New Orleans Disasters

New Orleans is known for being a culturally rich city; from its food to its music to its celebrations it is full of spirit and unique traditions. It is not hard to pick up on this, it is what you hear across the country when someone mentions New Orleans, it is what the New Orleans tourism board features in all its material, it part of how institutions such as Tulane market themselves. Everyone may know about jazz music and second lines but many of us visitors to the city lack knowledge about their historical, political, and social/cultural context. A crucial element of New Orleans culture and history that provides a lot of this context, that every visitor should take the time educate themselves about, is social aid and pleasure clubs and benevolent

In the history of the United States of America, Hurricane Katrina was known as one of the worst hurricanes in the world. The hurricane was a combination of tropical waters and gushing winds. It was the vicious hurricane that caused severe damage to the citizens of the United States of America. The amazing city known for its southern style, Cajun cuisines, jazz music and its celebration of Mardi Gras will never be the same. New Orleans, Louisiana was changed forever in August 2005 when this category five hurricane left the city devastated. The catastrophic storm tore through the city of New Orleans and surrounding areas destroying everything in its path and killing hundreds of people.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast at daybreak, “pummeling a region that included the fabled city of New Orleans and heaping damage on neighboring Mississippi. In all, more than 1,700 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of others displaced.” (Laforet, New York Times)

Bourne, Joel K Jr. "New Orleans." National Geographic. 01 Aug. 2007: 32. eLibrary. Web. 02

New Orleans culture is unlike any other city in the United States. In order to understand, we first need to learn about the history of the city. New Orleans was settled by the French in 1718, but the Spanish ruled from 1765 to 1802. In the mid-1700s, the French and Spanish from Europe were joined by many Cajuns. Thrown out of Acadia, which today is present day New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, by the British, Cajuns ultimately ended up in what is today Louisiana and their culture thrived. The Europeans of New Orleans did not try to conquer the American Indians who lived in the region; instead, the French allowed them to keep their freedom and culture. Also, the Spanish, in an effort to gain support over the French, allowed

In Zeitoun and When the Levees Broke, it was evident that Hurricane Katrina caused catastrophic damage to the Gulf Coast, especially to New Orleans. Many lives were lost, and the people were both physically and mentally distraught. However, after just six months the people of New Orleans gathered their spirits to celebrate Mardi Gras. This celebration proved that the city’s identity had not been forgotten. New Orleans’ identity was also evident during the hurricane, which highlighted the ways in which people cared for each other. Although New Orleans went through an environmental crisis, the city was resilient enough for the people to remember their history, jazz music, and their connection to their tight-knit community.

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 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 hit New Orleans in August of 2005. A once vibrant and cultural community was decimated by harsh winds and extreme flooding. The rescue efforts sent to Louisiana were substantial, consisting of now only FEMA but also donated services from other countries as well. Even so thousands of people were displaced from their homes. There are people who refused to leave even after their homes were flooded and their mementos lost to the dirty polluted water. Ten years after the fact the city is still under construction. There are varying degrees of repair from street to street, the tourist area was one of the first few areas to be repaired, and the neighboring residential areas seem to have become of secondary importance. People were forced into homelessness because they could not afford to repair the house they had worked to attain before the hurricane toppled their economy. Still to this day the homeless line the streets, which should seem scary and dangerous, but it does not feel that way. It has become obvious that people need to learn to look beyond their own beliefs to better understand the world as a whole because not everything is how it seems.

New Orleans is an American city known for being very different from the rest of America. The differences vary in food, attitude, location, and atmosphere. These differences make New Orleans a unique part of America, and they have survived through many cases of adversity such as white supremacy, Hurricane Katrina, and many others. If events like these occurred in any other city across America, it would have caused mass diaspora and eventually the collapse of the city into something unrecognizable. New Orleans is a different story. New Orleans has resisted much of the change that has taken hold of the rest of the country. They have traditions that have been passed down and an attitude that is only at home in New Orleans.

Hot and humid weather, hurricanes, Mississippi river, jazz, delicious food, famous vacation place, and relatively high proportion of black people. These are all that I’d heard about New Orleans before I came to this city. A month has passed since I arrived to New Orleans, and I experienced more than I’d knew. But still, although I was aware of the fact that what I had experienced until now are not everything about New Orleans, I was surprised when I learned about the new aspects of New Orleans through the service work, class, and the lecture of guest speaker.

Hurricane Katrina hit the southern coast of the United States on August 28, 2005. The center of Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans on the morning of August 29, 2005. The devastating effect of this hurricane resulted in more than 1,800 citizens losing their lives, as well as more than an estimated $81 billion dollars in damages occurred. By August 31, 2005, eighty-percent of the city became submerged under water because the storm surge breached the city's levees at multiple points. If the levees are damaged massive water will flood Louisiana from the Gulf Coast, the Mississippi River, and other surrounding bodies of water. Some areas of New Orleans were 15 feet under water. Winds of Hurricane Katrina reached an astounding category 3 as

August 29, 2005 may be just another date to most of the American population but for New Orleans it is a date that weighs heavy on the hearts of the residents. Every year when this date comes around, residents are reminded of the lost ones they didn’t get to say goodbye too, the pets that were lost, homes that were damaged and lost, families that were shattered and broken apart due to this tragic event. Thousands of lives were taken during this time, not including the hundreds of thousands of homes that were lost. Many people sat on the roofs of their homes trapped inside of unbearable hot attics, or canoeing through disease waters trying to stay alive until emergency response teams could reach them.

New Orleans is a Louisiana city on the Mississippi River, near the Gulf of Mexico. Nicknamed the "Big Easy," it's known for its round-the-clock nightlife, vibrant live-music scene and spicy, singular cuisine reflecting its history as a melting pot of French, African and American cultures. Embodying its festive spirit is Mardi Gras, the late-winter carnival famed for raucous costumed parades and street parties.

While the city did not take a direct hit, New Orleans also felt the impact of Katrina as she came ashore. The wind and rain from the storm put enormous stress on the levees protecting the city. Unfortunately, the levees could not withstand the forces applied to them and they eventually gave way flooding large portions of the city of New Orleans and surrounding areas. Large public places began to become places of refuge for those still in the