Hurricane Katrina

In August 2005, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico barrelled toward the United States. When Hurricane Katrina finally struck land, it devastated hundreds of miles of shoreline, but the disaster that captured the world’s attention unfolded in one place above all: the city of New Orleans. Within hours of the storm passing, the flood defence levees meant to protect the city broke, and it began to fill with water. What followed the natural disaster was a crisis that raised profound questions about preparedness, inequality, and the ability and willingness of a modern nation to protect one of its own great cities. But why was New Orleans so vulnerable in the first place? What was the response in the wake of the hurricane and flooding? And what did the disaster reveal about the systems of engineering, government and society that were supposed to protect it? This is a Short History Of Hurricane Katrina. A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Jed Horne, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City. Written by Sean Coleman | Produced by Kate Simants | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Mirianna Pitman-Latham and Matthew Peaty | Assembly edit by Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw Unlock the next two episodes of Short History Of… right now by subscribing to Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network, including Real Survival Stories and Sherlock Holmes Short Stories. Just click the subscription banner at the top of the feed, or head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions to get started. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:02Speaker 00

  It is the early morning of August the 29th, 2005, in New Orleans. For hours now, Hurricane Katrina has been battering the city, bringing huge storm surges of water from the Gulf of Mexico and dumping massive volumes of rain amid winds of more than eighty miles per hour.

• 0:22Speaker 00

  In the Lower Ninth Ward, a father of two in his early thirties braces himself before rushing out of his house to grab a box of supplies from his truck. It's just a few steps, but he has to work for them, with a furious gust threatening to knock him off his feet.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  All around him is evidence of the massive, Category 3 hurricane that has caused hundreds of thousands to evacuate over the last few days. Loose roofing sheets of corrugated metal flap and squeal, barely hanging on to the houses they once protected. Trees have fallen, and scattered debris lie everywhere.

• 1:01Speaker 00

  He grabs the box and closes the trunk. Then nods a greeting to a neighbor who was waving to him from her house across the street.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  They exchange a gesture of relief that they are both safe, and in truth, they were both expecting much worse. The warnings had said it would be bad, and they weren't wrong. But the eye of the storm has passed a little way off from the city, and the houses are mostly still standing. For now, they seem to have avoided the flooding they had feared.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  But as he locks the trunk, the man now suddenly looks up at the sound of a low, rumbling explosion, followed by a deep, gushing roar. His neighbor turns, head tilted, trying to place the sound. Suddenly her eyes widen, and she claps a hand over her mouth.

• 1:50Speaker 00

  Because at the end of the block, a huge surge of gray water is rolling towards them, moving at terrifying speed, filling the street from one side to the other.

• 2:01Speaker 00

  The man watches in horror as the water slams into the furthest houses, splintering wooden porches, tearing fences from their posts.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  A parked car lifts and begins to float sideways on the rapidly rising tide of floodwater.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  The surge can only mean one thing. The levees have breached. With the flood protection gone, the neighborhood will soon be underwater. And since no one in his family can swim, there is no choice but to get his daughters to the highest point possible.

• 2:35Speaker 00

  The man sprints inside, hurrying the girls up the stairs as the torrent hits the house with a splintering roar shaking its foundations.

• 2:45Speaker 00

  The whole building shudders as water pushes against the walls and a drifting car slams into the side, peeling away on its rebound and slowly disappearing as it sinks. Looking back down the stairs, he can see the water flooding in under the door, rising quickly.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  He hurries the girls to an upstairs window,

• 3:04Speaker 00

  helping them out onto the narrow sill and then up onto the roof. Outside, the street is a river, with the water already around eight feet deep. His children cling to him, crying, and he sings gently to them to quell their fear, trying to hide his own.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  But as he reassures his terrified little girls that everything will be okay, their home shears from its foundations, the wood unable to withstand the pressure.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  Helpless to do anything but pray, they hold tight to the house as it floats down what was once their road, slowly splintering and sinking, ever further into the flood.

• 3:53Speaker 00

  In late August 2005, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico barreled towards the United States. When Hurricane Katrina finally struck land, it devastated hundreds of miles of shoreline. But the disaster that captured the world's attention unfolded in one place above all: the city of New Orleans. Within hours of the storm passing, the flood defense levees meant to protect the city broke, and it began to fill with water.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  What followed the natural disaster was a crisis that raised profound questions about preparedness, inequality, and the ability and willingness of a modern nation to protect one of its own great cities. But why was New Orleans so vulnerable in the first place? What was the response in the wake of the hurricane and flooding? And what did the disaster reveal about the systems of engineering, government, and society that were supposed to protect it? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is A Short History of Hurricane Katrina.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  The city of New Orleans sits in a location that has always been both a gift and a risk. Tucked into a hook shape of land above the Gulf of Mexico, it's also hemmed in by the Mississippi River to its south and west. And immediately to its north lies Lake Ponchatrain, a vast, shallow, brackish body of water covering some 630 square miles. In the early 1700s, the settlement was founded as a port, because this was where the riches of the continent could be gathered, traded, and sent out into the world. The river has shaped the city's fortunes from the beginning. Jed Horn was city editor of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit,

• 5:49Speaker 00

  and the author of Breach of Faith, a book about the disaster that followed.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  The river swells, the river floods, the river throws huge tidal waves into the city's center, but it has also been the basis of the economy, the slave economy, let us not mince words, back in the day, when it was a very, very rich city, the richest per capita in America, and it, to this day, is a scene of passing cargo infrastructure. Huge ships pass through here or stop and offload their cargo before proceeding on out into the Gulf or on up into the middle of the United States.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  Known as "The Big Easy", the city has a distinct multicultural identity, bound up in music and the annual Mardi Gras festival of parades. With its strong sense of community, there is a feeling among its residents and visitors that New Orleans is a place unlike anywhere else in the United States.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  It's a small town, relatively speaking. Above all, as most people know, it's the city of jazz. It's the city where a great many wonderful jazz artists set their roots, live, sometimes generations of their families together, the Nevilles, the Marsalises, the Baptists and all of that, which makes it just a living cauldron of invention and cultural advancement.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  By July 2005, the city's population stands at just under 500,000, large enough to matter and small enough, as locals often say, to feel like a town.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  I might add, the population base is as complex as can be imagined in a small town. We have a huge black-white divide. It's a majority-black city. But we also have the Cajun people, who are French-speaking and came down from Canada a long time ago. We have a huge Latino population these days. It's quite a melting pot.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  New Orleans has been shaped by the legacies of French and Spanish colonial rule, slavery, segregation, and migration. Though its layered and diverse race and class have been written deeply into not only its culture, but also its geography. Sitting in a saucer-shaped basin, much of the city is close to sea level or even below it. The higher ground hugs the old natural levee beside the Mississippi, while lower-lying areas stretch up towards the lake and into the land that was once swamp or marsh.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Over time, those differences in elevation have become part of the inequality in the city. The higher land is home to those who have money or power, while the rest occupy the cheaper, more flood-prone districts.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  The main problem with anything saucer-shaped is that it holds water. As such, long-raised embankments of earth and concrete, known as levees, have been built alongside the river to keep the water where it's meant to be when it rises.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Well, levees are huge, for the most part, huge earthen mounds, twenty, thirty feet high along the river. You can walk up onto them, you can throw a frisbee, you can walk your dog. They are very accessible and of paramount importance in keeping the river in the riverbed. And then, within them, are further fortifications, the so-called sheet piling, which are just sheets of metal, sometimes twenty, thirty feet deep, driven through the tops of the levees all the way down into the subsoil.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  With the exception of the easternmost part, almost all of Oline's parish is ringed by levees. Behind them sits an intricate system of pumps, largely built and expanded in the decades after the Second World War. They work constantly, lifting out rainwater and pushing it back into the surrounding canals, lakes, and waterways, while floodwalls reinforce the weakest points. Without this infrastructure, much of the city could not function as it does.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  By the time hurricane season rolls around, in 2005, there have been warnings for years that parts of it are inadequate. Upgrades are behind schedule, adding to the fear that a truly powerful storm could overwhelm the whole thing.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  The city's relative isolation in the deep south only sharpens that vulnerability. When extreme weather approaches, outside help does not arrive quickly, if at all. And for many residents of this relatively poor city, leaving isn't straightforward. And when a sizable storm now starts to brew, the combination of these geographical, social, and political realities really starts to matter.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  On Tuesday, August 23, 2005, a tropical depression forms over the warm waters of the Bahamas, around 900 miles to the southeast of New Orleans. Though it's unremarkable at first, it is then fueled by warm ocean water and rising air, and within a day, its wind speed passes the 39 miles per hour mark. Reclassified as a tropical storm, it is given the name Katrina. By August 25, it's upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane, and makes landfall in Florida with winds of around 80 miles per hour.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  There is damage in Florida with flooding and power outages, but it's not extraordinary for the region or the season.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  But Katrina now moves out over the Gulf of Mexico, where it stays for 48 hours, growing ever wider as it rapidly intensifies. Forecasters issue increasingly urgent warnings, with projections showing it to be on course towards the Louisiana coast and the low-lying city of New Orleans.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  Aside from concerns about the strong winds, there are fears about storm surge and what might happen if the levees are overtopped. But for many in the region, this is not unfamiliar territory. They've weathered big storms before.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  New Orleans was inured to panic by the frequency with which we experience hurricanes. And, you know, they have a way, and this one did the same thing: of hooking to the east ever so slightly at the last minute and plowing up into Mississippi, which, you know, has much less infrastructure, much less urbanity. And the assumption is, "Okay, it's gonna be tough." There's a long tradition of, "Hey, let's barbecue some chickens out here on the street and have ourselves a party." And that certainly was going on.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  Even as Katrina gathers size and strength out in the Gulf, there is still a lingering hope that this storm may curve away or weaken. People are reluctant to leave yet. Besides, in a city where evacuations leave homes exposed, there is another quieter concern that makes staying put a sensible option.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  There's an inclination to just kind of hope it doesn't really get awful and see what happens. Hunker down, make sure your house isn't going to get raided or looted. Let's just see what happens. I've got a shotgun, you've got a shotgun. Let's just hunker down. And a lot of people chose to do that.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  And so the city waits. Its occupants board up windows, fill bathtubs, buy supplies, call relatives, and watch the forecasts with growing unease. Though many of those with the means to get somewhere safer choose to leave, with no organized evacuation underway, plenty have no choice but to stay put.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  On Sunday, August 28, Katrina's wind speed peaks at 175 miles per hour, making it a category five hurricane, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the Gulf. And there is little doubt that it's heading straight for New Orleans.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes' short stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder

• 14:35Speaker 00

  in the Sign of Four. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

• 14:45Speaker 00

  By Sunday morning, officials are urging people to leave New Orleans while there is still time. Mayor Ray Nagin issues the city's first-ever mandatory evacuation order. It is a dramatic step, but also a late one.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  The mayor has been chided for not having ordered an evacuation before the very last day, that Sunday. It was almost pointless to order that evacuation, but he finally did, and the reason he hadn't to that point. An evacuation is an enormously chaotic and difficult thing to pull off intelligently. Highways immediately jam, even if they're made one-way out of town, and I'm sure that there was a reluctance on Nagin's part to go to that extreme. He finally did. Chaos didn't ensue. It had already ensued, just from people acting on their own initiative.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  Those who have waited to leave until the evacuation order is given find themselves on clogged, one-way highways. Petrol runs low and tempers fray, with evacuees fearing they'll be still stuck on the road when the storm hits in just a few hours. Though more than a million people leave the wider New Orleans area, tens of thousands cannot. Some have no transport, are elderly or in hospital, or have nowhere obvious to go. There is no comprehensive public transport operation to carry everyone out either. In practice, evacuation is left largely to individual means and personal networks. If you have a car, cash, relatives, friends, and somewhere to aim for, you go. If you do not, you stay.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  A lot of mistakes in the evacuation. Where were the school buses? With lumped-in school buses, this whole city might have been evacuated in an orderly fashion, but that isn't what happened. It was calamitous, and people had no clear idea of how they were going to support themselves, feed themselves, where they were going to sleep.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  For those unable to get out, the city opens refuges. Most famous is the downtown home of the NFL New Orleans Saints, the Louisiana Superdome. It opens at noon and begins receiving thousands of people ahead of landfall, expected in the early hours of the next morning.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  By nightfall on Sunday, those who can leave have mostly gone. Those who cannot are either trapped in traffic, heading west into uncertainty, or settling in to face the storm where they are.

• 17:16Speaker 00

  By dawn on Monday, August the 29th, the waiting is over.

• 17:22Speaker 00

  Just before sunrise, Hurricane Katrina makes landfall near Bures, Louisiana, as a category-three hurricane. At well over 100 miles per hour, winds are ferocious. But it is the water that poses the gravest threat. A huge wall of seawater, known as a storm surge, is being driven towards the coast and into the wetlands, canals, and waterways of southern Louisiana. Along the Gulf Coast, that surge rises to more than 25 feet in places. It uproots trees and tears homes from their foundations. Entire stretches of coastline are left in ruins. In New Orleans itself, at first, the picture seems less catastrophic than many had feared.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  The city is battered by wind and rain, but avoids the full force of the storm. For a short while, there is a hope that the nightmare everyone feared may not happen after all.

• 18:19Speaker 00

  But soon, that illusion begins to collapse.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  The first reports now come in that some of the levees have failed.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  What had already become clear that afternoon, we're talking Monday afternoon after an early-dawn assault on the city by that storm, was that the levees were breaching and that water was pouring into the city. People went up onto the levees, and it was immediately obvious that Lake Pontchartrain, which is on one side of the city, and the Mississippi River, which is on the other side of the city, were simply pouring through these breaches and would soon flood the entire metropolitan area.

• 19:00Speaker 00

  Across New Orleans, the flooding rises with terrifying speed. Streets disappear beneath it as cars begin to float away. In the low-lying, predominantly black neighborhood of the Lower Ninth Ward, where many of the houses are modest, cheaply built, and closely packed together, the flooding is especially sudden and destructive. Out here, in the east of the city, closest to the Gulf, when the flood wall gives way, a wall of water tears through the neighborhood, strong enough to sweep some homes clean off their blocks. Houses take on water, room by room, and floor by floor.

• 19:37Speaker 00

  As it surges through their lower floors and up their staircases, families grab their children, pets, and elderly relatives, and head for their attics and rooftops.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  Many simply drown where the water finds them, unable to swim, too frail to climb to safety, or trapped by the speed with which it comes.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  By the end of the day, around 80% of New Orleans is underwater, much of it up to eight feet deep.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  This is not simply the force of nature either. The scale of the devastation reflects years of weakness in the city's flood protection, coupling poor design with inadequate maintenance in a system that had long been known to be vulnerable.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  The problem was that the levees were poorly designed, poorly maintained. There's been an effort to blame only the design of them, which was a febrile project, when in fact, the local authorities, the "levee boards," so-called, were wildly negligent in not looking after the areas that had dampened, the areas that had begun to erode, and as a consequence, the whole thing collapsed.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  The flaw is not only in how the levees were looked after, but in how they were built in the first place.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  The so-called "sheep pilings," the metal that runs down through the middle of those otherwise earthen, dirt banks, was not big enough to hold them upright in the kind of weather that they experienced in 2005, and they fell apart.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  Different agencies and authorities begin to trade blame over who is responsible for the failure. But the human cost is already clear. With the city and a large portion of its population already drowning, Hurricane Katrina is no longer a passing natural disaster, but a catastrophic infrastructure failure.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  And as the floodwaters settle, a second catastrophe begins to unfold. Tens of thousands of people are now trapped inside a city that can no longer function.

• 21:45Speaker 00

  This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators Returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History Of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four.

• 22:28Speaker 00

  Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

• 22:38Speaker 00

  In the immediate aftermath of the failure of the levees, rescue efforts are patchy and improvised. U.S. Coast Guard helicopters start lifting people from rooftops, while local police, firefighters, and volunteers in small boats try to reach those trapped by the flood. More organized military support will come later, but for now, rescue depends on who can get there first.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  Some stranded residents scroll messages on sheets or bits of cardboard and hold them up to passing helicopters, or wave shirts over their heads, hoping to be plucked to safety. Others remain trapped inside attics, banging on ceilings, waiting for anyone to hear them. In neighborhood after neighborhood, those who have survived the storm and the initial flood now find themselves marooned above it.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  With their homes destroyed, many more make their way to the shelters of last resorts, like the Superdome, where thousands of people had already gathered in the hope of waiting out the hurricane in relative safety. The nearby Ernest N. Morial Convention Center also begins to fill with people who have nowhere else to go. But even these emergency refuges quickly deteriorate into humanitarian crisis. Food and drinking water run low, toilets back up, lighting falters, and the oppressive late-summer heat and humidity exacerbate the growing stench, with temperatures reaching the mid-30s centigrade.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  It was ghastly, let's be blunt, and the people who were there would be the first to agree. The plumbing failed almost immediately, so there you have a sanitation issue, with people relieving themselves in the back corridors of the Superdome. Food very quickly ran out, but to a remarkable extent, people stayed calm. There were widespread rumors of catastrophic violence, gunplay, gunfights. It was not true. That didn't happen.

• 24:33Speaker 00

  Outside the picture is just as uncertain. While some higher parts of the city and more affluent areas like the French Quarter remain largely above water, entire poorer, lower-lying communities are submerged. Help from aid agencies like the Red Cross is stymied while the flooding continues, and large-scale federal assistance is still days away. So, for tens of thousands of people, rescue depends on being seen and on being reached in time. And in hospitals across New Orleans, time is already running out.

• 25:14Speaker 00

  It is the day after Hurricane Katrina swept across the Gulf Coast. Inside a hospital in New Orleans, a nurse pauses in a dim corridor, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The power has failed. The generators struggle through the night, but now the lights flicker and fade again, leaving only the thin, wavering beams of torches moving through the wards. Through the windows you can see floodwater in the streets below, turning the world outside into a slow-moving gray lake, punctuated by detritus, cars, and the bodies of the drowned. A traffic light blinks uselessly above the waterline.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Inside, the heat is suffocating. Without air conditioning, the temperature climbs with every passing hour, and the atmosphere is thick with the stench of sweat, antiseptic, and failed plumbing.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  Somewhere down the corridor, a voice calls weakly for help, and the nurse increases her pace. It's all they can do to keep the patients alive, let alone comfortable. They need help, and fast.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  In the ward, she crouches beside an elderly man who cannot walk. His skin is clammy and his breathing shallow. Time is running out for him. Stretches are in short supply, so staff are forced to improvise with sheets, blankets, anything that will hold a person's weight. Now, together with three others, she slides a sheet beneath him, knotting the corners tight. They are moving the sickest patients up to the roof, where hopefully they'll be lifted to safety by the infrequent helicopters.

• 26:53Speaker 00

  But the elevators are dead, so the only way out is by hand.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  On a coordinated count of three, they lift.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  The weight settles awkwardly between them as they begin the climb, one flight after another, each step slow and careful. The man lets out a low groan as they adjust their grip.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  As they climb, the nurse gently reassures her patient, keeping talking as they move.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  Above them, the thudding blades of a helicopter echo across the roof. The sound reverberates down the stairwell, offering a promise of escape. They reach a landing and pause to adjust their grip again.

• 27:36Speaker 00

  Then keep going. There is no time to delay. They need all of these patients out of here.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  Finally, they make it to the top, where an open door lets in a shaft of harsh daylight to cut through the gloom. On the roof, rescuers are already guiding another patient into a harness. The body lifts slowly into the air, turning slightly as it rises, legs dangling.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  The helicopter lifts and banks away. And for a moment, the roof falls quiet.

• 28:09Speaker 00

  Other patients sit or lie in the sun, waiting their turn, while staff bring water and try to keep them cool.

• 28:17Speaker 00

  One at a time. That is how they are leaving this place. One at a time.

• 28:24Speaker 00

  With no communication from above, no one here knows how many flights the helicopter can make. No one knows how long the fuel will last or how long this building will remain safe. Behind the nurse, the stairwell is filling as more patients are brought up from the wards below. Some conscious, some barely breathing, some silent and still. The line stretches back down into the darkness.

• 28:49Speaker 00

  Finding a space, the nurse and her colleagues gently lower the old man to the ground. He'll have a long wait up here, but at least he's one step closer to safety.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  She wishes him luck, then turns back to the stairwell again. There is no other choice. They either carry every one of these patients out of this building or leave them here to die in it.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  But while doctors, nurses, and neighbors struggle to keep people alive, the wider response is faltering.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  As the humanitarian crisis deepens, attention turns to the slow and confused response from the authorities. Responsibility for dealing with the disaster falls to a combination of city officials, the state government of Louisiana and the federal administration in Washington, led by President George W. Bush.

• 29:49Speaker 00

  In theory, agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, exist precisely to manage crises like this. But in the crucial first days after the storm, coordination just doesn't seem to be forthcoming. Buses that could evacuate thousands are delayed or never deployed. Food, water, and medical supplies don't reach those who need them most. Across New Orleans, tens of thousands remain stranded, waiting for salvation that they start to fear will never come.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Here we are, the richest country on the planet, and we couldn't dump loads of food down in front of the folks gathered in front of the convention center or the Superdome? I mean, what's the problem? We can't find buses? We can't mandate that those buses be driven directly to New Orleans? Apparently not.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  Help does come, just not in the way it's supposed to. The U.S. Coast Guard continues its air rescues, but it's a slow, piecemeal operation and not even spread across the city. After four days, National Guard units and federal troops begin arriving in greater numbers to support on the ground. But rescue is not the same as relief. Organized deliveries of supplies remain slow and uneven, and evacuation on any meaningful scale is still not in place. On the ground, survival becomes improvised. Neighbors help each other using anything that floats, from children's plastic sand pits to doors, road signs, plants of wood. They share food, water, news, and support. In many places,

• 31:25Speaker 00

  it is this idea of people helping people that keeps others alive.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  But it's not easy. Aside from the risk of drowning, the floodwater itself is dangerous. It's contaminated with sewage, wreckage, fuel, and chemicals, and in places, the bodies of the dead, not to mention the snakes and alligators.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  From across Louisiana, fishermen, shrimpers, and owners of any kind of boat form a backbone of volunteers, sometimes called the Cajun Navy. They bring their own vessels into the flooded streets, risking their lives to rescue and drop supplies to whoever they can.

• 32:06Speaker 00

  But these efforts, however courageous, simply can't meet the scale of the disaster. Fear turns to anger, and anger to desperation. And the spirit of "help thy neighbor" doesn't reach through every community in New Orleans.

• 32:24Speaker 00

  As the days pass, stories spread of widespread violence, of shootings, rapes, and gangs roaming the city stealing what they find. Most of these reports are exaggerated or simply untrue, but they take hold nonetheless as they are repeated across national media.

• 32:41Speaker 00

  In a city already marked by racial division, those rumors follow familiar lines. The largely-black population of New Orleans is increasingly cast not in terms of victimhood, but in terms of threat.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  Newspapers show images of black youths described as "ludus", while those depicting white people in similar circumstances simply describe them as having "found supplies".

• 33:06Speaker 00

  In some of the city's wealthier districts, built on higher ground where the floods aren't as severe, conditions are markedly different. Many residents left before the storm. Those who remain are more likely to have access to vehicles, resources, and information, and in some cases are reached more quickly by rescue teams.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  But as their underprivileged neighbors try to escape their own flooded areas, there are incidences of armed white civilians blocking roads, turning them back.

• 33:36Speaker 00

  And those attitudes are not confined to the streets. They reach into the highest levels of power.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  A group of big shots, businessmen and civic leaders and so forth, all of them white, had gathered themselves in Baton Rouge, the capital of the state, and one of the refuges that those who could leave New Orleans had found places to stay in. And that guy said to The Wall Street Journal, "If we don't use this as an opportunity to purge the city of its underclass", which is simply a very familiar reference to impoverished, black New Orleanians, "I'm not coming back", is what he said.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  Eventually, more troops and National Guard units move into the city to help with rescues, security, and the first attempt at evacuation.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  The Army did get into New Orleans, and under a guy named Russell Honoray, a wonderful Louisiana native, the Army began to make a real contribution. They began to pull people off roofs and go into houses and help people down from their attics where they had fled. And that was systematic work. It was important work. Ultimately, it was insufficient in the sense that there were so many more people that needed help and rescue that even the Army could provide.

• 35:01Speaker 00

  But even this more coordinated effort cannot keep pace with the scale of the disaster.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, "Real Dictators" returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On "Short History of," we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On "Real Survival Stories," a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In "Jane Austen Stories," Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in "Sherlock Holmes Short Stories," Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in the Sign of Four. Get all of these shows and more

• 35:53Speaker 00

  early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

• 36:02Speaker 00

  Inside government, the response remains tangled in delay and confusion. Even as the crisis deepens, political leaders continue trading blame over who failed to act, who delayed evacuation, who was responsible for the levees.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  You had that sort of embrace of inertia and bureaucracy at every level of government. I think the federal government was the most absurd. I mean, there was a famous moment when Michael Brown, who was the head of the FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was declared to be in need of a good supper. And so he went to a steakhouse in Baton Rouge and dined royally on steak and potatoes there, while the city continued to crumble and starve, literally for lack of food and any kind of support.

• 36:56Speaker 00

  In the face of this, it's little wonder those still trapped in New Orleans feel abandoned. And as the days stretch on, the question of how this can be allowed to happen grows louder, not just in the city, but across the country. How could one of the richest, most powerful nations on Earth struggle to rescue its own citizens from the disaster of this scale?

• 37:19Speaker 01

  You can blame bureaucracy, you can blame racism, you can blame the weather, which was behind it all. But I think, yes, the catastrophe was around interoperability, it was around just the complexity of the tragedy and the inability of the government to get out of its own way and just get stuff done.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  All the while, countless citizens of the city are trying to find their own routes of escape. But for some, even when they do find a way to safety, those on the other side of the divide are not willing to receive them.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  It is Wednesday, the 31st of August, three days after Hurricane Katrina struck.

• 38:06Speaker 00

  On the western edge of New Orleans, a young mother moves slowly along the highway towards the Crescent City Connection, a bridge that spans the Mississippi River and connects New Orleans with a neighboring city of Gretna.

• 38:19Speaker 00

  Her infant son is bound to her chest with a strip of cloth, the child's head tucked beneath her chin as he sleeps fitfully, having cried for hours through hunger and distress. At her side she supports her grandmother. Now in her eighties, she is frail and unsteady, her weight sagging with each step.

• 38:39Speaker 00

  The sun is high, and the heat is relentless and overwhelming. Still, they plod on, part of a mass of humanity trying to escape the flood.

• 38:49Speaker 00

  Some carry bags or push shopping trolleys with their children perched atop their meager possessions. One woman clutches a plastic sack of medicine as she shuffles along in the line. Some carry nothing at all.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  Faces are drawn, lips cracked, clothes stiff and muddied with dried floodwater.

• 39:09Speaker 00

  It has been a long walk, and they are hot, hungry, and dehydrated. But now up ahead, the bridge rises like a beacon of hope, dry and intact.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  Thousands have already crossed this way in the last day or so, before buses arrived on the far side to carry them onward away from the disaster. Now, as this group reaches the foot of the bridge, something has changed.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  The movement of the column slows, then stops. The woman looks up to see a line of police officers blocking the roadway ahead. They stand across the bridge, shoulder to shoulder, weapons visible, radios crackling at their belts. No one is being allowed through.

• 39:55Speaker 00

  The crowd presses forward anyway, uncertain at first, then more urgently as the reality becomes clear. One of the officers fires a warning shot into the air above the heads of the evacuees.

• 40:08Speaker 00

  People scream and duck, and a ripple of panic moves through the crowd. Another shot follows.

• 40:16Speaker 00

  The message is unmistakable: Gretna is closed. They're not letting anyone else in.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  The line breaks. Some turn back immediately, retreating from the threat. Others hold their ground, too exhausted to move, too desperate to go anywhere else. The young mother tightens her grip on both child and grandparent, holding them close as the crowd shifts around her.

• 40:43Speaker 00

  Behind them, there is nothing to return to. Ahead, the road out is blocked. This family, like so many others, have used the last dregs of energy to get this far, and now there is nowhere to go.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  Minutes, and then hours, pass, and people begin to sit, then to lie down. Small groups gather along the edge of the bridge, using bags, clothing, scraps of cardboard to create patches of shade against the relentless sun.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  Gradually, a camp forms, not by design, but by exhaustion. The bridge becomes a place of purgatory.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  But the waiting doesn't last long. With a chirp of the siren, a police cruiser now speeds down the bridge towards the camp. The officer in charge jumps out, shouting that they can't camp there, swearing at them as he tells them to get off the bridge. The woman hauls herself up, babies screaming, and reaches a hand to her grandmother. They have to move before hell breaks out.

• 41:46Speaker 00

  Even as they start to retreat, a helicopter overhead drops low to land nearby. The downwash whips up dust and debris, ripping plastic bags from hands, scattering what little people have left. Clothing, bottles, papers, and medicine are all torn away. People shield their faces as they scrabble on the ground, trying to gather what they can. The young mother bends over her child, shielding him from the blast as she pulls her grandmother closer.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  As the police continue to press, and more shots are fired above the crowd, reluctantly, the woman joins the retreat. Maybe they'll be allowed to cross tomorrow. Maybe not.

• 42:30Speaker 00

  What is certain is that she, like everyone else on the bridge, will never forget how help was refused to the victims of the hurricane in their darkest hour.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  That was an absolute classic example of persistent racism in the deep south of the United States of America. And it was partly triggered by the myths that were in such wide circulation about the gunplay and the fighting and the raping and so forth. But these people, desperate for any kind of solace or sustenance, were blocked at the first town they got to, where they might have descended from the bridge. And in a better world, they would have been received by caregivers, by the Red Cross, by whoever was over there, fed and camped in some form or other and given the life-saving, decent treatment that they deserved.

• 43:35Speaker 00

  The incident on the bridge at Gretna, along with almost every aspect of the official response to the crisis in New Orleans, has come to define Hurricane Katrina. It became not only a natural disaster, but also a moment that exposed profound weaknesses in the systems meant to protect the city and raised enduring questions about discrimination, responsibility, and the obligations of a government to its people.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  In the weeks and months after the disaster, more than 1,800 people lose their lives and over a million are displaced. The damage exceeds $125 billion, making Hurricane Katrina one of the costliest disasters in American history.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  The response of FEMA and the administration of George W. Bush comes under intense and sustained criticism.

• 44:24Speaker 00

  Investigations reveal failure at every level in emergency planning, in the design and maintenance of the levee system and in the coordination between local, state, and federal authorities. Just as starkly, the disaster exposes the deep social and racial inequalities that had long shaped life in the city.

• 44:43Speaker 00

  And yet, in the ravaged neighborhoods themselves, something else begins to emerge.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  In the immediate aftermath of the storm, there was a very inspiring within the communities, particularly the middle-income, lower-income communities. There was a wonderful coming together and a sense of coordinated dreaming. And stuff started to get done.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  Across New Orleans, communities begin to rebuild, as her people organize to clear debris and decide how the city might be remade more safely. Schools are restructured, and entire neighborhoods are reshaped, while building on some of the most vulnerable land is reconsidered. Billions of dollars are eventually invested to strengthen the levees and flood defenses that failed so catastrophically.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  In the years that follow, relevant policy across the United States is reexamined and reworked. Two decades on, as climate risk grows and the institutions meant to manage disaster remain politically contested, Katrina's warnings still feel uncomfortably current. For New Orleans, the underlying reality has not changed. The city still sits between river, lake, and sea. It is still a place carved out of water, dependent on the strength of the infrastructure that holds it back.

• 46:08Speaker 00

  Engineers say those systems are stronger than ever before, but uncertainty remains.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Hanging over all of that is this ominous sense that there shouldn't be a city on such low-lying ground and this close to the Gulf of Mexico. But there we are. And you know, you don't walk away from a city of several hundred thousand people without any provision for landing them elsewhere. And the government has yet to figure out how to make that happen. So, you know, there's reason to wonder: Should we be living in New Orleans?

• 46:43Speaker 00

  The devastating hurricane of 2005 exposed the fragility of the systems meant to protect a city. But it also revealed a stubborn resilience in the face of disaster. In the absence of leadership, it was the ordinary people of New Orleans who kept each other alive. And perhaps that, more than anything, explains why it endures.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  It was an enormous test. It was a test equivalent to the San Francisco earthquake, to the Fukushima disaster in Japan, to the Kyoto earthquake, to the Chicago fire. And yet, importantly, the city survived it.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  And the city's ability to survive, it spoke to and revealed strengths that we didn't even understand were strengths. And made for an important learning experience, and more importantly than learning, made for an emotional re-engagement with each other that is at the very essence of what about New Orleans was worth saving.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  Next time on Short History of, we'll bring you a short history of the Brink's mat robbery.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  I think every single criminal involved in that crime, except for possibly Kenneth Noyn, wishes they'd never gone anywhere near it. In terms of it literally being a curse, I can't tell you, but as far as what has happened is, they touched that gold, they got involved in that robbery, and 28, at least of them, died. If that's not a curse, I don't know what is.

• 48:28Speaker 00

  That's next time.

• 48:34Speaker 00

  You can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of right now, without waiting and without adverts, by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Just hit the link in the episode description or head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions to unlock more episodes today. This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators Returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at

• 49:17Speaker 00

  the very top of the world. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes' Short Stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in the Sign of Four. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.