At the Superdome in New Orleans, where supplies had been limited to begin with, officials accepted 15,000 more refugees from the storm on Monday before locking the doors. They had been in the attic since about 9 a.m.Outside, other neighbors were wading out, or were on their roofs, checking on each other. "President George W. Bush had originally praised his director of FEMA, Michael D. Brown, but as criticism mounted, Brown was forced to resign, as was the New Orleans Police Department Superintendent. The Yorks had lived in Bayou View — about two miles inland — since 1990 and had weathered many storms there.“A neighbor lived there during Camille and said they didn’t get any water,” Cheryl York said. “The family had to swim—with me on my © 2020 A&E Television Networks, LLC.
Photos: Remembering Hurricane Katrina A woman gets carried out of floodwaters after being trapped in her home in Orleans Parish, Louisiana, on August 30, 2005. When the storm surge (as high as 9 meters in some places) arrived, it overwhelmed many of the city’s unstable levees and drainage canals. That day, the National Weather Service predicted that after the storm hit, “most of the [Gulf Coast] area will be uninhabitable for weeks…perhaps longer.”Before the storm, officials worried that surge could overtop some levees and cause short-term flooding, but no one predicted levees might collapse below their designed height. I’d like to thank them for sharing it. So did hundreds of others across the Coast.Another amazing thing about the York’s Katrina experience is that they captured it in a video diary. By 9 a.m., low-lying places like St. Bernard Parish and the Ninth Ward were under so much water that people had to scramble to attics and rooftops for safety. I kept thinking, ‘if this structure holds we’ll be OK,’ chanting it in my head.“Then I realized, if it gets up into the attic, we have no way to get out.”Mr. All Rights Reserved.Michael Appleton/NY Daily News Archive/Getty Images Mrs. York said the neighbors nicknamed themselves the “attic sitters.”If you ever wanted to see the extraordinary experience many ordinary Mississippians had in Katrina, watch the Yorks’ video. Hide Caption Meanwhile, it was nearly impossible to leave New Orleans: Poor people especially, without cars or anyplace else to go, were stuck. Brother Ronald Hingle, then principal of In October 1780, a powerful storm slammed the islands of the Caribbean, killing more than 20,000 people. The U.S. Congress launched an investigation into government response to the storm and issued a highly critical report in February 2006 entitled, "The failures in response during Katrina spurred a series of reforms initiated by Congress. “Funny how you put so much stock in all this stuff and then, it’s gone.”“You start thinking of all these stories you’ve heard about houses that wash away,” Mrs. York remembered nearly 10 years later. It was the deadliest hurricane to hit the Western Hemisphere in more than 200 years. And officials from different branches of government were quick to direct the blame at each other. Hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were displaced from their homes, and experts estimate that Katrina caused more than $100 billion in damage.The tropical depression that became Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005, and meteorologists were soon able to warn people in the Gulf Coast states that a major storm was on its way. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin argued that there was no clear designation of who was in charge, telling reporters, “The state and federal government are doing a two-step dance. But so did many of their neighbors in the Bayou View neighborhood in Gulfport. “The water was two inches from the ceiling, and we were sitting there with our legs dangling.
Water seeped through the soil underneath some levees and swept others away altogether. By nightfall, almost 80 percent of the city’s population had evacuated. The Coast Guard rescued some 34,000 people in New Orleans alone, and many ordinary citizens commandeered boats, offered food and shelter, and did whatever else they could to help their neighbors. City leaders had no real plan for anyone else. Katrina then weakened to a Category 4 hurricane as it moved across the north central Gulf and weakened further to a strong Category 3 hurricane shortly before making landfall in southeast Louisiana.

That feeling of relief.”The Yorks waded out when the water had dropped to chest deep, about 5:30 p.m.