Hurricane Katrina Exposed America’s Deepest Inequalities. Twenty Years Later, New Orleans Still Bears the Scars.

Two decades after being abandoned by FEMA, New Orleans is still not prepared for another extreme weather event. 

On Aug. 29, 2005, roughly 80 percent of New Orleans was devastated by flood waters caused by the total collapse of the city’s levee system. From Aug. 23 to 29, the storm spanned coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, resulting in:

Disproportionate Impact on Black Neighborhoods

When the 23 total levee and floodwall failures struck the city, Black neighborhoods were hit the worst by extreme flooding and storm surges. Katrina destroyed at least 100,000 homes in New Orleans alone, particularly the predominantly Black neighborhoods of the Lower Ninth Ward and Gentilly, which were some of the most impacted by the city’s levee breaches the morning of Aug. 29. 

A significant amount of Katrina’s damage—not to property but to people’s lives and livelihood—was due to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) near-total neglect of the hurricane’s victims for weeks after the storm ravaged New Orleans on Aug. 29. FEMA began bringing in supplies within three to five days, but not nearly enough to provide for the whole city. For comparison, during the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, resources from USAID were mobilized within hours of the event. Many criticized the federal government’s quicker response to an international event rather than a domestic disaster. 

Rather than receiving promised aid from their own government, New Orleanians almost exclusively received food, water and rescue services from the Red Cross and other private organizations in the storm’s immediate aftermath. President George W. Bush, who was vacationing as the storm made landfall, faced criticism for delayed mobilization of FEMA and his focus on the Iraq War during the storm’s fallout. 

As they were devastated by the loss of their friends, families and homes, many lacked the financial resources or agency to determine where they could relocate. Evacuations organized by the National Guard continued through September as conditions in the Superdome and other shelters became unbearable due to heat and lack of resources like food, water and medical care. 

Notably, “of those who evacuated, about 410,000 had not returned to their homes by October 2006,” wrote researchers and academics Jeffrey A. Groen and Anne E. Polivka. Hundreds of thousands of those able to come home lived in FEMA-supplied trailers—cramped, cheaply-produced portable homes where many were exposed to formaldehyde. 

As laid out in Spike Lee’s four-part documentary, When the Levees Broke, many homeowners were blatantly duped by insurance companies like Allstate in the aftermath of the storm. NOLA residents, many of whom worked for years to purchase a home, were told that flood insurance did not cover wind damage to their homes, even if the damage was a result of both elements of the hurricane. Various types of homeowners insurance are continuing to skyrocket and become more unaffordable, including flood and wind policies. 

New Orleans’ population still has not recovered to its pre-Katrina levels. In 2006, the city population was 223,000—half of its 455,000 residents in 2005.

In 2020 (the most recent decennial census), there were 383,997 residents. 

Implications for Women and Children

Thousands of childcare centers were impacted by the storm, compounding problems for already underfunded childcare and the women and families that relied on it. FEMA reported that 3,045 childcare centers in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi were located in federal disaster areas. And low-income families were hit the hardest, as only 25 of the over 200 centers in New Orleans catering to low-income families remained operational. At the time of the storm, almost 30 percent of women in New Orleans were living below the poverty line compared to 20 percent of men, placing them at higher risk for limited resources. 

Hurricane Katrina prompted the largest migration of Americans since the Dust Bowl, forcing more than 1 million people from their homes. Schools were destroyed and over 300,000 children were enrolled in new schools throughout the country. 

The hurricane also caused a dramatic uptick in gender-based violence in the years following, while women were displaced from their homes. Intimate partner violence remains an often overlooked public health issue following disasters. While reports of physical victimization stayed the same for men, they almost doubled for women: from 4.2 percent to 8.3 percent. And on a wider scale, climate disasters are linked to increased rates of child marriage, sexual exploitation and human trafficking. 

Consequences of Insufficient Disaster Management 

Despite years of public discourse and calls for improved infrastructure, New Orleans is still not prepared for another Katrina.

In 2019, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted an annual survey deeming the levees “minimally acceptable.” Despite this assessment, the Corps has not published another grading in the six years since.

A recent Tulane study showed that the already below-sea-level city is sinking even further, which is evident throughout the city by extremely sunken sidewalks and roads, and frequent damage to local infrastructure via flash flooding, even in brief rainstorms. If the entire city is sinking, the levees are, too.

Yet, under the Trump administration, FEMA is even less prepared to serve the Gulf Coast in an extreme weather event. In early July, a flash flood killed more than 130 people in Kerr County, Texas. In response, DHS secretary Kristi Noem opined that disaster management “should be state and locally led, rather than how it has operated for decades.” 

Katrina highlighted many of the issues of FEMA as an organization—slow response time, supply shortages, lack of preparation—but rolling back federal aid is not the answer. Rather, as laid out by 180 FEMA staffers warning Congress that today Trump’s “FEMA is enacting processes and leadership structures that echo the conditions PKEMRA was designed to prevent.” 

Policy Implementation and Future Prevention Strategy

In the two decades since Katrina, some reforms have been adopted, yet are not sufficient in case of another extreme weather event. Testimony from Katrina survivors and Louisiana officials in December 2005 prompted Congress to pass the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act in 2006, which sought to strengthen FEMA’s internal infrastructure and create more preventative safeguards rather than a solely reactionary mission. 

More recently, local policy in New Orleans has been enacted to bolster flood mitigation, yet the Trump administration’s rollback of FEMA operations is likely to undermine any progress the city makes on its own. 

And hurricanes aren’t going anywhere. In fact, climate experts warn of an increase in extreme weather due to human-driven ecological disruption. In 2025 alone we’ve seen extreme flooding, increased tornado warnings, and wildfires around the world, and in 2024 natural disasters caused at least 16,753 deaths around the globe.

With this administration’s utter irreverence for extreme weather events and the importance of protections against them, local advocacy may be our best bet moving forward. Organizations like Levees.org are pushing for the Army Corps of Engineers and the city of New Orleans to consistently inspect and reinforce the levees and floodwalls to prevent another catastrophe like Katrina. 

Additionally, as funding for weather research is decimated under the current administration, independent university studies continue to be as important as ever. 

This August also marks one year since I moved to New Orleans myself, where, through my encounters with my professors, local students and city residents, I’ve realized that Katrina is still very much present in NOLA: Her destruction of entire neighborhoods and challenge to the city’s lively spirit have left scars still visible in the community. 

New Orleans didn’t deserve this. No community does. The Trump administration’s decimation of FEMA has already had horrific effects, and as climate change continues to worsen, extreme weather is only going to become more of a threat, especially to coastal and below-sea-level communities. 

Thanks to Livia Follet for her editorial support.