Hurricane Katrina slammed into America's Gulf Coast a year ago today, killing more than 1,800 people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.
As much as 80 per cent of New Orleans was flooded when the city's levees were breached, and rebuilding has been marred by scandal and stalled by bureaucracy despite a federal aid award of
$110 billion.
Audits found that the US government wasted millions of dollars in the contracts it issued in the days after the hurricane struck. Wrangling among local politicians over which areas should be given resources slowed the process, leaving homeowners in many wrecked neighbourhoods in limbo.
New Orleans residents stand during a candlelight ceremony dedicated to the victims and survivors of Hurricane Katrina on the levee in Orleans Parish
Only around half of the pre-storm population of 455,000 have returned, and vast stretches of the city remain a bleak wasteland, particularly in poor areas like the Lower Ninth Ward.
US President George Bush said the huge job of rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina was just beginning a year after the massive storm, but expressed hope that the help sent from Washington would be enough.
Trying to erase the black mark left on his presidency by the administration's sluggish response to Katrina, Mr Bush yesterday returned to the first scene he saw a year ago of the storm's devastation.
Standing on a vacant lot in a working class neighbourhood of Biloxi, Mississippi, where trailers and gutted buildings stand next to newly-built homes, Mr Bush pledged the federal government would stand with the region as it rebuilds. It's a promise viewed with scepticism by victims still reeling from the storm. "A year ago, I committed our federal government to help you," Bush said. "I said, 'We have a duty to help the local people recover and rebuild,'and I meant what I said."
When Katrina struck a year ago, winds of more than 100 mph tore off part of the roof of the Superdome stadium, where 9,000 people were taking refuge. Rescuers were reported to be pushing aside the dead bodies floating in the water as they tried to reach stranded survivors.
Many spent days stranded on rooftops waiting for helicopters and boats to rescue them.
On the third day of the crisis, the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, ordered the full evacuation of the city, with up to 100,000 residents still said to be there.
Tens of thousands of people ended up crammed into the Superdome amid increasingly desperate conditions. Witnesses told of terrifying scenes as people ran amok with knives and guns, used crack cocaine and hurled racial abuse.
New Orleans was said to be descending into anarchy, with reports of looting, shootings, carjackings and rapes. While buses and helicopters began to transport the most vulnerable out from the Superdome to Louisiana and Texas, anger grew over the delay in getting aid to New Orleans, and the US government was criticised for what was seen as an inadequate response.
Eleven days after Katrina hit land, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Michael Brown, was removed from his role of managing the relief effort on the ground.
Entire neighbourhoods were washed away by the flooding, and many surviving homes are still uninhabitable, with families forced to live crowded together in trailers.
The psychological effects of the crisis have also been significant, with many suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. According to one report, the suicide rate in New Orleans has almost tripled in the last year.
There is also widespread confusion about what grants people are entitled to, as well as shocking revelations about how handouts have already been spent.
In June investigators revealed that bogus claimants had spent up to $1.4 billion of FEMA money meant for hurricane victims on tropical holidays, French champagne, a divorce lawyer and even a sex change.
Meanwhile, forecasters said Tropical Storm Ernesto could become the first hurricane to hit the US this year as early as tonight, with the chance it will strike Florida exactly 12 months after Katrina made landfall. Ernesto became a hurricane briefly at the weekend before being downgraded, but could grow in strength in the warm waters off Cuba.