Hurricane Katrina

Essay by imhana88High School, 12th gradeA+, June 2006

download word file, 3 pages 3.3 1 reviews

Hurricane, which means evil spirit and big wind in Caribbean Indian, is an enormous rotating system of oceanic tropical origin with sustained surface winds of at least 74 miles per hour within the storm. Our earth's rotation causes the spinning of the storm we call a "cyclonic rotation", counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere while clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. Hurricane is a natural disaster that happens worldwide, and we distinguish them with different names by their location. A recent hurricane called the Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Louisiana on September 29, 2005, the winds blowing at about 145 miles per hour. It was recorded the eleventh named tropical storm, fourth hurricane, third major hurricane, and first Category 5 hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It was the third most powerful storm of the season after Hurricane Wilma and Hurricane Rita, and it also was the sixth-strongest storm ever recorded in the Atlantic basin.

Before it hit New Orleans, it hit the north of Miami, Florida on August 25, 2005 as Category 1 and along the Central Gulf Coast near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana as a Category 4 on August 29, 2005. Due to the tremendous force of the storm, the levee system that protected New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River broke, causing the city to be subsequently flooded. Hurricane Katrina was the most destructive and costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States, leaving major damages in the coastal regions of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

September 29, 2005 seemed like any ordinary Sunday. 6:10 AM, as the hurricane struck near Buras of Louisiana, nobody expected anything more than a tropical Hurricane Katrina that they have just experienced a few days ago. Nobody knew that this day would be the day the world witnessed a catastrophe that...