The Perfect Storm And Submerged City

This case summarizes events preceding the Hurricane Katrina, which was one of the worst natural catastrophes in the modern history of the USA. It raises questions about the lack of reasonable prevention and preparation actions due to flimsy structure and management of the responsible organizations and persons, invalidity and inconsistence of their actions and incapability of making the decisions in a timely manner. As a result of the unstructured and incoherent activities, we could observe several ineffective and costly attempts to mitigate floods and hurricanes. In the beginning the local officials, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and “White Houses past and present always seem penny-wise and pound-foolish” because of the chain of the wrong

A natural disaster has the capability to cause large scale damage and destruction to an area. Seismic events have been known to alter landscapes and affect the livelihoods, health and development of communities. No two earthquake events are the same and the level of threat posed by an earthquake can vary due to both the human and physical factors of an area. The 2010 magnitude - 7.0 earthquake that occurred in Haiti is an example of where a natural disaster caused a previously vulnerable area to suffer tremendous loss and debilitating socio-economic impacts, to an already poverty-stricken nation.

The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger is an account of an immense storm and its destructive path through the North Atlantic. In late October of 1991, crews of several different fishing ships left their port for their final haul. Little did they know that they would soon cross paths with one of the greatest storms ever recorded. This particular storm would create huge swells, high winds, and hard rain. The system, was said to be a “perfect storm” because all of the elements were just right to create the worst imaginable storm ever seen, “… a hundred-year event,” claimed some meteorologists. These types of storms are caused when: “Warm air is less dense than cool air; it rises off the surface of the ocean, cools in the upper atmosphere, and

The author’s frightening story, “The Storm” has all the expected things that a good scary story should have. It has a story line that gains suspense throughout the story, there is irony, and there is lots of

In the scientific article,’’Super Disasters of the 21st Century,’’ by Jacqueline Adams and Ken Kostel, used text structure to visualize and organize their text about the natural disasters, causes and effects. They achieved this by using the strategy subheadings, and one example is, in paragraph 10 titles,’’Sinking City.’’ This foreshadows what event will happen next about the disaster of hurricane Katrina and focuses on the causes and effects of thedsaster. Authors may use subheadings also for organizing their text and to present information in the article. Next what the authors used in the scientific article,’’Super Disaster of the 21st century,’’ is figurative language, and to prove that it states

“Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938” by R. A. Scotti was first published in 2003 by Little, Brown and Company in New York City. The novel attempts to recreate the confusion, chaos, and devastation before, during, and after one of the largest hurricanes to hit New England. The “Long Island Express,” as it was named for its speed and impact location, killed 682 people and had massive implications for the region as a whole particularly, the coastal areas where its effects were felt the most. The novel draws less on these implications and instead focuses on a play-by-play of the storm from several perspectives. As such, it ventures from the realm of nonfiction and towards that of historical fiction.

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. Levees failed in New Orleans, resulting in political and social upheavals that continued a half decade later. (Laforet, New York Times)

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.

Economic and development of any area is always and always will be interrupted by disasters big and small. These disasters can have a big impact on the economy by destroying businesses, homes, and damage property. As disaster pose a challenge to up and coming or existing developments or communities there are ways to possibly help damage and lose such as not building in a flood zone and moving to higher elevation. Disasters can have an effect on families to.

Natural disasters are a part of our lives as humans. If you’ve never been in one then you've probably heard of one or been taught about one. There effects are devastating and tragic. Those who are lost in such unexpected ways are some of the most memorable and mourned. Though disasters may be more prominent in some places, such a Haiti, they are not specific to one place, rather found all over the world and endured by many. Throughout Leonard Pitts article Sometimes the Earth is Cruel, the idea that the Earth is undeniably, unwaveringly, and inescapably cruel is an important and prevalent theme.

The memory of Hurricane Katrina creates a new image of Mississippi. Residents of Mississippi tell their own story by marking a boundary before Katrina and after Katrina. Their identity, their culture and their hometown story washed away by the hurricane. The town’s landmarks they used to give directions are no longer there. Moreover, the residents feel that they lost their

Although he doesn’t use diagrams like Adams and Kostel to put pictures in our minds, Junger uses data and details to put those images in our heads. In the text it says, “Several hundred miles to the west, though, conditions have gone off the charts. The first hundred-foot wave spikes the graph at 8 p.m., and the second one spikes it at midnight…”(Junger,4). By doing this, Junger gives us an image in our minds to be able to visualize how harsh the natural disaster

Disasters, whether natural or manmade, can happen anytime and anywhere, without warning. An earthquake, hurricane, tornado, fire, or hazardous material spill or even an act of terrorism can happen

Every emergency or disaster, from a small house fire to a hurricane that devastates entire communities, have a distinct cycle. This is

While natural disasters such as floods, drought and hurricanes are commonly thought to occur due to environmental forces such as weather, climate and tectonic movements; a deeper investigation into the ‘disaster’ displays other contributing forces. Human factors have a large, if not equal, contribution to the occurrance and outcome of such disasters (Pelling, 2001). As Pelling (2001) argues, there is both a physical and human dimension to ‘natural disasters’. The extent to which the natural occurrence of a physical process, such as a flood or earthquake, impacts on society is constructed by that society, creating a ‘disaster’ as measured by a