On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina and the federal levees breaches that followed devastated massive areas of southern Louisiana. It was the most destructive and costliest natural disaster in American history, causing catastrophic damage the likes of which we have never seen before. Nearly 2,000 people lost their lives in Katrina with others still missing. Hundreds of thousands lost their homes. Countless communities were wrecked. Tens of thousands of businesses were shut down. Three milion people went without electricity. Schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, police stations, libraries, clinics, military installations, port facilities, and an array of public infrastructure was ripped apart. Federal disaster declarations covered 90,000 square miles, an area almost the size of the United Kingdom. Over two years after the hurricane made shore and the levees broke, the heartbreaking loss remains evident along the Gulf Coast with ruined homes, desolate neighborhoods and endless reminders of this massive American tragedy.
As the rebuilding process moves along, and progress is being made in many areas, we cannot forget the tens of thousands of families that still live in cramped trailers while others remain unable to return to their homes, jobs, neighborhoods and schools. "It was a national catastrophe of extraordinary and historic proportions," said Sen. Mary Landrieu of Hurricane Katrina. "As a natural disaster, it ranks in a category of destruction all by itself. Let us hope and pray we never see anything like it again."
Less than a month after Katrina hit, Louisiana was hit by another hurricane, this one named Rita. Making landfall September 24, 2005, Hurricane Rita brought terrible damage to the southwestern part of Louisiana as well as many coastal Texas areas. Rita, which was measured to have wind gusts as high as 235 mph, was the fourth-most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded and the most intense tropical cyclone ever observed in the Gulf of Mexico. The storm surge killed many people and completely destroyed a large number of coastal communities. "Rita was a terrible storm that cut across our southwestern parishes," said Sen. Landrieu. "Though Rita did not get the national attention from the media as did Katrina, it ranks as one of the worst natural disasters of our nation's history. I work everyday to make sure the bureaucrats and federal agencies in Washington never forgot the victims and the destruction caused by Rita."
These photos offer only a glimpse of the devastation caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in Louisiana.
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