Ne New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Case Study

time of crisis by R. David Paulison, who unlike Brown, has had a career focused on disaster

Although rebuilding the levees,drainage system and infrastructure were essential for the protection of the people, the rebuilding of communities is just as important. It’s more than just these events such as Hurricane Katrina that cities need to focus on to becoming more resilient.47 In July 2006, the Rockerfeller Foundation, Greater New Orleans Foundation and the Bush- Clinton Fund announced the Unified New Orleans plan (UNOP) process that would build upon previous efforts and constructively more towards an overall recovery plan for the city and of its citizens. 48 As Christopher Kennedy notes, “infrastructure primarily mean transportation systems, which determine land use in cities, and other physical assets such as water pipes , sewers

After much debate, France offers to sell the U.S. not only New Orleans, but the entire Louisiana Territory for a price of only $15 million dollars! Stretching from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, what will our nation do with all of this extra land?

One of the most horrific times in New Orleans history was due to Hurricane Katrina. On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans causing massive destructions and flooding throughout all of New Orleans. Katrina forced many individuals to be evacuated from their homes due to flooding. In some parts of New Orleans the water reached up to 15 to 20 feet causing mass chaos and confusion. With the mass of destruction and lack of protection from the local law enforcements, crime in New Orleans spike considerable. There were individuals who were looting and sacking stores, gangs were more prevalent and visible. This created an issue for the New Orleans police department because many of their five hundred officers were cut off by the storm and floodwaters causing many to walk away from their posts. This left the department in shambles, having police New Orleans without having all of its police officers in place to help maintain order. A lot of policeman faced high levels of stress and distress due the rising flood waters, the conditions made their job increasingly tougher. Not only were they tasked with maintaining order, but many of their families were affected by the storm as well. The policemen became targets of angry residents and mob violence and in some instances having to protect

New Orleans was built on a risky location. According to Lalwani, Khagram, Evans, Jackson, and Lindenber (2007, p1), New Orleans was built on “a natural levee adjacent to the massive Mississippi river that was not embayed and therefore not protected from flooding.” When French colonizer, Jean Baptiste La Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, founded New Orleans in 1718, it was considered a strategically significant port of trade between North America and the rest of the world due to the Mississippi River and its’ vast network of tributaries (Lalwani, et al., 2007, p1). On the other hand, the city’s first chief engineer, Del la Tour, and geologists Kolb and Van Loplin found the site unsuitable for a city because the threat of flooding (Lalwani, et al.,

In chapter four, it mentions about how in August 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and how Hurricane Katrina was one of the most deadliest natural disasters as well as one of the most destructive natural disasters. The author also mentions that this storm was catastrophic and within hours of the storm, “New Orleans was eighty percent under water and in certain places the water was almost twenty feet deep” (74). The author also discusses how many of the residents were left homeless with nothing, no food nor water because of the destructive damages that was done by Hurricane Katrina; not only that but the author talks about how many residents lost their lives during this catastrophic storm. The author mentions how after the storm it was

Hurricane Katrina was one of the most destructive hurricanes to ever hit the United States, causing damage across the entire Southeast, with the harshest conditions falling on the city of New Orleans. This hurricane began as the consequence of a tropical wave encountering the traces of an earlier tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico. Once the wave and depression interacted, a new depression formed, located right near the Bahamas. This depression intensified exponentially, developing into a complete hurricane. Katrina wreaked havoc for slightly less than a week before subsiding over the eastern Great Lakes. This hurricane had catastrophic social and economic effects on the Southeast requiring a lengthy reconstruction period.

The whole world observed as the administration responders appeared incapable to provide essential protection from the effects of nature. The deprived response results from a failure to accomplish a number of risk factors (Moynihan, 2009). The dangers of a major hurricane striking New Orleans had been measured, and there was sufficient warning of the threat of Katrina that announcements of emergency were made days in advance of landfall (Moynihan, 2009). Nonetheless, the responders were unsuccessful to change this information into a level of preparation suitable with the possibility of the approaching disaster. Federal responders failed to recognize the need to more actively engage (Moynihan, 2009). These improvements include improved ability to provide support to states and tribes ahead of a disaster; developed a national disaster recovery strategy to guide recovery efforts after major disasters and emergencies; and the Establishment of Incident Management Assistance Teams in which these full time, rapid response teams are able to deploy within two hours and arrive at an incident within 12 hours to support the local incident commander (FEMA,

Hurricane Katrina is a historical storm that hit the United States on August 29, 2005. The country experienced the storm exactly four years after the occurrence of the terrorist attack on 9/11/2001. This was three years after the establishment of a crucial department of Homeland Security. However, regardless of the intensified concentration to homeland security, response to Hurricane Katrina was a huge failure. The unfortunate response was due to lack of adequate planning and ability to take care of the risks. The possibility of New Orleans experiencing the effects of Hurricane had been put into consideration for quite a long time. There were enough warning signs of the hurricane. Declarations and deliberations were made days before the landfall. However, responders did not transfigure this information into the extent of preparedness suitable with the range of the imminent disaster.

Hurricane Katrina hit the southeastern coast of the United States in August of 2005. The eye of the storm went through the city of New Orleans and caused thousands of casualties and more than eighty billion dollars in damage (Schwartz). However, poor engineering and design allowed the immense flooding to breach the levee system and flood most of the metropolitan area. Despite the Delta Service Corps admitting that they knew of the possible failures for over twenty years, they claimed that insufficient budgets set by Congress and local governments prohibited them from restructuring and preserving the levees (Can We Save New Orleans?). Katrina was the third most intense land falling tropical storm in United States history. The combination of

Hurricane Katrina will forever be noted in United States history as one of the worst natural disasters to hit the states. Within its wake, Hurricane Katrina left thousands of Americans dead and many more homeless with no place to call home. A vast majority of the homeless were already living in poverty in New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina hit the hardest. People that already didn’t have what most Americans have were forced out of their homes and their jobs with nowhere to go. Many have criticized the United States government and President Bush for the lack of response to this disaster, as well as ignoring the fact that the levees in the Lower Ninth Ward were not strong enough to withhold this type of force. Still to this day, many are still rebuilding their lives, homes, and businesses.

In the year 2005, New Orleans was famously hit a major natural disaster that took lives and destroyed the homes and civilians. This wrath of Mother Nature became to be known as Hurricane Katrina, a category 5 hurricane with gusts peaking at 174/mph according to the Safir- Simpson wind scale (SSHS). With this Hurricane having its path directly on a city only being on average 1-2 feet below sea level, it created conditions for serious havoc (NOAA, 2012). The aftermath left a serious physical imprint on the city, which has the potential to never be removed. This imprint left by Hurricane Katrina caused extensive damage to 134,000 housing units, destroying multiple bridges along the Gulf Coast, as well as various buildings across the city, which led to harmful chemicals leaking into the water system, such as petroleum and natural gas. Finally, Hurricane Katrina also caused the main power grid to be disoriented for a number of weeks. As a result, the damage costs from the storm added up to be about $108 billion (2005 USD), which according to Eric Blake was the costliest storm ever to hit the United States (Blake et al. 2011). Hurricane Katrina perpetuated all of these tribulations, as it drastically altered the lives of the many inhabitants of New Orleans and they continue to face the repercussions of the storm in their day-to-day lives.

Hurricane Katrina resulted in massive loss of life and billions of dollars in property damage. There are many lessons worth learning from this event. Finger pointing started before the event was over. Most of the focus on Hurricane Katrina was on its impact on New Orleans; however, the storm ravaged a much wider area than that. This paper will briefly summarize the event, the impact on the city of New Orleans and the lessons learned to ensure preparedness today.

10 Years ago on the last week in August, one of the most brutal storms the United States has ever had hit Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. On August 28th and 29th, Fifty-five-foot waves crashed down the Mississippi coast leaving total destruction behind. In New Orleans a levee was built to protect the city but failed in 50 different places due to it being poorly designed. FEMA brought many survivors to their camps, but some weren’t that lucky. In New Orleans about 20,000 residents were trapped in the Louisiana Superdome without clean water, medical care, or working toilets. After the floodwaters receded, over 100,000 residents left the city of New Orleans to never return. 10 years later after the hurricane, most of the affected

Hurricane Katrina pounded the Gulf Coast with tremendous force at daybreak, August 29, 2005, severely punishing regions that included the city of New Orleans and its neighboring state Mississippi. Resulting in a total of just over 1700 people killed, and hundreds of thousands missing. When we think of Hurricane Katrina stories, we think of stories that were published by the media such as, “Packing 145-mile-an-hour winds as it made landfall, the category 3 storm left more than a million people in three states without power and submerged highways even hundreds of miles from its center. The hurricane's storm surge a 29-foot wall of water pushed ashore when the hurricane struck the Gulf Coast was the highest ever measured in the United States.