From the weather satellites it looked every inch an act of God: a giant doughnut of low pressure and high winds churning towards New Orleans. Four years on, a judge has ruled that the flooding of the city by Hurricane Katrina was, in large part, a man-made disaster.
In a decision that could leave the US Government liable for billions of dollars in damages, US District Judge Stanwood Duval blamed the US Army Corps of Engineers for failing to maintain the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) and allowing the hurricane’s storm surge to breach the city’s flood defences.
