Hurricane Katrin The Worst Environmental Catastrophe Essay

Hurricane Katrina A disaster is a sudden, catastrophic event that seriously disrupts the functioning of a community or society and causes human, material, and economic or environmental losses that exceed the community’s or society’s ability to cope using its own resources. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, typhoons, and hurricanes inflict serious damage and so seem to be bad for the economy. This topic will give the example of Hurricane Katrina, deal with its different effects and also will examine some solutions to prevent its various damages. Katrina is considered as the worst environmental catastrophe that the United States has ever known. In the morning on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of the United States. When the storm surge (as high as 9 meters in some places) arrived, it overwhelmed many of the city’s unstable levees and drainage canals. Water seeped through the soil underneath some levees and swept others away altoge ther. Eventually, nearly 80 percent of the city was under some quantity of water. As a matter of a fact, the storm itself did a great deal of damage, but its aftermath was catastrophic. Thousands of people were displaced from their homes, and experts estimate that Katrina caused more than $100 billion in damage. Basically, natural disasters affect our daily lives in several ways. They effectively stop the economy of the area. For examples, natural disasters destroy tangible assets such as buildings and equipment