Hurricane Katrina Simulation

Hurricane Katrina is the storm of the modern day century. Everyone knew it was coming, but did so little to prevent its destructive forces. In one year before Hurricane Katrina was forming in the Atlantic Ocean scientist did a simulation of what would happen to New Orleans if a hurricane hit. The simulation was called Hurricane Pam. The simulation showed that 61,000 people would die, and with 175,000 would be injured, and half a million homeless (Penry-Davey and Chinn, 2005). Engineers, scientists, government officials, and the citizens of New Orleans did not listen to the warnings and did nothing about it, which resulted in on the greatest failures in American history. One of the main reasons for this disaster that took place was due to poor

The canal was poorly engineered and helped contribute to the result of the massive amounts of water to pour into the city. The canal experienced a wave of eighteen to twenty five feet. The category three levee walls could not withstand the amounts of water brought by the hurricane by more than five feet. It weathered down the levee foundation and in the end destroyed them (Penry-Davey and Chinn, 2005). The ground that the levee was built on sunk from the increasing amounts of water that the soil was absorbing. The levee wall began to sink resulting in the height to no be able to withstand the hurricane waves. The main reason is that the waves were higher than the level of the wall. The design caused the water pressure to scour away the foundation allowing for the water to flow over the levee. The pressure of the water surges of the hurricane become to great for the levee wall to withstand. Once the Industrial Street Canal levee broke, the entire city began to flood and remained in these conditions for several weeks until the water could be pumped out. This was because the systems was designed to only keep the water out and had no system to get the water out once it was in (Penry-Davey and Chinn, 2005). Hurricane waters filled the city of New Orleans within seconds and the levee stood no chance (McQuaid and Schleifstein,

The levees overall goal is to keep the water out, so when engineering a plan to design these levees was to be able to endure the produced hurricane’s power. The 17th Street Canal could withstand up to category three hurricane conditions, so it should not have failed. This is due to the fact that Hurricane Katrina only experienced a category one or two. The conditions of the levee systems was not exceeded or was it even over powered by the storm (Penry-Davey and Chinn, 2005). The main mechanism of the levee failure for the 17th Street Canal was due to a pressure burst. The foundation at the base of the levee was unable to tolerate the force or the generated power of the hurricane. The earth was too weak and could not handle the forces, causing the massive flooding in one of the most populated cities of United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau New Orleans grew faster than any other large city in the U.S. in 2008. In 2008 New Orleans was estimate to have a population of about 311,853 people (United States Census Bureau, 2009). The ill designed levee system allowed for water to go underneath the levee allowing the foundation to break. This can be explained by not having the foundation driven into the ground far enough. Especially the levees need to be sunk deeper into the ground to be able to hold up to the massive amounts of pressure and water that was