Hurricane Katrina was not a ‘natural disaster’
Two decades on from Hurricane Katrina, the wounds remain raw for survivors of one of the most devastating storms in the history of the United States. The documentary Katrina: Come Hell and High Water revisits the storm, its aftermath, and the lives forever altered.
The documentary is a blistering indictment of systemic injustice, state abandonment and the deep racial and class divides that shaped who lived, who died, but also who was left behind.
The documentary opens with harrowing footage from August 2005—the embankment collapsing, the neighbourhoods submerged and the people stranded on rooftops. Over 1,800 lives were lost, hundreds of thousands were displaced and entire communities ripped apart and wiped away.
Katrina was not a “natural disaster”. It revealed a deeply unequal society—poverty and racism, not Katrina, determined the suffering.
Survivors speak with clarity and urgency that pierces through years of government neglect. Their stories highlight not only the trauma of losing homes and loved ones, but also the resilience of communities abandoned by a state that failed them at every level.
Katrina: Come Hell and High Water clearly frames the disaster as political. It confronts the glaring inequities that made New Orleans so vulnerable: decades of disinvestment in infrastructure, chronic underfunding of levee protection, and development policies that persistently neglected the working class.
The documentary recalls the infamous images of Black residents labelled as “looters”. It revisits the militarised policing of survivors, treated less as people in need of aid and more like threats to property.
And it traces how, in the aftermath, politicians used the crisis as a chance to privatise housing and dismantle unionised schools.
The documentary pushes back against the narrative that Katrina was simply an unforeseeable tragedy. Instead, it makes clear that the storm exposed and intensified the inequalities that structure US society.
These voices are not presented as passive victims. Rather, they reveal the resourcefulness and solidarity of working class people, who organised food distribution, rescue efforts, and housing support long before state agencies like Fema appeared on the scene.
The documentary captures both the horror and the hope of Katrina—the cruelty of state abandonment, and the humanity of collective struggle.
The lessons of Katrina grow ever more urgent today. As a warning about the unequal toll of climate catastrophe under capitalism. Disasters do not strike a level playing field—they magnify existing injustices. Poor and working class communities are consistently left most vulnerable and least supported.
The documentary also highlights the dangers of allowing the ruling class to use crises for their own ends. In New Orleans, disaster became the pretext for privatisation, gentrification, and displacement and alas a grim preview of “disaster capitalism”.
The documentary underscores the urgent need for systemic change.
It is essential viewing—an unflinching reminder that the real disaster was not only the storm itself, but the brutal inequality it laid bare.
Powerful production of the Piper Alpha disaster
On the night between 6-7 July 1988, the Piper Alpha rig in the North Sea, off of Aberdeen, Scotland, collapsed. Huge fires had been caused by a gas leakage, killing 165 workers—61 survived.
The platform was the single largest oil producer, accounting for roughly 10 percent of North Sea oil and gas production.
The documentary, Disaster at Sea: The Piper Alpha Story, tells the tale from the point of view of the survivors and the families of those who didn’t. Combining witness testimony and reconstruction, this is a shocking and powerful production.
The anger and pain of the working class women and the anguish of the men who survived will bring you to tears.
Their intelligence and articulateness comes across, contrasting with the weasel words of the company lawyers.
One worker tells of how “safety was the highest priority—unless it interfered with production”.
A public inquiry found the rig’s operator guilty of inadequate maintenance and safety procedures.
Incredibly, no criminal charges were brought. One of the participants in the documentary explains that this is because all the companies operated in the same way.
The disaster led to the setting up of the trade union OILC. The union organised large strikes in the summers of 1989 and 1990, which did lead to some safety improvements.
But the industry remains a dangerous place to work.
Dave Gilchrist
