The Chicago Heat Wave : The Effects Of Hurricane Katrina

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

And lastly, in chapter 5 "The Spectacular City," Klinenberg speaks about media's involvement during that time. He investigates and interviews journalists, editors, and news companies, discussing the angles at which the disaster was portrayed and why this may be. More importantly, this chapter focuses on the cultural "reframing" of the actually news and information of the heat wave. He says that Chicago used its public relations tools to deny there was a disaster and then to claim it was a natural and unpreventable one. They defended the government's role while masking the social roots of the high mortality rates during the heat wave.

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was one of the largest disasters in American history. Practically overnight the great city of Chicago was destroyed. Before the fire there was a large drought causing everything to be dry and flammable, then a fire broke out in the O’Leary’s barn and spread throughout the city. Many attempts were made to put out the fire but there were too many errors and problems in the beginning. After the fire many people were left homeless and had to help build their city again (Murphy, 39)

“There are natural hazards, but disasters are the result of human actions that put people and property in harm’s way” (Cigler 2007: 64). Throughout history New Orleans has been continuously altered by the presence of humans through the creation of levees and canals, the introduction of artificial irrigation systems, and through human induced processes that have ultimately accelerated the process of land degradation and erosion. While a natural hazard struck New Orleans in 2005, the disaster portion resulting from Hurricane Katrina was a result of human induced interactions throughout the history of New Orleans.

During the mid-20th century there was much racial discrimination, specifically in home ownership. During this period there was mass immigration of Southern blacks to the north. In Lawndale Chicago, there was adverse reactions to this. As the

Hurricane Katrina was a devastating disaster that has affected many people in New Orleans. The communication broke down hours after Katrina because of the unexpected fast winds and floods that broke down “3 million phone lines and 1,000 cellular towers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.”( Joch ). Because of the millions of phone lines that were broken down, contacting the government for help was difficult hours after hurricane Katrina. Not only that, the people of New Orleans underestimated the power of Hurricane Katrina causing many to be “ stranded with no food or water” (Narrator, “The Storm”,PBS).

Hurricane Katrina was a devastating disaster that has affected many people in New Orleans as well as the surrounding areas. It had a stunning “death toll of 1300 people and damage over $100 billion ”( Davlasheridze 94 ). The communication were taken down hours after Katrina because of the unexpected fast winds and floods that broke down “3 million phone lines and 1,000 cellular towers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.”( Joch ). Because of the millions of phone lines that were battered, contacting the government for help was difficult hours after hurricane Katrina. Not only that, the people of New Orleans underestimated the power of Hurricane Katrina causing many to be “ stranded with no food or water” ( Narrator, “The Storm”,PBS ).

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)

In this paper I read the Essay that Abe Louise Young wrote about “The Voice of Katrina Part One”. In this Essay at its core is about Hurricane Katrina, which was a massive hurricane that hit in 2005. It caused massive damage and destruction along the Gulf coast from Florida to Texas. Hurricane Katrina will always be remembered for hitting New Orleans, Louisiana, when the levee system failed leaving 80% of the city flooded and destroyed. Hitting the worst parts of New Orleans such as the 9th ward, already being one of the poorest areas in Mississippi. Much of the Essay talks about the people of New Orleans, Abe being a new graduate started Alive in Truth: The New Orleans Disaster Oral History and Memory Project, her goal she state’s is to

Several agents and factors of racial projects construct the many different ways human bodies and social structures are represented in New Orleans. Specifically, the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans not only reflected a catastrophic disaster for those stranded but also disclosed the failure of federal, state, and city government in terms of providing relief and response services. To support my claims, I will consider how stories and pictures viewed white and black people after Katrina and the plan to close down the city’s public housing projects as documented in Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine in Action in New Orleans.

After Katrina destroyed New Orleans, Zeitoun, a Syrian American businessman, arrested, jailed, moved to a maximum-security prison for weeks, without representation by counsel as recounted in Dave Eggers National Best Seller Zeitoun. His story, one of many just scratches the surface of a failed justice system where constitutional protections no longer apply. This failure of the justice system in the aftermath of Katrina, described in Brandon L. Garrett and Tania Tetlow’s article Criminal Justice Collapse: The Constitution After Hurricane Katrina in the Duke Law Journal, explains what happened. Caterina Gouvis Roman, Seri Irazola, and Jenny W.L. Osborne’s research in After Katrina Washed away? Justice in New Orleans published by the Urban Institute, Justice Policy Center backs up Garrett and Tetlow’s research. This personal history describes Zeitoun’s experiences in the aftermath of the Katrina; this essay describes what happened to the residents of New Orleans and where the constitutional failures occurred.

It is pretty poignant, yet honest to say that the hurricane Katrina has long derived an almost obsessional attention from Natasha writer. In “Beyond Katrina: A meditation of the Mississippi Gulf Coast”, Tretheway has purposely pictured the devastation scenario from witnesses’ narratives; hence her story could speak for many stories of people who are less visible, whom we cannot see struggling against the aftermath - the stories we may not know about how tenacious the return of Gulf Coast communities was from those tremendous sufferings they miserably faced up to.

The opinion of New Orleans residents regarding how Hurricane Katrina was handled by the government also depends on the resident’s race, class, and gender. Many of the poor urban residents in New Orleans that were the most devastated by Hurricane Katrina were African American (Pardee, 2014). These residents felt that they were forgotten by their government and left to die because they did

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

This paper will discuss the differences between two different natural and man-made disasters. The disasters that will be discussed are Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Additionally, this paper will look into the specifics of what constitutes a natural and man-made disaster. Specifically, this paper will look into each disaster to include the events surrounding them; the risks; and the assessments. Furthermore, this paper will look at some of the details of each disaster and why there was so much devastation. Finally, this paper will look at a few similarities, but mainly the differences between the two, and how the effects of each still linger today.