Hurricane Katrina 20 Years Later: Disaster, Recovery, & Legacy

Decades after the storm’s passing in August 2005, the wrath of Hurricane Katrina remains etched into the American psyche. Like the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, Hurricane Katrina was one of those rare events that affected the whole of a major American city, in this case New Orleans, a low-lying urban center surrounded by water and wetlands.

Hurricane Katrina was a disaster on many levels. Although the immediate threats posed by the hurricane’s wind, rain, and storm surge have long since dissipated, Katrina’s arrival and departure laid bare a number of political, bureaucratic, and socioeconomic shortcomings—driven largely by systemic bias and racism—associated with bringing a major city back from ruin. Whereas parts of the city have been made whole, in low-wealth communities of color, the long odyssey toward a “just recovery” continues.