Cause And Effects Of New Orleans

New Orleans is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United States. The city, nicknamed the “Big Easy”, brings people from all over the country. Its unique and vibrant culture and fascinating history just draws people in whether it is to celebrate a well-known festival like Mardi Gras or to visit the very Congo Square where Jazz music was born. This beauty of New Orleans is one of the reasons why the summer of 2005 was so devastating. On the 23 of that August, Hurricane Katrina was set to make contact with the area where New Orleans was located. The Category 5 storm caused tremendous damage including the destruction of the ninth level ward of the levees which caused the entire city to flood. In 200-, Spike Lee released his film

The Army Corps of Engineers were supposed to be the ones that built the levees, and they were supposed to build them strong enough that they would protect the city of New Orleans. However, their engineering was severely faulty. Robert Bea even went as far to say that the levees were the “most tragic failure of a civil engineered system in the history of the United State” (Lee, 2006). The levees were supposed to be built to be seventeen feet below sea level and integrated into an earthen levee, but that did not happen. Colonel Lewis Setliff claims that the levees did not work as “they would have liked” (Lee, 2006). If they were not building them right, though, then they had to know that they were not going to work the way they were supposed to. Benny Pate points out that if they knew there was such a great chance the levees would break, knowingly building them incorrectly was like they were “letting it happen” (Lee, 2006). The people of New Orleans should have been able to expect that the levees would be built right which is why the level of government that appointed the Army Corps of Engineers for this job was neglectful in the prevention of Hurricane Katrina’s

For one, response to help these victims was all around slow. Then when they were finally rescued, most people went to the convention center where food was scarce and they did not have any of the necessities that they needed including decent medical equipment. These people were told that buses would be there to get them, but buses never showed up. It took the Mayor making a very angry phone call to get buses there to get these victims and take them somewhere. Even then, though, everyone was just dispersed. Many people were separated from their families. It was extremely disorganized. Later, after New Orleans had reopened, college student Paris Ervin came to discover another way that the government had been neglectful. Before he had arrived, he had gotten in contact with the search and rescue who had told him that there were no bodies found in his house. This caused him to believe that maybe there was a chance his mother had made it out alive after all. However, when he arrived at his house, he found that all the doors were still locked which meant that no one had gone into his house to search for any bodies. Upon further searching, his mother’s body was found underneath the refrigerator in the kitchen. He was not the only one this happened to either. The people involved in the search and rescue, which included people from FEMA, a federal organization, had a system of markings