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Van Heerden, The Failure of the New Orleans Levee System during Hurricane Katrin
Impacts of katrina on new orleans
Impacts of katrina 2018
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The historical event of Hurricane Katrina, a category three hurricane with winds ranging from 111-130 mph, in August 2005 revealed major structural failures in the levee systems of New Orleans. Though not all structural failures are as catastrophic, the breeched levees led to loss of life, homes, businesses, highways, and left a trail of destruction that is still being repaired today. The result of this failure led to lawsuits, conspiracy theories, and court cases. Hurricane Katrina had a major effect upon our country and those results are still rippling on today. Though a city once devastated, major improvements to the failed system have been made and leave the city feeling safe once again.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans with its fierce intensity, the lives of its inhabitants was forever changed. The winds rose and the waves crashed upon the only security system this, below sea level, city had against the many water systems surrounding it. Most people think that the waves simply rose up over the banks and levees of the city; however, evidence proves this thought wrong. The actual reason New Orleans was flooded was due to poor engineering. According to experts, two thirds of the tragic flooding could have been prevented. Thousands of homes could have been saved if the engineers responsible for building New Orleans’s levees had followed regulatory guidelines.
After the shock of Hurricane Katrina slightly diminished, the Congress ordered a congressional inspection of the federally build levee system. As they dug deeper into the cause of the levee’s failure, they began to discover flaws in the actual engineering of the levees. Three of the levees that had the most prominently negative effect on the city, and ...
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...cane to protect the rich and middle class, and some blame President Bush.
In conclusion, Hurricane Katrina had devastating effects on the city of New Orleans. I believe the blame was portioned correctly onto the heads of the engineers responsible for building the levees. Not enough care or attention to detail was put into the construction of the levees, and resulted in death and devastation. When it comes to the safety of people, all measures must be taken and no cost spared. This historical event learned from that, and great improvements were made to the protection system in New Orleans.
Works Cited
Hurricane Katrina. [online] 14 October 2010. http://en.www.wikipedia.org/wiki/effects_of_HurricaneKatrina_in_New_Orleans
Parker Waichman Alonso LLP. Levee Failure. [online] 17 October 2010. http://www.yourlawyer.com/topics/overview/levee_failure
New Orleans, Louisiana lies at the second lowest elevation among major cities in the United States. It is a city surrounded by water, making it almost like an island. To counter this dangerous combination of the low elevation along with the lakes, rivers and swamps surrounding it, the Army Corps of Engineers built a series of levees around the city to foster its protection. It is these very same levees however that might doom the city should a Category 3 hurricane ever hit. Our statistical analyses examined the current belief that there is a 39% probability that New Orleans will be hit by a major hurricane and based on the resulting Z-score, rejected that belief. We did find however that the probability, while not 39%, was still in the 30th percentile range, which should still be a major cause for concern among the leaders and residences of the city of New Orleans.
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
Yet this is not the only example of the failure of Mississippi river management. Only 10 years ago, New Orleans’ levies failed, an example of the inability to control the flooding.
Dave Eggers events of looting are an accurate portrayal of Spike Lee’s documentary When the Levees Broke. Works Cited Eggers, Dave. Zeitoun. San Francisco: McSweeney's, 2009. Print.
manmade levees, dikes, and other flood control measures, is a case in point. In a
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
Katrina is the costliest U.S hurricane, with estimated damage over $81 billion and costs over $160 billion.” The people that were affected the most was the poor people, children, the sick, and the elderly. Most of New Orleans was underwater; it was going to take a long time for the city to come back from this. “The The rescue and recovery efforts following Katrina became highly politicized, with federal, state and local officials pointing fingers at one another.” People didn’t get the proper warnings to evacuate. After the hurricane “Government officials have sought to learn from the tragedy and implement better environmental, communications and evacuation policies.” Ten years after the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the city is still dealing with still trying to recover. The have lost a lot when the hurricane hit and it affected them financially, because of the popular areas that are in New Orleans. In all, almost everyone that evacuate from New Orleans fled to Houston which led to the population to grow, but also those that came to Houston had a different feeling about things. Houston has also had its fair shares has had 27 disasters- eight hurricanes, eight floods, six severe storms, three
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 category 3 storm changed the lives of the residence who lived there forever. The storm in combination with the fault of the man-made flood protection walls (levee’s) resulted in the death of at least 1,300 people (1). With nearly half the victims over the age of 74, deaths were caused by; drowning, injury/ trauma and heart conditions (2). Hurricane Katrina was one of the most costliest storms to land on American soil, costing around US$135 billion in damages (3). Although the number of deaths caused by Hurricane Katrina are not as high as other natural disasters, Katrina displaced a massive amount of people from their homes, around 85% of the population were displaced directly after the storm hit (6). Being one of the most devastating natural disasters to hit the United States, Hurricane Katrina impacted not only the residence of New Orleans by also many of the surrounding
Ubilla, Javier, Tarek Abdoun, Inthuorn Sasanakul, Michael Sharp, Scott Steedman, Wipawi Vanadit-Ellis, and Thomas Zimmie. "New Orleans Levee System Performance during Hurricane Katrina: London Avenue and Orleans Canal South." Geotechnical & Geoenvironmental Engineering (2008): n. pag. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.
There comes a time in the world where the outcome of certain events can cause a huge social change, one of those events is Hurricane Katrina. The events that took place prior to, during and after Katrina although impact only a few places physically it was left in the minds of everyone in the world. There were many actions that could have taken place to prevent the damage of such a catastrophic event, however nothing was done. Hurricane Katrina, a category 3 hurricane struck Louisiana and parts of the Mississippi. New Orleans in particular, due to various reasons received the most damage. Katrina first started off as a small hurricane formed in the Bahamas as it moved towards Louisiana and Mississippi it became a category 5, which is the strongest it can become, then decreased to category 3 once it finally struck. The storm caused an incredible amount of damage that Hurricane Katrina was noted as the most destructive and costly natural disaster in US history. The death toll was 1,836 people with 200 bodies left unclaimed as well as over 700 people unaccounted for. Hurricane Katrina was a source of social change as people have learned from the impact it had on the mind and body of the citizens of New Orleans, the mismanagement and lack of leadership the government showed, and the substantial immediate and long term economic damage it caused the country.
Fink, Sheri. "Hurricane Katrina: after the flood." The Gaurdian. N.p., 7 Feb. 2014. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.
...he government of Louisiana soon came up with new criteria on how future structure should be built to withstand more natural disasters like these. Not only knowing basic information, knowing how to prepare, and seeing how Hurricane Katrina was so destructive should help the forty five million citizens that live on hurricane prone coastlines prepare for anything like this in the future.