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Negative Essay : Hurricane Katrina

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Hurricane Katrina Imagine waking up one day, and you learn that you and your family are in terrible danger. You must pack your clothes, food, and irreplaceable items into a bag and get in your car and evacuate from the place you know and love. Where would you go? Unfortunately, this is the predicament many people faced during the last week of August, in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina was making its way into the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane Katrina was a monstrous natural disaster that made landfall and caused significant long-term damage, loss of life, changed the way Americans viewed hurricanes, and changed political attitudes towards President George W. Bush. Hurricane Katrina started off as a category 1 hurricane when it initially hit …show more content…

The levee failure also resulted in flooding which left some places 20 feet under water. On August 30th Hurricane Katrina starts to break apart and leaves the city in chaos as looting starts to occur. The Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, soon orders the evacuation of the Superdome, which was used as a housing center for almost 20,000 people during the storm. The federal government had a very slow response time, and almost seemed reluctant to help victims of the storm, this caused many citizens to be angry and distrust the President, George W. Bush. Hurricane Katrina claimed over 1,800 lives and is known as one of the most expensive natural disasters in history. Hurricane Katrina had many short-term and long-term impacts. One short-term effect caused by the massive destruction was significant loss of life. The total death toll is estimated to be 1,833, over 75 percent of the deaths occurred in Louisiana. According to CNN, approximately 40 percent of the deaths in Louisiana were caused by drowning, and 25 percent were caused by some type of injury or trauma. Another impact of the hurricane was the damage that it did to Louisiana’s infrastructure, 80 percent of New Orleans was underwater and many houses even floated off there foundation. Loss of electricity was a huge problem during and after the storm, with over 800,000 people without power, this lead to panic and

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