Natural Disasters Strike the Earth Floods Natural Disasters Strike the Earth

Hurricane Katrina slams into the Gulf Coast.

Hurricane Katrina's 175-mile-per-hour (280-kilometer-per-hour) winds and storm surge damaged some seaside homes and erased others on Alabama's Dauphin Island. The island is about 68 miles (110 kilometers) east of where the eye of Katrina made landfall.

Economy...and Then Some        Del.icio.us        newsvine        stumble What is share? Homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in Gulf Coast in Gulfport Mississippi.

  10 of 10     A New Orleans golf course is submerged after Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana.

                                Two men wade through floodwaters on Canal Street two weeks after Hurricane Katrina tore open New Orleans' levees, flooding about 80 percent of the city and neighboring parishes.

                                Twilight descends over a flooded New Orleans street nearly two weeks after Hurricane Katrina's Category 5 winds stirred up catastrophe and controversy.

                                Blocked roads foiled evacuation and rescue efforts in New Orleans, Louisiana, adding to the mayhem following Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. The flooded city lost more than 1,800 people in the storm and suffered more than $81 billion in damages.

in Katrina's Aftermath Residents wait to be rescued from the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans September 1, 2005.

A young boy rescues his cats from Katrina’s flood waters. Gallery: New Orleans People, Pets Flee Flood A young boy rescues his cats from Katrina’s flood waters.

                                Tsunami: Killer Waves. The most infamous tsunami of modern times hit Indian Ocean shorelines on the day after Christmas 2004. That tsunami is believed to have packed the energy of 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs. Some 150,000 people were killed in a single day. The 2004 tsunami stripped of foliage, trees on India's Great Nicobar Island stand in flooded pools. The countries worst-hit by the tsunami were Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand.

                                Churning waters retreat from the battered coast of Kalutara, Sri Lanka, after the December 2004 tsunami drove the ocean more than half a mile (1 kilometer) inland. In deeper waters, tsunamis can travel up to 500 miles (800 kilometers) per hour.

A year after the December 2004 tsunami swept through Thailand's Phang Nga province, tourism continued to suffer. The top photo, from January 9, 2005, shows destruction to a hotel resort; the bottom, from December 11, 2005, shows rooms that were partially repaired yet remained empty                                

                                                                      Many eyewitnesses have compared the post-tsunami scene in Banda Aceh to that of Hiroshima, Japan, after it was hit by an atomic bomb during World War II.

                                                                      The December 2004 tsunami destroyed an estimated one-third of the buildings   2 of 10   Next >>