Nat Geo’s ‘Hurricane Katrina’ Documentary Removes the Gap Between the Past and Present

Jul 27, 2025

Jeremy Gray

A man with a white beard sits on worn steps outside a house (left); an aerial view shows a flooded neighborhood with partially submerged houses (right).

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the devastating Hurricane Katrina, which killed nearly 2,000 people, primarily in Louisiana and Mississippi. National Geographic‘s new documentary series, Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, transports viewers back to the chaos and destruction Katrina wrought in New Orleans, and shines a much-needed light on the people and stories that were ignored back in 2005.

The first three of five episodes of Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time premiere tonight, July 27th, on National Geographic and will arrive on Disney+ and Hulu tomorrow, while the final two episodes air tomorrow night and land on streaming on Tuesday, July 29th.

The series is directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Traci Curry and produced by the Oscar- and Emmy-winning team at Lightbox, as well as Ryan Coogler’s production company, Proximity Media. PetaPixel chatted with the series’ producer, Myles Estey, and lead editor, Jeremy Siefer, about Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time‘s compelling blend of archival footage, eye-witness accounts, and modern filmmaking.

“It was shocking. It was a ‘how is this happening in this country?’ moment,” Siefer tells PetaPixel. ”

People carrying bags walk along a highway under green road signs for Claiborne Ave and Medical Center. A billboard and overpass crowded with more people are visible in the background. It is a sunny day. — New Orleans residents walk down the Interstate trying to find refuge in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. (Global Imageworks, LLC.)

Estey adds, “It’s a big story that had huge news coverage at the time, probably a week or 10 days of basically 24-hour coverage.”

Although Katrina hit the southeastern United States 20 years ago, it can simultaneously feel like it was only yesterday. It was such a significant moment.

“It’s a big responsibility in the early stages of the project,” Estey says. “It’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the story in terms of its importance to so many people — the people of New Orleans, first and foremost.”

“But like Jeremy said, many people around the country at the time had some version of, ‘Wow, I cannot believe this is happening.’ And in the two years of making the [series], my friends, family, colleagues, people I ran into, had interesting reactions. Most people were like, ‘Wow, it’s already been 20 years.’ I think it’s a mix of it feeling like it could have been 100 years ago but also some of those memories are really etched in people’s brains.”

Aerial view of a flooded residential neighborhood, with water submerging streets and partially covering houses. A canal runs parallel to the area, and non-flooded buildings are visible in the upper part of the image. — An aerial view of a broken levee after Hurricane Katrina. (Pond5)

Estey explains that as he and the team spoke to the survivors of Katrina 20 years later, many of them were instantly transported back to the horrible event as soon as they started talking about it again. Tragedy has a way of feeling so distant and yet so close all at once.

“A lot of the coverage at the time was fairly salacious,” Estey recalls. “I think there was certainly news coverage that wasn’t painting people in the most favorable light. And I think at times we had to dig pretty deep — there were thousands and thousands of hours of archival footage between all the major news networks.”

A deserted city street at night glistens with reflections from streetlights and traffic lights on wet pavement, with buildings and a high-rise in the background. — The empty streets of downtown New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina makes landfall. (ABC News Videosource)

Aerial view of a large crowd gathered on a parking garage and surrounding area next to a tall building and an arena in an urban setting. Many cars are parked, and people are densely packed in open spaces. — Crowds of stranded New Orleans residents gather at the Superdome following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. (POND5)

People sit on cots under a highway overpass surrounded by scattered debris, trash, and mud, with more people and supplies visible in the background, suggesting a crowded emergency shelter situation. — Stranded New Orleans residents gather underneath the interstate following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. (KTVT-TV)

A helicopter is parked on a narrow strip of land surrounded by floodwaters, with a large group of people gathered nearby, and submerged buildings visible in the background. — A military helicopter arrives to rescue stranded New Orleans residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. (John Keller)

Estey and Siefer also reviewed a significant amount of footage captured by people on the ground. While smartphone camera technology was nowhere near the level it is now in 2005, people could still capture photos and videos with dedicated cameras and camcorders, although power outages were a significant limiting factor.

But Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time is not about retreading the same ground; it is about telling new stories that went largely ignored during the disaster, largely because of racial and socioeconomic divides. Much of the coverage back in 2005 exploited the tragedy and pointed fingers at the people who stayed behind in New Orleans, largely ignoring the diverse reasons why people tried to weather the storm.

“A lot of our work was trying to find different people who stayed for different reasons,” Estey says. “That was a big objective and goal of Traci Curry. No person can be a monolith for every person who stayed behind.”

Some people stayed to care for elderly family who could not possibly leave, others stayed to protect their home, some were essential workers who had a duty to stay put, and many more stayed behind because they had no means of leaving.

“There are a lot of reasons people stayed, and I think many counter this sort of idea that ‘Oh, people didn’t feel like leaving’ or didn’t care and didn’t think there was risk,” Estey says. “That wasn’t the case at all.”

A man with a shaved head and goatee, wearing a light gray pullover, sits indoors in a warmly lit room with white walls, a window, and a lamp in the background. — When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Shelton Alexander lived in Violet, La., St. Bernard Parish. Using his video camera, he starts recording as the winds started picking up and narrates his experience over hours of footage from the Superdome – the storm as experienced inside the Dome, where thousands of people found shelter and waited for rescue. With emotional accounts of survivors and immersive archival footage, National Geographic’s Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time reveals Hurricane Katrina as a disaster that was anything but natural. (National Geographic)

A man in a dark suit, bow tie, and black hat sits on a red-and-white striped armchair, looking thoughtfully to the side. Behind him are patterned curtains and decorative pillows. — Big Chief Kevin Goodman is a cultural ambassador, coming from a family immersed in the rich traditions of the 7th Ward Black Masking Indian (also referred to as Mardi Gras Indian) culture, which blends African, Native American, and Creole influences. During Katrina, weakened from days without food and water, Goodman bravely held his months-old twin nieces in his arms as he stood in front of news cameras to report the reality of what was happening at the Convention Center. With emotional accounts of survivors and immersive archival footage, National Geographic’s Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time reveals Hurricane Katrina as a disaster that was anything but natural. (National Geographic)

A man in a fire department dress uniform with badges and an embroidered shoulder patch sits indoors, looking serious and slightly to the side. The setting appears to be a living room. — Now a District Fire Chief, Paul Hellmers was a New Orleans Fire Department Captain when Hurricane Katrina hit the city in 2005. Along with fellow Captain Joe Fincher, he appears to have been the first to have reported and documented a breach in the levees from atop their Katrina HQ. A long-distance runner and triathlete, Hellmers later ran an unofficial rescue operation, swimming out into the dying storm to commandeer boats and quickly organize his crew to use their skillset to rescue people from attics or shuttle evacuees. With emotional accounts of survivors and immersive archival footage, National Geographic’s Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time reveals Hurricane Katrina as a disaster that was anything but natural. (National Geographic)

He also notes that the messaging from the city and state was inconsistent and arrived too late for many to evacuate.   ”If you don’t have the means to leave, what do you do? There are a lot of questions like this that don’t get answered by simple news coverage.”

Bringing the Past to the Present Through Archival Footage and New Filmmaking

“There are two main elements to a documentary about the past,” Siefer tells PetaPixel. “There’s archival footage and photographs, the artifacts themselves from the period. And then there are the people who have stories to tell [now]. The people who have stories to tell is the more important element for me.”

For Siefer, his editing task is immense. There is a huge sifting process, of course, but Siefer says that the editing of new interviews is even more critical.

“Everyone focuses on the quantity of the archival, but we’re talking about hundreds of hours of new interviews as well,” Siefer says. “These are people who haven’t told their story before. So the power of their memories, there’s a moment for them when the 20 years [disappear]. The gap between the past and present disappears and you can see it in the emotion of their storytelling.”

An older man with a white beard, wearing a black hat, coat, and jeans, sits on worn concrete steps in front of a weathered wooden door and house with metal railings and plants on either side. — When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Malik Rahim was a West Bank, an Algiers Point resident. He recounts his experience while being interviewed for the production of National Geographic’s Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time. With emotional accounts of survivors and immersive archival footage, the series reveals Hurricane Katrina as a disaster that was anything but natural. (National Geographic)

“So for me, sometimes it’s about getting out of the way and letting those stories and the emotion of those stories ring,” Siefer says. “That’s more valuable than any sort of unseen, never-before-seen footage [from 20 years ago]. It’s the never-before-heard stories that matter to me.”

‘The gap between the past and present disappears… ‘

Estey notes that some of these new stories were very difficult to hear, and some of the footage is so hard to watch.

“We had conversations about that as a team. For whatever personal reasons, certain footage touches someone more than other footage, and that can be everything from police violence to stories dealing firsthand the death of pets or people running out of food and water to young children left out in the Sun,” Estey says. “That stuff can be very hard to watch and, well, we watched a lot of that.”

However, the series is not just about the tragedy; it is also about how people persevered and survived.

“There are also really beautiful moments you see. Sometimes that’s the most impressive — when everything has gone wrong and people are still being not just decent humans, but excellent humans to each other. That is really rewarding.”

For Siefer, who is laser-focused on telling stories that haven’t been heard before, a big part of that task was sharing stories from New Orleans’ large black community, which was disproportionately harmed by Hurricane Katrina. While storms don’t see race, the impact of Katrina, like many natural disasters, was not felt equally by all communities, and how people think about the government’s response to the disaster varies wildly by race.

Some of these problems remain and have been observed in subsequent natural disasters, which are expected to increase in frequency and intensity due to climate change. Estey and Siefer hope that people in 2025 can take valuable lessons forward from 2005 and the people who survived Hurricane Katrina.

“We get the chance every day to make millions of choices, and people under duress often make kind, caring, and selfless decisions,” Estey says. “We saw people who made really impressive choices in a really bad situation, and that can be inspiring for day-to-day life.”

An aerial view of a crowded parking structure with people, tents, and belongings scattered across multiple levels, while large groups gather along the edges and top floor. — Crowds of stranded New Orleans residents gather outside of the Superdome following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. (CNN)

A woman wearing glasses and a green coat points to the left, while an older man with a white beard, sunglasses, and a hat sits on worn steps in front of a house with a metal screen door. — Malik Rahim recounts his experience to Director Traci A. Curry while being interviewed for the production of National Geographic’s Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time. With emotional accounts of survivors and immersive archival footage, the series reveals Hurricane Katrina as a disaster that was anything but natural. (National Geographic)

An older man in a camouflage jacket, blue overalls, and a cap sits in a dimly lit boat cabin next to a ship’s wheel, looking directly at the camera. Light filters through windows behind him. — When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, Ricky Robin was in his boat in the Violet Canal, St. Bernard Parish. With emotional accounts of survivors and immersive archival footage, National Geographic’s Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time reveals Hurricane Katrina as a disaster that was anything but natural. (National Geographic)

“And I think it’s also important to remember that where there’s so much destruction, disaster, and death in the [news] narrative, there is often more to it,” Estey adds.

“I think stories can really touch people emotionally and will hopefully get them to think beyond ‘Oh, this is a bad thing that happened to someone,'” Siefer says. “What if we could learn something from this experience and do something a little bit different? Even if that little different thing is to open our minds to the possibility that we, as a society, bear some responsibility in terms of the environment we live in. I hope one thing people can take away [from the series] is to open their minds to the possibility that what happened to the people of New Orleans 20 years ago could happen to them, could happen to their loved ones.”

Airing Now

Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time premieres on National Geographic tonight in will arrive on streaming platforms tomorrow. Both Siefer and Estey emphasize that the series was a massive team effort, and it would have been impossible to work through all the old and new footage without a large, dedicated group.

 Image credits: National Geographic