Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the Louisiana governor whose single term in office was overwhelmed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when she earned a mix of criticism and praise for her response to it, died on Sunday at a hospice in Lafayette, La. She was 76.

The office of Gov. John Bel Edwards confirmed her death.

Ms. Blanco learned she had an incurable cancer, first detected in an eye, in 2017. In December, speaking at a civics group luncheon, she said the cancer had spread to other parts of her body, adding that there was “no escape.”

“The monster is not far down the road,” she was quoted as saying in the Baton Rouge newspaper The Advocate. But she said she was at peace with her condition.

Hurricane Katrina, striking in late summer, ravaged large parts of Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, killing 1,833 people and putting roughly 80 percent of New Orleans underwater after the city’s levee system failed. It also damaged reputations at all levels of government, from the New Orleans mayor, Ray Nagin, to President George W. Bush, both of whom were accused of lackluster responses to the disaster.