“Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time” Paints a Man-Made Disaster in the Making

Hurricane Katrina was a Category 5 hurricane that devastated the Gulf Coast in August 2005. The storm caused 1,392 deaths and $125 billion in damages in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. New Orleans and the surrounding areas suffered greatly due to the massive storm surge (that ranged from 16 to 30 feet), widespread flooding, and significant damage to infrastructure.

The flooding in New Orleans quickly led to a humanitarian crisis shortly after the storm, with delayed and inadequate response efforts, according to a report by the George W. Bush White House Archives.

The aftermath was nothing short of absolute horror. Bodies, and even buried coffins, littered the streets. Entire neighborhoods were obliterated, while power grids, hospitals, schools, and public transit were knocked out for weeks or even months. Around 1 million people were displaced, with some ignoring warnings, and others with no means of escape, were forced to shelter in the Superdome and Convention Center, where thousands endured days without sufficient food, water, or sanitation.

While Hurricane Katrina was the primary cause of most of the devastation and loss of life, local and national government emergency response agencies also played a role. That’s the premise behind National Geographic's upcoming five-part docuseries, “Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time,” which delivers a moment‑by‑moment account of the storm’s chaos and aftermath in New Orleans.

Devastating Levee Failures

The series describes the catastrophic failure of New Orleans’ levee system, which was designed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers and touted as foolproof before the hurricane hit. However, decades of minimal upgrades (rooted in outdated models like the Standard Project Hurricane) left those barriers vulnerable to pressure, overtopping, and foundation destabilization.

Maintenance of those levees was the responsibility of the districts they served. The failures caused flooding in 80% of New Orleans and all of St. Bernard Parish. Approximately 134,000 housing units suffered damage from Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding resulting from levee failures (see figure).

In the aftermath, six investigations were conducted by civil engineers and other experts to identify the causes of the federal flood protection system's failure. All agreed that the primary cause of the flooding was inadequate design and construction by the Army Corps of Engineers.

FEMA Breakdowns

In April 2007, the American Society of Civil Engineers termed the flooding of New Orleans as “the worst engineering catastrophe in US History.” While the failure of the levees was the primary cause of flooding and devastation, other factors also contributed, including the inept response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and local governments.

The response to Hurricane Katrina was also a disaster, which revealed breakdowns at every level of government, with FEMA taking center stage. Despite the storm’s devastating impact, FEMA was slow to act, with delays in mobilizing resources. And it failed to understand the magnitude of the crisis even days after Katrina hit.

Congressional reports highlighted inadequate logistics, understaffed teams, outdated information systems, and a lack of coordination between agencies. In multiple instances, bureaucracy created harmful bottlenecks that impacted medical volunteers trying to reach the hardest-hit locations, supply trucks that stalled in the flood, and search-and-rescue operations that were delayed by red tape.

FEMA’s leadership also made critical missteps by hesitating to request federal support teams and even downplaying the urgency of evacuation efforts. Residents were blamed for remaining in the city, even though many didn’t have the means to leave. Congress later described FEMA’s actions as a “litany of mistakes, misjudgments, lapses, and absurdities.”

Local leadership also played a role in the disaster, as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin didn’t issue a mandatory evacuation order until just 19 hours before landfall, crippling the amount of time for residents to escape. Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and local agencies failed to request timely federal assistance, leaving a large number of people to seek shelter at the Superdome, which was designated as an emergency shelter but lacked sufficient food, water, sanitation, and security. The inability of FEMA and local officials to communicate and coordinate led to worsening conditions inside and outside of the shelter.

Then came the oil spill, which was briefly touched on during the series. During Katrina’s aftermath, it was discovered that at least 44 oil and chemical spills, including a 25,000-barrel Murphy Oil refinery rupture, contaminated communities already reeling from water and infrastructure damage. While those spills certainly harmed the environment and those sheltering in place, they also amplified concerns about industrial vulnerability during natural disasters and the clean-up efforts that followed.

Wake Up Call

By the last episode, “Wake Up Call,” the docuseries shines a spotlight on the importance of accuracy with local and national media, a problem we still face today. The episode highlights how news outlets prioritized sensational imagery over systematic facts, falsehoods that were spread freely, panic-inducing rumors of mass deaths, militia violence, and looting, all of which helped to delay needed aid and damaged public perception.

Hurricane Katrina wasn’t just a natural disaster; it was a human, political, and engineering failure on nearly every level. “Race Against Time” doesn’t hold back; the series exposes those breakdowns, from the crumbling levees and FEMA’s inadequate response, to media-driven misinformation that helped worsen an already unimaginable crisis.

What happened in New Orleans should have been preventable, and the consequences of that negligence are still being felt today. National Geographic’s “Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time” docuseries serves as both a record and a warning, as the lessons learned will be repeated if they’re not remembered.