Hurricane Katrina Essay

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The tragedy of New Orleans

The month of August in 2005 was an extremely shocking and devastating time for the United States more particularly for the people of New Orleans, Louisiana. For a city that was already crumbling for many years something tragic was about to happen. On the 29th of August a rated Category 3 hurricane made landfall. The name of the tragic disastrous storm is Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina, will forever be known as one of the worst storms in United States history. Tearing apart the lives of so many people in just a short period of time(Hurricane Katrina, par. 1). Before the devastation of hurricane Katrina New Orleans population had already begun to decline. In fact the population had been declining for roughly …show more content…

People were able to begin evacuating before the hurricane hit due to the warnings from the meteorologists. The meteorologists discovered the path of the storm when Hurricane Katrina first formed as a tropical depression over the Bahamas on the 23rd of August. Knowing that the levees would be breached, the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin sent out a mandatory evacuation notice to the whole city. For the people that could not evacuate the city Mayor Nagin reserved the Superdome stadium as a shelter because it sat on a higher ground level. By the time the evening came nearly all the people except about twenty percent had evacuated the city. Of the remaining people thousands of them decided to stay home and the remaining thousands decided to seek out safety at the Superdome stadium(Hurricane Katrina, par. 2 & …show more content…

A large number of them are located in Houston, Texas. With the rest being spread all across the United States. Only a portion of those people have returned to the area to help clean up and rebuild their homes. Many of the other people are choosing to stay in the location they evacuated to, because they feel they have better opportunities there than they would back in New Orleans. Others fear that there is a possibility that another massive disaster such as Hurricane Katrina will happen again. But, for those that will not be returning they say that New Orleans will always hold a special place in their hearts(Kotkin, Pars

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