Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest and most expensive hurricane to hit the United States, taking the lives of nearly 2,000 people and displacing a million in late August of 2005.
Ten years later, hundreds of people are still missing
Today is the anniversary of the day the hurricane made landfall in Louisiana, which lead to the severity to this tragedy. The hurricane affected about 90,000 square miles of land, caused billions of property damages and wreaked havoc on the economy by destroying homes, causing a rise in gas prices, and putting an end to about 1 million non-farm jobs in the affected areas.
For the tenth anniversary of the tragedy, George W. Bush has returned to New Orleans, and his visit has been met with mixed responses.
Ordinary citizens were very proactive in the catastrophic aftermath of the hurricane, praised for helping their neighbours and providing food and shelter, while the coast guard rescued 34,000 people in New Orleans alone. The Federal government, however, was heavily criticized for its slow response to the disaster. President Bush was accused of not understanding the extent of the destruction or bothering to witness it, barring his photogenic flight over the disaster zone after the pressure started to kick in. On social media, his visit back to the disaster zone ten years later is therefore deemed wildly inappropriate by many, with some going as far as blaming the former President for the dreadful aftermath.
Despite this, Bush was very well received upon his arrival at a secondary school in New Orleans where much of the resentment seems to have subsided. Outside, however, were protesters with a sign that read “George Bush still hates black people.”
