Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans August 23, 2005 as a Category 3 storm. It was one of the costliest and deadliest natural disasters to occur in the United States history. The final death toll was 1, 836 and more than half of these victims were senior citizens. The hurricane caused $81 billion in property damages. Additionally, the total economic impact is expected to exceed $150 billion. ("11 Facts About Hurricane Katrina")
Before the hurricane landed, officials were well-aware of the threat the topography of New Orleans posed to its citizens. Even a former senator, David Vitter (LA), mentioned that a major hurricane smashing New Orleans and flooding the city was not a case of “if” rather “when”. (Glasser, Grunwald) New Orleans is typically described as a “fish bowl” due to the major bodies of water surrounding it and the city being below sea level. This topography increases the city’s vulnerability to floods. Given that hurricanes tend to carry surges of wate, they
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On the other hand, approximately 70,000 citizens remained. These citizens generally belonged to disadvantaged populations such as low-income citizens, senior citizens, or they required other special needs. When Hurricane Katrina landed, it left the city relatively intact; nevertheless, levee breeches flooded the city. During the response phase, emergency management officials were not prepared to respond because many aspects of their emergency operations plan were left “To Be Determined” (TBD). Because the Hurricane Pam project was eliminated, the TBD areas were not adequately addressed. Therefore, emergency managers struggled to provide relief in these unaddressed areas. These areas included medical assistance, quick evacuation, shelter, and law and order. Emergency managers also struggled with gathering and providing information to officials whom could provide relief.
Also, they are going to run into having a water shortage which is going to sicken and even kill many people. Once the hurricane has turned east the people of new orleans are faced with another big problem one or more of the levees have been breached and are starting to flood the city. Also, people are starting to loot stores. As the flood water rise with all the dead bodies and other dead things all water in the city is un usable. this cause a complete evacuation of the city, and could be 3 to 4 months before restaurants and other business are up and running.
Additionally, scientists had been warning New Orleans and the government that climate change would lead to increased storm activity and that the city’s defenses weren’t strong enough for such a storm. However, these warnings were ignored by the government and no preventative measures were taken which has influenced the effects of the storm. The reason for the poor response of the government and their negligence of the warnings is arguable. However, it is positive that the reason for this is that the majority of the people affected were the poor, and mostly colored, citizen of New Orleans. The city is racially and economically segregated and these citizen lived in the lower parts of the city, which go down to 11 feet below sea level.
It was 6:10 in the morning August 28 2005 and New Orleans had just been struck. Homes were being demolished, people were screaming, innocent people were getting killed from the result of the storm surge. . To this day there are 705 people still missing. While people are living there normal lives, they have not yet to know that in the middle of the Atlantic warm air is rising and it is getting replaced by the cooler air. the Not to forget, the hurricane affected their economy because of $81 billion dollars of property damage.
August 23 - 31, 2005, Katrina made her appearance in New Orleans, Louisiana. The rescue efforts of Katrina were almost immediate. Shelters, food, and transportation were all provided. “As of today, 563 shelters have been opened” (“Hurricane Katrina Response and Recovery”). Shelters for the people affected by the storm was the main effort focus after Katrina.
Since 80% of the city was flooded, tens of thousands of people went to the Convention Center and Louisiana Superdome for shelter. But help arrived extremely slowly and soon conditions became unsanitary and endangered the people. People suffered from hunger, the heat, and the lack of medical attention. The city was in shreds and there was nowhere to go for most people as the majority of New Orleans was just above the poverty line before the hurricane
Katrina recorded top wind speeds of one hundred miles per hour and spread across four-hundred miles. Massive floods occurred in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, as well as, widespread damage recorded in Georgia and Florida. In all, Hurricane Katrina killed over two thousand people, damaged approximately ninety thousand square miles, and is currently the most costly natural disaster in US history at one hundred and forty-five billion dollars. As expected, the local and state governments were overwhelmed by this cause of events, especially dealing with the limited resources and political climate that surrounded the aftermath of Katrina.
It struck with winds up to 140 mph. Although the hurricane created substantial damage, the aftermath had fatal consequences. The levees that were supposed to withhold a Category 3 hurricane in turn failed and about 50 breaches were created. The 50 breaches were the result of failed construction, neglect of upkeep. The City of New Orleans local & federal legislation should supply the money in order to secure the well being of the city.
Following the tragic event, the Water and Sewage Board in New Orleans ordered taller levees to be constructed. Hurricane Betsy in 1965 caused leaders to redesign the levee system and the responsibility of levee construction was placed under the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Once again citizens of New Orleans started to reconstruct their city after another natural disaster. Only forty years later Hurricane Katrina, the unfortunate event that was due to the failure of levees to withhold water, left many homeless, dead and looting for survival. Not only did the levees fail the people of New Orleans, but their government also fell short of supplying the desperate citizens of the city with aid and support.
Danny Glover once stated, “When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf and the floodwaters rose and tore through New Orleans, it did not turn the region into a Third World country…it revealed one” (Glover). As the winds reached speeds of 100 to 140 miles per hour, water crashed against the levees, which in turn broke them, and flooded 80% of Louisiana. Hurricane Katrina’s peak was a category five, but disintegrated into a category three just before landfall. The third deadliest hurricane is what Hurricane Katrina achieved.
Current Reflective Essay Paper On August 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall on the coast of Texas. It was originally set to be a category 1 hurricane and wasn 't supposed to be that bad of a natural disaster. Although a number of adding factors made Hurricane Harvey a catastrophic event, the hurricane increased levels as it reached land which was one of the biggest impacts. The main two factors that made Harvey one of the most destructive natural disasters to ever hit the United States was all the recorder rainfall over the city of Houston and the release of the Addicks and Barker reservoirs.
Uncertainty is what is left because it’s a long process of rebuilding, not only that but to see what used to be home now is gone and have to start from zero. After, the impact there is many rescues done as well as evacuations, the flooding caused massive destructions (“Federal report shows punch of last year 's Hurricane Harvey”, 2018). Another Hurricane that impacted U.S. was Hurricane Katrina which hit August 23, 2005 – August 31, 2005. The destruction was largely
By August 28, evacuations were underway across the region. 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.” New Orleans was at particular risk. Though about half the city actually lies above sea level, its average elevation is about six feet below sea level and it is completely surrounded by water. Over the course of the 20th
FEMA’s mission and priorities were changed so that, “terrorism prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery became central to the emergency management mission” (Haddow 325). As a result of the terrorist attacks on 9/11 the country’s focus shifted completely from natural disasters to an outright major assault on all things terrorism with no second glance at the potential emergency’s natural disasters presented. There might be a possibility that because of the nation’s extreme obsession with terrorists and terrorism that Hurricane Katrina was not given full priority nor given as much thought as it should have been because the whole focus of the government was on terrorism. When an agency and governmental structure, such as the defense agencies, undergoes an extreme shift within the course of a few years brought on so suddenly, there are bound to be weaknesses. Hurricane Katrina was the most challenging threat that tested the DHS as well as FEMA’s preparation and mitigation of natural disasters since the shift of focus.
It made landfall at Buras-Triumph, Louisiana as a category 3 hurricane. The winds of Katrina were 200 kilometers per hour and its storm surge reached 8 meters above sea level. This damaging storm killed 2,000 people and caused 108 billion dollars in damage. After Katrina, many conclusions regarding hurricane intensity were evaluated. The storm surge of Katrina emphasized the ineffectiveness of the hurricane category system to adequately convey hazards and suggested that floods cause more damage than winds (Sumner).
With winds reaching more than 175 miles per hour this was the strongest winds the city of New Orleans had ever seen. With the winds came lots of water, some areas of New Orleans seen more than 20 feet of water. My home was in an area that was greatly impacted by the water. I remember watching the news and seeing all the damage caused by the hurricane. The system that was in place to protect the city had failed.