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The impacts of hurricane katrina on new orleans
Negative impacts of hurricane Katrina
Negative impacts of hurricane Katrina
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In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, leaving its signature of destruction form Louisiana all the way to Florida. The hardest hit area and the greatest catastrophe was in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. For many years the people of New Orleans had feared that one day a hurricane would drown their city with its storm surge. Katrina brought that nightmare storm surge and flooded the city. Yet the New Orleans levees system and flood control was the major cause of flooding, due to the inadequate repair and maintenance failure, incompletion of the levee system, and engineering designs based on outdated scientific data.
New Orleans on average lies 6 feet below sea level. It’s bordered by the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain on two sides. Those bodies of water ultimately feed into the Gulf of Mexico, which lies less than 100 miles from New Orleans. Besides being surrounded by water, the city is also marbled with canals and bayous that are essential to the city’s daily functions (Galle, 2006). The effects of Hurricane Katrina flooded a large part of New Orleans and breeched levees and floodwalls along the 17thStreet London Avenue canals (Government Accountability Office (GAO) 2005). The city of New Orleans has a history of levee failure and trying to control flooding fromhurricanes and rivers.
Long before Katrina arrived, the Native American and French settlers faced floods from the river and from hurricanes. The colonial capital was settled in 1718, to fend off flooding, the colonial government began building low earthen barriers, which they called levees (Colten, 2006). The colonial government enacted a law requiring all landowners to erect their own levee; the Spanish continued this aft...
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...all, Mark. “Its Cheaper to Go Dutch.” Newsweek 148 (2006): 36. Military and Government Collection. EBSCO. Univ. of South Alabama, Mobile. 26 Oct. 2006.
Mann, Eric. “Race and the High Ground in New Orleans.” World Watch (2006): 40-43. Academic OneFile. Thomson Gale. Univ. of South Alabama, Mobile. 28 Nov.2006
Ryan, Dave. “Bringing Them All Back Home: Six Months After Katrina, Homeless.” Dollars and Sense (2006): 46-50. Academic OneFile. Thomson Gale. Univ. of South Alabama, Mobile. 28 Nov. 2006.
Shafer, Jack. “Don’t Refloat.” (2005). 28 Nov.2006 http://www.slate.com. Szymanski, Greg. “New Orleans Levees Intentionally Exploded by Bomb?” Artic Beacon(2006). 29 Nov. 2006 http://www.mataba.net/news. United States. Cong. House. Army Corps of Engineers: Lake Pontchartrian and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project 28 Sept. 2005. 30 Oct. 2006 http://www.gao.gov.
In New Orleans, officials dynamited a levee south of the city. Water washing across St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes relieved pressure on New Orleans levees, maybe preventing flooding. But those parishes were ruined.
Rather than working with nature through multi-tiered flood control with spillways and reservoirs, levees disallowed the river to naturally flood, deteriorated the natural ecosystem, and ultimately weakened the city’s defenses against the hurricane (Kelman). Culture and society further interacted, as beliefs in man’s power over nature and racial discrimination promoted levee expansion and racial segregation, creating a city of racially differentiated risk (Spreyer 4). As a result, inundation mostly impacted the lower land neighborhoods that housed poor people of color. Society and nature interfaced in the application of levees that contained nature’s forces. Ultimately, nature won out: the hurricane overpowered the levees and breached the Industrial Canal, disproportionally flooding the mostly black, low-elevation neighborhoods of New Orleans (Campanella
Mississippi was also managed in New Orleans to limit flooding. This was done through levies that were at first naturally built by the river’s mud flows during floods. Later the levies were built higher and higher to keep the flooding Mississippi into the New Orleans area. But the levies were often ineffective in managing, or led to, more flooding. Kelman explains this when they write “With the development in the Mississippi Valley ongoing and artificial banks confining more runoff inside the channel, the river set new high-water marks” (Pg 702).
Niman, Michael I. "KATRINA's AMERICA: Failure, Racism, And Profiteering." Humanist 65.6 (2005): 11. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.
Rudawsky, Gil. "Five Years After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Tourism Rebounds." DailyFinance.com. AOL Inc, 27 Aug. 2010. Web. 29 Nov. 2013.
Most of the destructions from the events of August 29th 2005, when Katrina Hit the City Of New Orleans, were not only caused by the storm itself; but also, by failure of the engineering of the levee system protecting the entire infrastructure of the city. The years of poor decision making and avoidance of the levee system led to one of the most catastrophic events in the history of the United States. Throughout our research, we have identified three key players in charge of the levee system design, construction and maintenance. These three organizations are the Unites States Corps of Engineers, the New Orleans Levee District and the Louisiana Department of Transportation. The consequences of the hurricane showed the organizations negligence in the design, construction and maintenance of the protective walls. Later independent sresearch showed that more than 50 levees and food walls failed during the passage of the hurricane. This failure caused the flooding of most of New Orleans and all of ST. Bernard Parish. The Unites States Corps of Engineers had been in charge of the of the levee system and flood walls construction since the 1936 flood act. According to the law, the Louisiana Department of Transportation is in charge to inspect the overall design and engineering practices implemented in the construction of the system. Once the levee systems were finished, they were handed over to the New Orleans Levee District for regular maintenance and periodically inspections. The uncoordinated actions of these three agencies resulted in the complete failure of a system that was supposed to protect the people of New Orleans. The evidence is clear that this catastrophic event did not happened by chance. The uncoordinated response of these...
By August 28, evacuations were underway across the region. That day, the National Weather Service predicted that after the storm hit, “most of the [Gulf Coast] area will be uninhabitable for weeks…perhaps longer.” New Orleans was at particular risk. Though about half the city actually lies above sea level, its average elevation is about six feet below sea level–and it is completely surrounded by water. Over the course of the 20th century, the Army Corps of Engineers had built a system of levees and seawalls to keep the city from flooding. The levees along the Mississippi River were strong and sturdy, but the ones built to hold back Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Borgne and the waterlogged swamps and marshes to the city’s east and west were much less reliable. Even before the storm, officials worried that those levees, jerry-built atop sandy, porous, erodible soil, might not withstand a massive storm surge. Neighborhoods that sat below sea level, many of which housed the city’s poorest and most vulnerable people, were at great risk of
According to Hurricane Katrina At Issue Disasters, economic damages from Hurricane Katrina have been estimated at more than $200 billion… More than a million people were displaced by the storm… An estimated 120,000 homes were abandoned and will probably be destroyed in Louisiana alone (At * Issue). For this perspective, “Hurricane Katrina change the Gulf Coast landscape and face of its culture when it hit in 2005” (Rushton). A disaster like Katrina is something the victims are always going to remember, for the ones the lost everything including their love ones. Katrina became a nightmare for all the people that were surround in the contaminated waters in the city of New Orleans. People were waiting to be rescue for days,
The Web. The Web. 21 Nov.2011 Bose, Debopriya. The “Hurricane Andrew Facts.” Buzzle, Buzzle.
News of the devastating hurricane Katrina and its economic, political, social, and humanitarian consequences dominated global headlines in an unprecedented manner when this natural catastrophe struck the region of New Orleans in mid August 2005 (Katrinacoverage.com). As a tradition, large-scale disasters like Katrina, inevitably, bring out a combination of the best and the worst news media instincts. As such, during the height of Hurricane Katrina’s rage, many journalists for once located their gag reflex and refused to swallow shallow and misleading excuses and explanations from public officials. Nevertheless, the media’s eagerness to report thinly substantiated rumors may have played a key role in bringing about cultural wreckage that may take the American society years to clean up.
Hurricane Katrina was one of the most devastating natural disasters to happen in the United States. The storm resulted in more then US$100 billion in damage when the cities flood protection broke and 80% of the city was flooded (1). The protection failure was not the only cause for the massive flooding, the hurricanes clockwise rotation pulled water from north of New Orleans into the city. 330,000 homes were destroyed and 400,000 people from New Orleans were displaced, along with 13,00 killed (1). Although the population quickly recovered, the rate of recovery slowed down as the years went on leading us to believe not everyone
Shah, Anup (2005, November 13). Hurricane Katrina. Global Issues. Retrieved from mhtml:file://F:Hurricane Katrina—Global Issues. mht
Some of the damage done by Hurricane Katrina could have potentially been avoided if protection systems were installed to the proper extents. In Louisiana, “some parts of the metro area continue to lack hurricane protection built to federal standards” (Webster). Had the greater Louisiana area been better protected, it is very likely that more people would have survived and the total cost of the storm been less. Even in areas where levees...
Fink, Sheri. "Hurricane Katrina: after the flood." The Gaurdian. N.p., 7 Feb. 2014. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.
Hurricanes occur all over the world, at different times, but commonly through June first and late November. However in late August 2005 a catastrophic hurricane struck. This was Hurricane Katrina. With winds traveling over one hundred miles per hour making it a category five on the Saffir- Simpson Hurricane Scale it was said to have cause billions of dollars’ worth of damage. Hurricane Katrina flooded nearly forty thousand homes, and killed at least two thousand people (“Hurricane”). An average category five hurricane has enough energy to power street lamps for more than twenty seven thousand hours (Williams 58). Knowing about Hurricane Katrina, and the devastation of the city in New Orleans would be beneficial. Also, general information on hurricanes can help civilians and people of higher authority better understand and prepare for damage that could once hit their town and community. Because experts know the general information on these storms they can help explain to the public why and how Hurricane Katrina and other hurricanes occur. Hopefully, in the future civilians will know and use this information to their advantage against hurricanes.