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Hurricane Katrina with a wind speed of 175 mph (280 km/h) was the first Category 5 hurricane, as per the Safir-Simpson hurricane scale, of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It first made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane just north of Miami, Florida on 25 August 2005. Then again on 29 August along the Central Gulf Coast near New Orleans, Louisiana, as a Category 4 storm. Major damages to the coastal regions of the southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama made Katrina the most destructive and costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States. The official death toll was more than 1,242 and the damage higher than $200 billion. It surpassed Hurricane Andrew as the most expensive natural disaster in US history. Over a million people were displaced, a humanitarian crisis on a scale unseen in the US since the Great Depression. New Orleans, Southern Louisiana, lay in a wide, shallow bowl 2-10 feet below sea level. Nearly 80% of the city was below sea level. It was bounded by the River Mississippi on the south, Lake Pontchartrain on the north and the Gulf of Mexico on the east. Levees of the river Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain covered 350 miles around the city to hold back the water from entering the city. The storm hit with the fury of a nuclear warhead, and pushed a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. This lake was 6 feet (2m) above sea level. The water level rose by 4-5 metres with waves reaching 2 metres above the surge and crept to the top of the massive wall that held back the lake before spilling over. Water from Lake Pontchartrain breached the levees of the 17th Street Canal, the London Avenue Canal and the Industrial Canal before flowing into the city. As the levees failed in five places, the city filled like a bathtub flooding 80% of the city. By the time US President George W Bush touched down at the tormented region, more than just the topography had changed. It was hoped that America had got smarter, more nimble and visionary in the ability to respond to catastrophe, four years after the greatest man-made disaster (9/11) in US history. The hope had shattered. How was it really possible that even after so many commissions and commitments, bureaucracies split up and restructured, emergency supplies stockpiled and pre-positioned, when a disaster struck, the whole newfangled system just seized up and couldn?t move? Should Katrina be remembered as the worst natural disaster or worst response in US history? Or both?