Overview

• Anniversary events across New Orleans and the Gulf Coast honored the dead and displaced as new reporting, including Snopes’ fact‑checks, revisited persistent myths and documented records.
• On Aug. 29, 2005, Katrina made landfall over Plaquemines Parish as a Category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of 125 mph after two rapid intensifications that peaked near 175 mph.
• Failures in the federal levee system flooded about 80% of New Orleans for weeks, contributing to 1,392 deaths reported by the National Hurricane Center and damage estimated at roughly $125 billion to $200 billion.
• Community leaders in the Lower Ninth Ward recalled a slow, disorganized government response and warned that dismantling FEMA would bring grave consequences.
• Two decades later, New Orleans’ population stands at about 384,000, with displacement hitting Black residents hardest and post‑storm changes including school privatization, public housing demolition and a rebuilt levee system.