Hurricane Katrina

Historical Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Domains

Natural Disasters

Dates

Date of occurrence 2005-08-29

Places

United States (Location)

Resources

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Hurricane Katrina, a category 5 tropical storm with wind speeds near its centre exceeding 170mph, struck the coast of Louisiana at 6.10 am on August 29th 2005 causing massage damage to buildings in the area of Gulfport, Biloxi and New Orleans. The hurricane then continued north through Louisiana, Missippi and Alabama, devastating an area of 90,000 square miles (233,000 km2), almost the size of the United Kingdom. The worst damage was to the city of New Orleans where 4 levees collapsed flooding much of the city. Before the storm struck, the mayor had ordered a complete evacuation of the city, but whilst a majority of the one million citizens left New Orleans and the surrounding area, many of the poor and infirm were not able to leave so were trapped in their houses by the floods. After…

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156 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Hurricane Katrina". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 September 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1589, accessed 06 May 2024.]

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