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Not sure what the science is between 2 images with no source or timestamp and nearly 20 years of technological improvement between them is but this isn't the peak of Katrina
Katrina ultimately reached its peak strength as a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale on August 28. Its maximum sustained winds reached 175 mph (280 km/h) and its pressure fell to 902 mbar (hPa; 26.63 inHg), ranking it among the strongest ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico.
It probably refers to its stats at landfall
Katrina weakened to a Category 3 before making landfall along the northern Gulf Coast, first in southeast Louisiana (sustained winds: 125mph) and then made landfall once more along the Mississippi Gulf Coast (sustained winds: 120mph). Katrina finally weakened below hurricane intensity late on August 29th over east central Mississippi.
But power doesn't equal damage for weather
[Katrina] is the costliest hurricane to ever hit the United States, surpassing the record previously held by Hurricane Andrew from 1992. In addition, Katrina is one of the five deadliest hurricanes to ever strike the United States
Sources:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorological_history_of_Hurricane_Katrina
But power doesn’t equal damage for weather
Only if you count what happened in New Orleans after the storm, which was an infrastructure issue, not a weather issue.
Why are you making this some type of competition?
I’m not. I’m explaining a difference.
What is the point of comparing Helene to Katrina? Harvey was also a 4.
Why discount the impact of Katrina just because there were systematic issues? It was a natural disaster and that was the impact.
Because it comes off to me like you're trying to "well ackshully" about Helene being really the most devastating hurricane.
How am I discounting it? Please quote me discounting it.
You're splitting hairs.
No I am not. Those deaths were not the result of a natural disaster. The levee break was both predicted for years and preventable if the funds were just spent on it. Those deaths were directly the result of government incompetence.
So are you not going to count deaths from Helene resulting from people not evacuating properly? For not taking it seriously because it was preventable?
Individual choices are different from government incompetence resulting in mass casualties. You understand that, right?
If lightning strikes a skyscraper that doesn't have sprinklers, causing it to burn down and kill 100 people- did the lightning kill those people or was it the lack of sprinklers?
Individual choices are different from government incompetence resulting in mass casualties.
There's a systemic criticism here; people not evacuating Helene properly demonstrates we don't have proper systems in place to facilitate evacuations in the case of a hurricane.
Someone who chooses not to evacuate because they didn't understand the severity or don't have a car or anywhere to go isn't an individual choice.
I notice you didn't answer my question. I will ask it again:
If lightning strikes a skyscraper that doesn’t have sprinklers, causing it to burn down and kill 100 people- did the lightning kill those people or was it the lack of sprinklers?
The lack of regulations requiring sprinklers of course.
Right. Which is why it would be a man-made disaster and not a natural disaster. The same with Katrina and the levees. Katrina was a natural disaster, but what killed the people in New Orleans was the levees not getting repaired when they needed to be.
And it's different from people refusing to evacuate since that's on them, it's not an issue of other people's incompetence being the cause of mass casualties.
it’s different from people refusing to evacuate since that’s on them
It isn't though, you need to examine why those people were unwilling or unable to evacuate.
This is a systemic failure; our systems failed to adequately enable and incentivize people to evacuate. Do you judge a country's covid response by the number of people killed by covid, or just chalk that up to people's individual choices too?
“Not evacuating properly”? Plenty of the people who died had no idea the storm was going to be as bad as it was when they were hundreds of miles inland in an area that had never had significant flooding.
I'm not saying any or all were preventable, only that OP is cherry picking out one single part of a catastrophe to tweak stats without fairly considering the removal of similar causes from the other event.
Where will poor people go and how would they afford to go and how would they get there?
It's the same for either hurricane