Katrina made landfall five years ago this morning. The first levee at New Orleans was breached at 8:14 am. By the next day, 80% of the city was underwater.
Spike Lee’s documentaries When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts and If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise, David Simon’s Treme, and Dave Eggers’s excellent book Zeitoun
What you heard and saw on TV during the actual event was mostly bull shit.