Caption:
NOAA aerial image for larger view of New Orleans, Louisiana, where homes were nearly swallowed up by flood waters. Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest and most destructive Atlantic tropical cyclone of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. Katrina is the seventh most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded, part of the 2005 season that included three of the six most intense Atlantic hurricanes ever documented (along with #1 Wilma and #4 Rita). At least 1,833 people died in the hurricane and subsequent floods and total property damage was estimated at $108 billion (2005 USD). The hurricane surge protection failures in New Orleans are considered the worst civil engineering disaster in US history and prompted a lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers the designers and builders of the levee system as mandated by the Flood Control Act of 1965. Responsibility for the failures and flooding was laid squarely on the Army Corps in January 2008 by Judge Stanwood Duval, US District Court, but the federal agency could not be held financially liable because of sovereign immunity in the Flood Control Act of 1928.