National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Photo: Is Gulf Coast Ready for Another Hurricane?


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The repaired Industrial Canal levee wall in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward is green with new turf in July 2006 (top). The U.S. government says the city's levees are back at pre-Katrina conditions.

A school bus sat stranded near a breach in the same levee on September 12, 2005 (bottom). The embankments were built to endure Category Three storms, yet several crumbled after Katrina's Category Three assault, perhaps as a result of poor design and construction.

See more photos of the Gulf Coast then and now.

Photographs by Mario Tama/Getty Images (top) and Justin Sullivan/Getty Images (bottom)