Cambodian community in Lowell collect 

$1015 to help Katrina victims in the Gulf coast. 

The Releif Fund is organized by ,


              TRAIRATANARAM TEMPLE
             21 , 25   Quigley Ave.  
            North Chemsford, MA. 01863
                                 U S A

             Phone ( 978 ) 251 - 2899

      Hurricane Katrina was ... first Category 5 
hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. 
It was ... most powerful storm of the 
season, ...strongest storm ever recorded in the 
Atlantic basin. It first made landfall as a 
Category 1 hurricane just north of Miami, 
Florida on August 25, 2005, then again on August 
29 along the Central Gulf Coast near Buras-
Triumph, Louisiana as a Category 4 storm. Its 
storm surge soon breached the levee system that 
protected New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain 
and the Mississippi River. Most of the city was 
subsequently flooded mainly by water from the 
lake. This and other major damage to the coastal 
regions of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama 
made Katrina the most destructive and costliest 
natural disaster in the history of the United 
States.

The official death toll now stands at 1,302 and 
the damage from $70 to $130 billion, topping 
Hurricane Andrew as the most expensive natural 
disaster in U.S. history. Over a million people 
were displaced — a humanitarian crisis on a 
scale unseen in the U.S. since the Great 
Depression.

In Louisiana, the hurricane's eye made landfall 
at 6:10am CDT on Monday, August 29. After 
11:00am CDT, several sections of the levee 
system in New Orleans collapsed. By early 
September, people were being forcibly evacuated, 
mostly by bus to neighboring states.

Federal disaster declarations blanketed 90,000 
square miles (233,000 km²) of the United States, 
an area almost as large as the United Kingdom. 
The hurricane left an estimated five million 
people without power, and it may take up to two 
months for all power to be restored. On 
September 3, Homeland Security Secretary Michael 
Chertoff described the aftermath of Hurricane 
Katrina as "probably the worst catastrophe, or 
set of catastrophes" in the country's history, 
referring to the hurricane itself plus the 
flooding of New Orleans.