The Costs And Costs Of The Cost Of Building New Orleans

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana on the morning of August 29, 2005. The storm produced sustained winds of up 125 mph when it hit that morning. On that same day Katrina caused 53 different levee breaches in greater New Orleans, spilling the waters of Lake Pontchartrain into the city and flooding an overwhelming majority of New Orleans. The floodwaters destroyed countless homes and lives along the way. Some estimates of the cost of Katrina were up in the 200 billions but according to Kimberly Amadeo, “The actual cost of Hurricane Katrina's damage was between $96-$125 billion, with $40-$66 billion in insured losses.” This

New Orleans on the other hand is usually seen as a prime example of the shortcomings of Federal aid agencies in disaster relief and the subsequent recovery was much slower and costly, requiring Billions in assistance. At first it may seem like this is a clear cut case of the Federal government being and expensive failure and local government thriving when left alone but I would argue that the cities were facing vastly different circumstances during each of their natural disasters and that comparing them isn't so clear cut. First take into consideration the population difference between the two. New Orleans had well over 10 times the population of 1900 Galveston, with over 10 times the amount of people being effected by the storm it is not surprise that responding to the needs of that many people during a natural disaster would be far more costly to deal with than with the much smaller population in Galveston. The type of government Galveston created after the disaster also work so well in part do to the number of people that it was governing. A city of less than thirty thousand people is very small by today's standards, that's around the number of people Galveston would have had after the storm, it is my believe one reason that the reason the government of the

First, Bush had created the Gulf Opportunity Zone- a government enterprise that he said would provide help on taxes, housing, education, and training for the victims of the hurricane. Secondly, Bush noted the he would ask Congress to pass the Urban Homesteading act to provide building sites on federal land through a lottery to low-income citizens, free of charge ( pg, 250). Lastly, a $10.5 billion given to FEMA for recovery efforts including shelter, food, and medical care. However, reconstruction and resettlement would cost around two to three times. (pg, 250). If Bush had executed a better plan for Hurricane Katrina, billions of government dollars would not have been spent

The expenses would simply be outrageous to fund and down-right impossible, which every American understands. Since many homes were not in a flood zone, most people did not have flood insurance. They will have to leave because they cannot afford to come back to their homes. Furthermore, people have grown tired of the numerous natural disasters that hit Louisiana. As Zack Kopplin states, “Climate change could sink all of our major coastal cities, but Louisiana is being held to a different standard, because we’ve already been hit with so many disasters”. That is why many media coverages have been particularly weak on the coverage of the flooding, only capitalizing on the disaster porn and other corrupted media coverages. The tunnel vision of the news media and the critics prevent and delay the reconstruction of Louisiana. It is true that it would take an immense amount of funding to completely rebuild Louisiana, but we can not allow money to get in the way of rehabilitating our fellow

On the morning of August Twenty-ninth, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region. The storm brought the water to about twenty feet high, swallowing eighty percent of the New Orleans city immediately. The flood and torrential rainstorm wreaked havoc and forced millions of people evacuate from the city. According to the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, Katrina caused approximately one hundred and eight billion dollars in damage. Hurricane Katrina was one of the most destructive disasters have ever occurred in the United States, but it also revealed a catastrophic government at all levels’ failure in responding to the contingency.

New Orleans itself is 10 feet below sea level. This only makes me wonder why even build a city there when there wont even proper conditions for one yet alone live there after experiencing the first hurricane that had hit them. When they were first told of that Hurricane Katrina would be hitting them, FEMA aka Federal Emergency Management Agency said they were ready for the news. Making people feel more relaxed about what was about to come. After being announced that Katrina had turned into a category five people started cleaning up their yards and boarding up the windows. The citizens were ordered to evacuate a bay before the storm and if they didn’t evacuate they were on their own. Along with that they were also told to write their social security on their arm with permanent marker in order to identify their bodies. I was definitely shocked about this information, why wouldn’t they

Often, the government responds to natural disasters with thorough preparation and planning. The federal, state, and local levels of government do this in an effort to help reduce injury and property damage as well as ensure the overall safety of the general population. The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season saw the costliest and one of the deadliest storms in United States history. This storm was Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina displaced of an estimated 645,000 Louisiana citizens (Cepeda, Valdez, Kaplan, & Hill, 2010). This paper will examine…

After reviewing the problems caused, what type of assistance should the citizens of New Orleans have expected from the federal government?

As FEMA’s funds were rapidly depleting, two more hurricanes and disasters were set to ravage the United States. “The administration is already anticipating the need for more hurricane relief funding: The White House has requested an additional $6.7 billion in Harvey funding as part of the spending bill that Congress must pass by the end of September to keep the government open. Greg Abbott said on Sunday that the Harvey recovery could ultimately cost as much as $180 billion” (Khimm, 2017).

Katrina hit New Orleans, Louisiana on August 29th, 2005, but the failure of the local government started before this day “by allowing building and growing in areas in low flood lands.” The local government did not regulate these land areas that have always

The responsibility for maintaining existing levees and building new ones falls to the federal, state and local governments. In reality, the costs of most infrastructure projects are in the hundreds-of-millions to billions of dollars. This means that the cost burden must fall on the federal government (Webster). The federal government, however, failed to provide the necessary resources to build protective infrastructure for U.S. citizens since, “Under the Bush administration there was little money for nor interest in internal improvements, as the federal dollar was spent mainly on the military while the nation's infrastructure continued to deteriorate” (George). Had more money been spent on internal improvements, more levees could have been built and the impact of the storm lessened.

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.

* On May 9, 2006, Secretary Jackson approved Louisiana’s initial supplemental CDBG Disaster Action Plan and awarded the state $368.4 million to help meet the state’s infrastructure needs, provide interest-free small business bridge loans and support long-term planning efforts. On May 30, 2006, Secretary Jackson approved an amended plan and awarded an additional $4.6 billion of the state’s original $6.2 billion to fund Louisiana’s Road Home Program. This program provides up to $150,000 to eligible homeowners whose primary residences were located outside pre-Katrina designated flood zones and were destroyed or severely damaged following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. (Hurricane Katrina:  What Government is Doing, 2006)

The City of New Orleans is a remarkable city and has enormous potential for expansion.

Before we discuss disaster management, it is important to briefly sum up the events of the events that began on August 25, 2005 to fully understand the brevity of the situation. Meteorologists began warning inhabitants of the regions that were hit by Katrina on August 23, 2005. By the 28th, evacuations were under way, that day, the National Weather Service predicted that after the storm hit, “most of the [Gulf Coast] area will be uninhabitable for weeks…perhaps longer.” (Spowart, 2015) New Orleans was particularly vulnerable. More than half of the city was built below sea level, and the levees protecting it were built on porous sand. The poorest parts of the city were completely unprepared for a storm surge. Many of these citizens lacked transportation and could not evacuate, and were left to wait out Katrina in their