11. Hurricane Katrina in 2005
Hurricane Katrina was a massive storm which caused tremendous damage and loss of life from Florida to Texas. Much of the damage attributed to the storm around New Orleans was actually the result of engineering flaws and structural failures, which the storm exploited. Katrina became a hurricane only hours before its first landfall in Florida, weakened to a tropical depression as it crossed the state and upon entering the Gulf of Mexico grew in strength rapidly as it bore down on New Orleans. By the time it reached the area it was a Category 5 storm which had expanded in size to cover nearly the entire Gulf of Mexico. It weakened to a Category 3 storm prior to landfall, wreaking havoc to Mississippi and Louisiana, and the subsequent flooding, high winds, and storm surge, coupled with the inadequacies of preparation and response, led to at least 1,800 deaths.
The protective levees around New Orleans suffered more than fifty failures, which led to the severe flooding in the city and to most of the deaths which followed, according to a report by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Inadequate maintenance of the levees and errors in its original design were blamed on the US Army Corps of Engineers, which had built the system. Because of the failure of the levees in New Orleans Katrina is linked to that city, but the destruction the storm wrought was devastating to other communities, as in Gulfport, Mississippi, for example. Katrina was not downgraded to a tropical depression until it reached the region of Clarksville, Tennessee, and property damage attributable to the storm was recorded as far north as the Great Lakes. Had the levees not failed in New Orleans Katrina’s death toll would have been much lower, but the flaws would have remained until found by another storm.