Overview

• Netflix’s three-part Katrina: Come Hell and High Water, executive-produced by Spike Lee, premiered Aug. 27, alongside National Geographic’s Race Against Time on Hulu, centering survivor testimony and systemic lapses.
• The Netflix series quickly climbed to No. 1 in the U.S., drawing fresh attention to the storm’s human toll and accountability questions two decades later.
• Independent reviews after the disaster, including a 2007 American Society of Civil Engineers report, concluded the levee system was inadequately designed and failed, making the catastrophe a man-made disaster as much as a natural one.
• Coverage underscores how poor, predominantly Black neighborhoods suffered the worst losses and how long-term impacts persist, with more than 370,000 school-age children displaced and studies finding lasting mental-health effects.
• Although levees and floodwalls have been upgraded, experts cite ongoing coastal erosion and climate-driven flood risk, and report roughly 2,000 FEMA departures this year and about 1,800 recent NOAA staff reductions, alongside an internal “Katrina Declaration” warning about proposed agency overhauls.