Hurricane Katrina
Renewal and Recovery

“We want people to remember not the storm’s damage,
but to remember the Coast for how great our recovery effort was”
- Biloxi Mayor A. J. Holloway

Hurricane Katrina was among the costliest and deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. It was the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane on record and was the third-strongest U.S. hurricane ever recorded to have made landfall . Hurricane Katrina developed in late August during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season and annihilated a majority of the north-central Gulf Coast of the United States. The media concentrated their coverage on the devastation of New Orleans, as the levees that separated Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne were breached by the surge; they flooded 80% of the city and many areas of neighboring parishes. While the media focused on New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina made its final landfall in Mississippi, with the eye wall passing over the cities of Bay St. Louis and Waveland as a powerful Category 3 with sustained winds of 120 mph. Katrina’s powerful right-front quadrant passed over the Mississippi Coast causing a powerful 27 foot storm surge that went 6 miles inland in most areas and up to 12 miles inland along bays and rivers. Due to Katrina’s sheer size, devastation occurred over 100 miles from the center of the storm.

Katrina is estimated to be responsible for $81.2 billion (2005 US dollars) in damages, making it the costliest hurricane in U.S. history. The storm killed at least 1,836 people, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane. In Mississippi, at least 238 people were left dead, 67 missing, and billions of dollars in damages.