History.com: Hurricane Katrina

Early in the morning on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the United States. While the storm itself did a great deal of damage, its aftermath was catastrophic Levee breaches led to massive flooding, the federal government was slow to meet the needs, hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama were displaced from their homes, and experts estimate that Katrina caused more than $100 billion in damage.