Causes And Impacts Of Hurricane Katrina

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Hurricane Katrina Hurricanes are one of the most powerful and vastly devastating forces of nature mankind has come to seen. These storms can pack sustain winds in excess of 75 miles per hour and in rare cases can exceed 175 miles per hour sustain winds. While these storms typically lose strength as they move over land the devastation left by them typically cripple many of the critical infrastructures we take for granted every day. One of the most devastating storms to ever hit the United States of America in recent decades was Hurricane Katrina.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION The area effected by Hurricane Katrina was the majority of the Gulf coast. Hurricane Katrina made landfalls on many of the gulf coast states, however many associate it with …show more content…

Hurricane Katrina eventually made it to Category five status which is considered the most powerful of all hurricanes. On August 29 Hurricane Katrina made its second landfall on southeast Louisana but only as a category three storm but this storm brought with it just as much destruction as a category five hurricane. …show more content…

Writer Todd Litman wrote that, “many private caregiving facilities that relied on bus companies and ambulance services for evacuation were unable to evacuate their charges because they waited too long (Litman).” According to the Louisiana Emergency Operation Plan, it calls for the use of school and other public busses in evacuations (State of Louisina EOP). Some of these buses were available but there were not enough drivers to drive them and this was due to the governor at the time not signing a waiver that would allow any licensed driver to transport evacuees on school buses. And in one instance a 20-year-old armed only with a standard operator’s permit took it upon himself to take a school bus and drive it to Houston with 50 to 70 passengers on board (Litman). According to an engineer for the city of New Orleans on August 29, the storm surge breached 53 levees and caused great flooding and submerged the eighty percent of the city in water (Christine). New Orleans is a major port hub for general cargo and several farming commodities and was stated that it could take eighty days for it to drain (trucknews.com). This shows the role transportation had in assistaing the recovery efforts and evacuation of the areas effected and the role it had to overcome since many ports were closed and had to go

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