The National Weather Service’s New Orleans/Baton Rouge office issued a vividly worded bulletin on August 28 predicting that the area would be “uninhabitable for weeks” after “devastating damage” caused by Katrina, which at that time rivaled the intensity of Hurricane Camille.
Clay never recovered from his illnesses, and died of tuberculosis aged 75 in his room at the National Hotel in Washington, D.C., on June 29, 1852.