleur-de-lis made of red beans and rice. The fleur-de-lis is featured in the center, on a multi-colored background. The fleur-de-lis is bordered in red beans with rice filling the inside.
Guitar used by Don Moser. The 6-string electric guitar is wooden with metal-plated head and body. A plaque on the head features text that reads [KATRINA - AUG - 29- 2005].
A fractured landscape painting in acrylic and oil on four (4) sheets of paper mounted to board with mixed media. The artwork depicts ladders, houses, geometric shapes, birds, dogs, snakes, and other abstract forms on a cobalt blue background

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