Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in August 2005, causing over $80 billion in total economic losses; disputed insurance claims — particularly over the distinction between wind and flood damage — became a national scandal, exposing deep failures in loss adjustment and coverage.

Katrina produced one of the richest bodies of disaster poetry in American literary history, including work by Natasha Trethewey, Yusef Komunyakaa, and many others; the failure of insurance as a social promise became a powerful metaphor for state abandonment and racial inequality.