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Executive Summary
After crossing South Florida and gaining strength over the Gulf of Mexico, the center of Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southeast Louisiana at 6:10 a.m. local time on August 29. Katrina was then a large Category 3 hurricane (See Appendix A for Saffir-Simpson Scale) with winds of 125 mph and a central pressure of 920 millibars (mb). This makes Katrina the third most intense United States (U.S.) land-falling hurricane on record based on central pressure. Katrina’s center moved ashore near the Louisiana and Mississippi border around 9:45 a.m. and continued to move north through Mississippi, maintaining hurricane intensity almost 100 miles inland. Over the next two days, Katrina moved north through the lower Mississippi Valley into the Ohio River Valley region, spreading destructive winds well inland and spawning dozens of tornadoes.
The devastation left in Katrina’s wake over southeast Louisiana and coastal Mississippi was immense. The storm surge ravaged coastal Mississippi, and several levee breaches occurred in and around New Orleans. The levee breaches and overtopping resulted in floodwaters of 15 to 20 feet covering about 80 percent of the city. The catastrophic damage and loss of life inflicted by this hurricane is staggering, with an estimated 1,353 direct fatalities' and 275,000 homes damaged or destroyed. According to the American Insurance Services Group, Katrina caused an estimated $40.6 billion in insured losses (as of June 2006). The National Hurricane Center (NHC) typically doubles the estimated insured losses for an estimate of total damage losses in the U.S., giving an estimated total $81.2 billion in damage. Total economic losses could be greater than $100 billion. These impacts make Katrina the costliest hurricane in U.S. history and one of the five deadliest hurricanes to ever strike the U.S.
Tens of thousands of jobs were lost due to severely damaged or destroyed businesses and supporting infrastructure. Major highways in and around New Orleans were damaged or destroyed, disrupting commerce. Katrina also affected the oil and gas industry by damaging platforms and shutting down refineries, and interrupted operations at two major U.S. ports in Louisiana.
While NWS offices were heavily engaged in forecast and warning operations during Katrina, the impacts of the storm created extremely challenging working and living conditions. Katrina caused significant disruptions in the communication infrastructure in southeast Louisiana. As a result, the NWS offices in Louisiana and Mississippi experienced communications outages affecting their ability to monitor weather conditions and disseminate forecasts, warnings, and information. Continuity of operations plans (COOP) were implemented for each of the impacted NWS offices in Louisiana and Mississippi. Under these plans, NWS offices from Texas to Florida were involved in providing the necessary backup services.
1	This estimate, as of May 15,2006, is based on information from affected states’ Departments of Health. The total includes direct fatalities only and does not include out of state evacuee fatalities included in some calculations. Fatalities bv state: Louisiana, 1097, Mississippi, 238, Florida 14, Alabama 2, and Georgia 2.
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