Learning from Katrina: How Communities Can Flourish in the Wake of Disaster

August 29th marks the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane. The failure of the storm surge protections from Florida to Texas, and especially in New Orleans, is considered one of the worst engineering failures by the Army Corps of Engineers in its history. The policy responses from local, state, and national public officials are also considered to have been woefully inadequate. The entire episode represents a classic case study in how government failure can compound the fury of nature through the folly of man. Peter Boettke discusses the lessons we can learn.