Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana 20 years ago this week. The storm killed more than 1,300 people, and displaced tens of thousands more.

In the years since Katrina, a slew of studies and government reports have found that most of the deaths and much of the destruction could have been avoided. Levees built and maintained by the federal government collapsed during and after the storm, causing massive flooding in New Orleans. Local, state and federal officials struggled to evacuate, rescue and house people as the disaster unfolded in the hardest-hit parts of Louisiana and Mississippi.

It was immediately clear that the government had failed. Then-President George W. Bush acknowledged as much in a speech in New Orleans three weeks after the storm: "The system, at every level of governme

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