CaptionA stranded Quintella Williams holds her nine-day-old baby girl, Akea, outside the superdome. Hurricane Katrina, the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded, hit the US Gulf Coast on August 29 causing severe destruction across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Levees protecting New Orleans were breached, flooding 80 percent of the city. Rescue efforts were delayed and disorganized. One-fifth of the population remained trapped in the city without power. Some 25,000 people made their way to the city's Superdome, which with insufficient food and water and with no air-conditioning or working toilets became increasingly uninhabitable.
