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Van Heerden, The Failure of the New Orleans Levee System during Hurricane Katrin
impacts of katrina on new orleans
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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 ... ... middle of paper ... ...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 is a city that is rich in culture as well as history. The city is in effect, an island – Lake Pontchartrain surrounds the city to the north, the Mississippi River to the west and south, and a bevy of lakes – including Lake Borne to the east. Surrounding the city is a series of levees to keep these bodies of water at bay. In addition to these levees, the only defense the city has is a series of canals and a very antiquated pumping system. However, the same levees that protect the city, makes it a death trap should a major hurricane make a direct hit to the metropolitan area. The risk of intense flooding brought forth by storm surges of 20+ feet would wipe the city out.
The film “When the Levees Broke” of spike lee is a four part series covering the events that took place before and after the devastation of Katrina on New Orleans and its residents. In August 2005, New Orleans was struck by Hurricane Katrina. People were unprepared for the disaster. As the city was flooding, levees safeguard failed the city, which caused the city to go underwater. In the film, part 1 shows hurricane Katrina and it’s impact. The flooding, rescue efforts and people trying to survive the disaster. Part 2 shows the aftermath with people that were evacuated waiting for help to come to the city. It was a very slow response to help and everyone was just waiting. Part 3 shows how people started to recover. Many hoped to return to their
In the late summer of 2005, a terrible tragedy occurred that changed the lives of many in the south-east region of the United States. A Category 3, named storm, named Hurricane Katrina, hit the Gulf Coast on the 29th of August and led to the death of 1,836 and millions of dollars’ worth of damage (Waple 2005). The majority of the damage occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana. Waple writes in her article that winds “gusted over 100 mph in New Orleans, just west of the eye” (Waple 2005). Not only was the majority of the damage due to the direct catastrophes of the storm but also city’s levees could no longer hold thus breaking and releasing great masses of water. Approximately, 80% of the city was submerged at sea level. Despite the vast amount of damage and danger all throughout the city, officials claimed that there was work being done to restore the city of New Orleans as a whole but many parts, and even the people, of the city were overlooked while areas of the city with higher economic value, and more tourist traffic, were prioritized along with those individuals.
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...
Hurricane Katrina roared through Louisiana demolishing everything in its path. It obliterated the city of New Orleans, inside and out leaving almost nothing untouched and intact. Homes, schools, office buildings, and almost all infrastructures were ravaged by the mighty storm. Thousands of people ...
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...
Louisiana is known for being an area prone to hurricanes, and millions of dollars of damage have been caused in this state almost every year. A major concern for a way to prevent future and major damage then started in the early 2000’s. The levees were designed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and they had to decide how to build these levees to withstand hurricane forces. Although they were built for hurricane forces, it could not stand up to Katrina in 2005, when they broke and flooded the entire city. I am studying the levee break during Katrina because I want to find out why the engineers decided to design for smaller hurricane forces so my reader can better understand that the engineers may have underestimated the potential harm to public. The main decisions behind the levee design were the voices influencing the design, the reasons for delays, and the materials for the design. The first thing they had to worry about was the people who had an important comment for how to design them.
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
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
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
On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast of the United States. The storm was measured as a category three hurricane which had reached winds of approximately one hundred and forty miles per hour. The storm had initially measured almost four hundred miles across affecting the areas of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Of these three affected areas, Louisiana contained the largest amount of damage; however, one city in particular suffered the greatest damage and was the primary focus of this disaster. That was the city of New Orleans. The city of New Orleans was at an incredibly high risk for a few reasons. One reason was that New Orleans was surrounded by significant bodies of water. Each of these bodies of water had contained levees that were built in the twentieth century, where some were stronger than others. Those levees that were not built properly held the greatest risk of being breached and causing treacherous flooding as well. Another factor included New Orleans being located below sea level, which had included the “city’s poorest and most vulnerable pe...
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,
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.
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.
On early morning of August 29th, 2005 on the Gulf Shore near New Orleans, a devastating hurricane struck. It wrecked havoc, demolishing anything in its path. Leaving nothing but mounds of trash. The surviving people were forced to leave due to massive flooding and the destruction of their homes. New Orleans was not the only place hit by Katrina but it was one of the areas that was hit the hardest. Millions of people were affected by this tragedy and the cost range was up in the billions. Crime rates went up, no one had a place to stay and water was polluted. The damage done by Katrina affected New Orleans and the other areas hit years after it struck. Restoration for the areas hit was going to need support from all of America and support groups across the country. No one was ready for this tragedy or could ever predict the horrible outcome.