Highlights
- Army Corps of Engineers’ “faulty design specifications” caused 65% of New Orleans’ flooding in America’s worst engineering disaster
- FEMA Director Michael Brown remained unaware of the Convention Center crisis for 3 days while deaths aired on live television
- 550 city buses and hundreds of school buses sat unused underwater, missing the chance to evacuate 20,000+ trapped residents
- Federal agencies actively blocked Walmart water deliveries, Coast Guard fuel supplies, and volunteer civilian rescue aircraft
- 1,392 confirmed deaths from $125 billion disaster caused by government failures, not hurricane winds alone
- Black residents died at 1.7-4x higher rates than white residents, with elderly populations abandoned by evacuation plans
Hurricane Katrina’s Hidden Horrors: How Government Failures Turned a Natural Disaster Into American Genocide
When Hurricane Katrina roared toward Louisiana’s coast in late August 2005, most people expected wind damage and some flooding.
NEW ORLEANS, La. (KPEL News) — On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near New Orleans as a Category 3 storm, but the real disaster wasn’t the hurricane itself. It was the spectacular failure of government at every level.
According to CNN, 1,392 people died in what became America’s costliest natural disaster, with damages reaching $125 billion. But the hidden truth reveals how government incompetence, racist neglect, and engineering failures turned a manageable storm into a humanitarian catastrophe that still haunts Louisiana today.
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The Levees That Were Built to Fail
Picture this: You’re watching the news as Hurricane Katrina approaches, and officials are telling you the levees will hold. You trust them, and why wouldn’t you? These are the same levees that protected your neighborhood for decades, built by the federal government’s top engineers…