2. By: Rahel Samarakkody

3. Hurricane Katrina Basic Facts Homes and People How Hurricane Katrina Effected the people The Wellington Avalanche Homes and People How the Wellington Avalanche effected the peopleHow the Wellington Avalanche effected the people

4. On August 23 2005, Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas and crossed southern Florida as a moderate category 1 causing some deaths and flooding there before strengthening rapidly in the gulf of Mexico.

5. The storm weakened before making its second landfall as a Category 3 storm on the morning of Monday, August 29 in southeast Louisiana. It caused severe destruction along the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas, much of it due to the storm surge. The most severe loss of life and property damage occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana, which flooded. Eventually 80% of the city became flooded and also large tracts of neighboring parishes, and the floodwaters lingered for weeks.

7. On August 28th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the southern coast of the United States with devastating effect. As a result, efforts to assist those effected by Hurricane Katrina still continue, as those effected by the terrible hurricane continue to work to regain the health and livelihood that they had before the storm. It was reported that more then 1,800 people lost there lives, and more then $81 billion dollars in damages occurred.

8. Homes and People The effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans were shattering and long- lasting. As the center of Katrina passed east of New Orleans on August 29, 2005, winds downtown were in the Category 3 range with frequent intense gusts and tidal surge. Though the most severe portion of Katrina missed the city, hitting nearby St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, the storm surge caused more than 50 breaches in drainage canal levees and also in navigational canal levees and precipitated the worst engineering disaster in the history of the United States.

9. Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast in August 2005, has had lasting and far-reaching effects. Katrina caused massive flooding in the city of New Orleans and catastrophic damage along the Gulf coasts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. As a result, Katrina caused one of the largest and most abrupt relocations of people in U.S. history. How Hurricane Katrina Effected the people

10. The Wellington avalanche was the worst avalanche, measured in terms of lives lost, in the history of the United States. For nine days at the end of February 1910, the little town of Wellington, Washington was assailed by a terrible blizzard. Wellington was a Great Northern Railway stop high in the Cascades, on the west side of the first Cascade Tunnel, under Stevens Pass. As much as a foot of snow fell every hour, and, on the worst day, eleven feet (335 cm) of snow fell.

11. Two trains - a passenger train and a mail train, both bound from Spokane to Seattle - were trapped in the depot. Snow plows were present at Wellington and others were sent to help, but they could not penetrate the snow accumulations and repeated avalanches along the stretch of tracks between Wellington and Leavenworth. Late on February 28, the snow stopped and was replaced by rain and a warm wind. Just after 1 a.m. on March 1, a slab of snow broke loose from the side of Windy Mountain in the middle of a violent thunderstorm. A ten- foot wall of snow, half a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide, headed for the town.

12. Homes and People By August 31, 2005, eighty percent of New Orleans was flooded, with some parts under 15 feet (4.5 m) of water. Most of the city's levees designed and built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers broke somewhere, including the 17th Street Canal levee, the Industrial Canal levee, and the London Avenue Canal floodwall. These breaches were responsible for most of the flooding, according to a June 2007 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers.[2] Oil refining stopped so the price of petrol increased all over the world.

13. How the Wellington Avalanche effected people Ninety percent of the residents of southeast Louisiana were evacuated in the most successful evacuation of a major urban area in the nation's history. Despite this, many remained (mainly the elderly and poor). The Louisiana Superdome was used as a designated "refuge of last resort" for those who remained in the city. Many who remained in their homes had to swim for their lives, wade through deep water, or remain trapped in their attics or on their rooftops. The city flooded due primarily to the failure of the federally built levee system.