By late in the day on August 28, the tropical storm winds extended 200 nautical mi. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts is a 2006 documentary film directed by Spike Lee about the devastation of New Orleans, Louisiana following the failure of the levees during Hurricane Katrina.It was filmed in late August and early September 2005, and premiered at the New Orleans Arena on August 16, 2006 and was first aired on HBO the following week. FEMA: “Hurricane Betsy was a major hurricane of the 1965 hurricane season tracking through the Bahamas and Florida before making landfall on September 9, 1965, as a Category 3 hurricane at Grand Isle, LA. Some levees downriver -were- blown up in 1927, which is widely acknowledged as the source of those rumors. ... built those very levees that were blown up in … Then came 2005's Hurricane Katrina, which laid bare the inadequacies of that federal levee system, in the process giving New Orleans a new hurricane high-water mark. The resulting levee improvements failed once again when Hurricane Katrina, a large and slow-moving category 3 hurricane, made a hit close to New Orleans on August 29, 2005. My parents stayed for Betsy, too. This made Katrina not only extremely intense but also exception-ally large. The memory of this event is seared in the memories of the parishioners. This ABC news report tries to poo-poo the ear-witness testimony to the levee destruction. The storm's erratic nature, coupled with its intensity and minimized preparation time contributed to making Betsy the first tropical cyclone in the Atlantic basin to accrue at least $1 billion in damage. Hurricane Betsy brought 160-mph gusts and a 16-foot storm surge that flooded the entire island. Umm, no. All-in-all, Hurricane Betsy--devastating and terrible--created an emergency which has welded all Orleanians together, regardless of race or color, in a spirit of neighborliness. Hurricane Betsy was an intense and destructive tropical cyclone that brought widespread damage to areas of Florida and the central United States Gulf Coast in September 1965. The Corps built new levees for New Orleans that were both taller and made of stronger material, designed specifically to resist a fast-moving category 3 hurricane like Betsy. By: Mike Scott, staff writer But as Hurricane Betsy made its way north from the Caribbean and began to threaten the Gulf, few in Plaquemines Parish were really worried. Hurricane Betsy was the worst disaster to strike New Orleans since the cholera epidemic of 1849 and the yellow-fever epidemic of 1905. Not in 1965 by Betsy, that was a rumor then. Since 1928, when the Army Corps of Engineers had built the Mississippi levee system— the world’s largest—no storm had breached those massive defenses. Through its tragedy, this disaster has brought to us the full realization that we are indeed our … Almost every survivor from Hurricane Betsy in ‘65 will passionately tell you the government blew up the levees to save parts of New Orleans. low-end Category 3 hurricane to a Category 5 hurricane in less than 12 h, with winds reaching 145 knots. Far fewer levees broke then. Now, whether that is true or not, that should not be discounted.’ He rattled off past government trespasses: 1927’s Great Flood of Mississippi, when the levees were, in fact, blown up; the flooding of the Ninth Ward during Hurricane Betsy in 1965; the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. My grandfather will tell you he heard the explosion that sent his family to his attic to axe his way out. from the center, and hurricane-force winds extended about 90 mi.