Hurricane Katrina: 20 Years Later, New Orleans Still Ill-Prepared

Hurricane Katrina's Devastation and Aftermath

• 🌀 Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast 20 years ago, killing over 1,800 people and displacing over a million.
• 🌊 The storm left 80% of New Orleans underwater, with no electricity and limited drinkable water, rendering the city uninhabitable for weeks.
• ⚠️ Two levees broke after the storm, flooding areas that had initially seemed to survive.

Neglect and Disregard for Victims

• 😥 Tens of thousands of people, including the sick, elderly, poor, young, and disabled, were left behind due to lack of transportation or inability to evacuate.
• 🚫 Reports from the time highlight a severe lack of food, water, and aid for those stranded, with instances of people being denied basic necessities.
• 💀 A disturbing account details a corpse remaining on the street for nearly two weeks, with authorities from the army, police, and Homeland Security repeatedly failing to remove it.
• 🗣️ Activists criticized the media's portrayal of Black families as looters while white families were described as searching for food, highlighting racial bias in reporting.

Failures in Leadership and Response

• mismanagement of the federal response, with FEMA Director Michael Brown, whose background was in Arabian horses, at the helm.
• 🏛️ Brown admitted his agency was unaware of thousands of refugees at the convention center, running operations from Baton Rouge while people in New Orleans suffered.
• 📢 The White House declared zero tolerance for looters, even for those taking essential items, a stance criticized as insensitive to the desperate circumstances.

Lingering Issues and Lack of Preparedness

• 📢 Malik Rahim, co-founder of the Common Ground Collective, argues that mainstream media falsely portrayed the city as having descended into anarchy.
• ✊ He asserts that the disaster was used as an excuse to remove people who were no longer tolerated, highlighting a