The forecasts had been warning for days, and still the scale of it was hard to believe once the levees gave way. Whole neighborhoods in New Orleans went under water that didn't recede for weeks. People watched it happen live, helplessly, from roofs and overpasses, while the emergency response fell short again and again in the days that followed. More than 1,800 people died, and it became the costliest hurricane in U.S. history at the time. It also became the story everyone measured other disasters against for years afterward — not just the storm, but everything that was supposed to work and didn't.
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