20 years ago, this week, NPR reported on one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in American history.

It is gorgeous, it's sunny, and it is hard to believe that 12 hours from now or 24 hours from now, I mean, it will be anything but what I've just described.

A Category 5 hurricane bears down on New Orleans. It's all things considered from NPR News.

Hurricane Katrina. As the storm approached, Gulf Coast communities prepared for the worst.

I was based in Kansas City for NPR at that time and got the call from one of our managing editors, you know,

can you go? And it was clear to all of us that this was the big one.

Correspondent Greg Allen was in New Orleans for NPR. He had reported on storms before,

but this one was clearly different. I'd never covered a hurricane where there'd been that much

anticipation and, you know, dread beforehand.

Katrina was shaping up to be a monster of a storm. And many worried about the scale of the destruction in New Orleans, a city that on average sits several feet below sea level.

The belief was that the entire city was likely to flood. You know, there'd been a number of stories about how vulnerable New Orleans was to flooding

from a big hurricane like this.

Consider this. Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans 20 years ago.

And in some ways, the city has never fully recovered.

NPR's Greg Allen reflects uncovering the catastrophe.

I'm NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.

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