This chapter explores the interrelationship between ‘natural’ and ‘man-made’ as revealed through a single disaster. It examines several poetry collections that arose in response to Hurricane Katrina, a major storm which devastated parts of New Orleans in 2005. A reading of Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler (2008) shows how far poetic responses can accurately reflect scholarly research findings, particularly as they relate to the role race and ethnicity played in Hurricane Katrina’s impacts. Issues around the appropriation of survivors’ stories and the ethics of writing disaster are also discussed. Other collections that arose from Hurricane Katrina are also analysed in terms of whose stories they tell and what found material was included. More generally, the ethics of writing other’s pain and trauma are then examined through the work of author and photographer Susan Sontag, novelist Kit de Waal, and cultural theorist Maggie Nelson. This is with a view to determining what issues and considerations need to be borne in mind when engaging with the poetry of disaster as readers and writers for both criticism and, indeed, for poetry practice.