In the early morning hours of August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans. While most of the city’s residents had safely evacuated, hundreds of thousands were trapped in their homes when the Category 3 storm made landfall. Thousands more had taken shelter inside the Superdome.
Then the levees failed, unleashing catastrophic flooding across New Orleans. Some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods were hardest hit and rescue efforts were painfully slow. When the waters finally receded, nearly 2,000 New Orleans residents were dead and hundreds of thousands had lost their homes.
What follows are six powerful stories about the harrowing days of Hurricane Katrina. They’re told by people who were there—helicopter rescue workers, Superdome survivors and unlikely heroes.