Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time

As Episode 1 of "Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time" (2025 release; 5 episodes of 45 min each) opens, it is "August 25, 2005", 4 days before Hurricane Katrina makes landfall. Everything seems alright, but behind the scenes, the weather forecasters and hurricane specialists are worrying more and more by the hour. In a flashback, we learn that exactly 1 year earlier, the New Orleans authorities had run a Hurricane Pam exercise, but its findings were either not implemented or simply ignored altogether.

Couple of comments: the narrative of this 5 part documentary series comes primarily from people that lived through it. Thousands of hours of video and camera footage were reviewed, and the big picture that emerges is that Katrina was a "hurricane of government failure". No doubt that the first responders did what they could, but it doesn't excuse the fundamentally flawed preparedness and response at all levels: at the city level, at the state level and, yes, at federal level. Which makes one wonder: what lessons were learned? Are the authorities be better prepared for the next Hurricane Katrina, now exactly 20 years later? (No need to respond, we all know the answer...) Kudos to the production team for presenting all of it in a clear way. Beware, some of the footage is truly revolting, but it simply shows what really happened.

"Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time" started airing on the National Geographic Channel earlier this week, and all episodes are now streaming on Hulu, where I caught it last night. This documentary series is currently rated 100% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. If you want to understand the many failures of local, state and federal authorities in dealing with this catastrophe of epic proportions, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusions.

Even though it's been 20 years since Katrina the impact of the storm and its aftermath are still being felt. I was amazed at the candor of some of the high-ranking officials who were interviewed for this production and who admitted they made mistakes. The devastating impact of disinformation was well-presented. The resilience of many of the survivors who ended up returning to New Orleans to rebuild their lives was amazing and inspiring. It's sad that many never returned.

It makes you sad and wonder why they didn't get the help they needed when this disaster happened. They got treated like dirt and they had to be on the streets and live like that- so sad.

FEMA was suppose to help and it looked like they didn't care.

The guards were ungodly rude and treated them unfairly.

Why do we have planned situations or emergency services if no one takes those things seriously.

Great documentary about how scary and how messed up life can be when disasters happen and your life is ripped apart.

This documentary was truly an eye opener of what hurricane Katrina really was. As an 11th grader in all of the years I have been in school this was not a really big discussion that was brought up and discussed in detail about the horrors these poor people have went through. It really shows how the government failed the people of New Orleans and how racism is still a HUGE issue in modern America. I also like how the documentary discusses how easy this disaster could have been prevented if the government would have stepped up and took the precautions to protect the people in the worst case scenario.

I remember when this happened, and how the response from our government at the time was horrendously slow. Other reviewers will say this is a social justice piece. The truth is it is. But I would like to highlight that black and white folks were victims, and also the helpers that cared for people of all colors on the ground during this travesty. You can't say this is a documentary about racism, it was about a lack of proper infrastructure, the plight of underserved and financially poor people, and a complete failure of government on all levels. You can't blame "looters" as they called them, they were trying to provide basic necessities when everyone else failed them. I would have done the same. It is something I hope will never happen again, and I would urge anyone who reads this to help however you can in your local communities. We are all human beings after all, don't ever lose your humanity.