This paper offers an intersectional model – “racialized disaster patriarchy” – to analyse the racialized and gendered impacts of Hurricane Katrina. The author considers how intersecting factors of structural racism and sexism have exacerbated the impacts of Hurricane Katrina on certain populations, and shaped the type of responses provided both by the government and at the grassroots. The concept of “racialized disaster patriarchy” links the intersectional experience of disaster to that of recovery, and highlights social movements’ actions for a just reconstruction.