NASA versus Katrina: August 29, 2005

It may not look like much, but Building 320 housed the 38 members of Michoud's ride out team during Hurricane Katrina. (credit: Nathan Mattise)

Update, Sept. 7, 2020: It's Labor Day Weekend in the US, and even though most of us now also call home "the office," Ars staff is taking a long weekend to rest and relax. The end of August marked 15 years since Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, the federal levees failed, and the city of New Orleans changed forever. We planned on resurfacing a few pieces from the archives to keep the lights on over this holiday, so we're resurfacing this look at how NASA managed to weather the impact of Katrina at its Michoud Assembly Facility just outside New Orleans. This story originally ran in August 2015 and it appears unchanged below.

MICHOUD, La.-On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina came, the federal levees failed, and chaos ensued in the New Orleans metro area.

By now the damage is well documented. So many people were displaced that New Orleans still only sits at approximately 80 percent of its pre-storm population a decade later. More than 1,200 people died-the most for a US storm since 1928. And 80 percent of the city flooded, causing property damage since estimated at $108 billion by the National Hurricane Center. Almost regardless of metric, Katrina stands as the most devastating Atlantic storm to ever hit the US.

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