The effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans were shattering and long-lasting. As the middle of Katrina conceded east of New Orleans on August 29, 2005, winds downtown were in the Category 2 variety with recurrent powerful gusts, and tidal flow was corresponding to regarding a strong Category 3 hurricane. Although the most stern portion of Katrina missed the city, striking nearby St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, the hurricane rush caused more than 50 breaches in drainage channel levees and also in navigational channel levees and precipitated the worst engineering disaster in the history of the United States.

By August 31, 2005, eighty percent of New Orleans was flooded, with several parts below 15 feet (4.5 m) of water. Mainly of the city’s levees intended and built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers were broken in one place or another, with the 17th Street Canal levee, the Industrial Canal levee, and the London Avenue Canal floodwall. These breaches were dependable for most of the flooding, according to a June 2007 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Ninety percent of the inhabitants of southeast Louisiana were evacuated in the most successful evacuation of a major urban area in the nation’s history. In spite of this, many remained .The Louisiana Superdome was used as a selected “refuge of last resort” for those who remained in the city. The city flooded owing mainly to the failure of the federally built levee system.