It’s been five years since Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. We look at the situation in pictures – then and now.
The southern States of America had been battered by many a storm and hurricane before, but no-one was prepared for Katrina at the end of August 2005.
The flood defences broke around New Orleans and the watery consequences suffered by the city’s inhabitants were catastrophic. Many lives were lost, property was destroyed and even those who made it to the the giant, covered Super Bowl stadium faced horrendous crowding, looting and disease.
In the immediate aftermath rescue workers worked around the clock, the then US President George W Bush surveyed the damage from the air and bodies and rubble littered the street. The city, and the country, had been woefully unprepared for what happened.
Five years on, things are slowly returning to normal. Houses are being rebuilt and repainted, and symbolic jazz-style New Orleans funerals are being held in an attempt to bury the past.
Large swathes of the city remain abandoned, however, and in some graveyards there are disturbed corpses that still await a proper reburial.
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