Hurricane Katrina Summary

Nicholas Devasia

My Symposium Project was about Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina formed on the 23rd of August over the Bahamas. On the 29th Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of the U.S. When the hurricane hit, it was considered a Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. When the hurricane reached its climax, it was then considered a category 5. Vast amounts of rain flooded major cities like New Orleans in Louisiana and Long Beach in Mississippi. When the storm dissipated, most of those cities were overly flooded. After the storm, many citizens stood up and helped out. Since a lot of people lost their homes, FEMA (federal emergency management association) had to stay in the cities that were effected so they could give the people food and shelter. Nearly 2,000 people died, 30% of New Orleans were in poverty, and it took several days, months, and even years to fix and clean all of the damage. Even though my town cancelled school for a couple of days, the storm didn't really affect us in a way that was tragic. The storm's strongest point was in the southeast quadrant of the U.S. so New Jersey didn't get hit that badly. There were several facts about Hurricane Katrina that I did not know before researching. One example would be that there are still at least 700 humans reported missing from the hurricane. Another fact is that even though several states weren't affected by the storm physically, Hurricane Katrina caused gas prices to go up, and it effected the economy. One thing I did not enjoy was the fact that Hurricane Katrina killed about two-thousand lives. Even though a natural disaster isn't controllable, humans as a society should be more prepared for incidents like this so we could avoid such a high amount of deaths.