Hurricane Katrina Flooding of 2005 Keenan LeePeters

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Hurricane Katrina Floodingof 2005Keenan
Lee-Peters
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Hurricane Katrina Floodingof 2005

• Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane
  season was the costliest hurricane in the history
  of the United States.
• Most severe loss of life and property damage
  occurred in New Orleans, which flooded as the
  levee system catastrophically failed.
• Nearly every levee in metropolitan New Orleans
  was breeched, and nearly 80 of the city became
  flooded.
• Total damage estimated to at 81.2 billion

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The Hurricane

• Katrina formed over the southeastern Bahamas on
  August 23rd, 2005.
• The storm then entered the Gulf where it rapidly
  intensified, growing from a Category 3 to
  Category 5 in merely nine hours.
• Katrina made landfall over southeastern Louisiana
  at 610am on Monday August 29th as a category 3
  with sustained winds of 125mph

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Pre-Katrina Predictions

• On August 28, the National Weather Service issued
  a bulletin predicting catastrophic damage to New
  Orleans and the surrounding region. Anticipated
  effects included, at the very least, the partial
  destruction of half of the well-constructed
  houses in the city, severe damage to most
  industrial buildings, rendering them inoperable,
  the "total destruction" of all wood-framed
  low-rise apartment buildings, all windows blowing
  out in high-rise office buildings, and the
  creation of a huge debris field of trees,
  telephone poles, cars, and collapsed buildings.
  Lack of clean water was predicted to "make human
  suffering incredible by modern standards".
• It was also predicted that the standing water
  caused by the storm surge would render most of
  the city uninhabitable for weeks and that the
  destruction of oil and petrochemical refineries
  in the surrounding area would spill waste into
  the flooding. The resulting mess would coat every
  surface, converting the city into a toxic marsh
  until water could be drained. Some experts said
  that it could take six months or longer to pump
  all the water out of the city.

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Evacuation Order

• At a news conference at 10 a.m. on August 28,
  shortly after Katrina was upgraded to a
  Category 5 storm, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin
  ordered the first-ever mandatory evacuation of
  the city, calling Katrina "a storm that most of
  us have long feared. The city government also
  established several "refuges of last resort" for
  citizens who could not leave the city, including
  the massive Super Dome, which sheltered
  approximately 26,000 people and provided them
  with food and water for several days as the storm
  came ashore.
• Although Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory
  evacuation of the city, many people refused to
  leave, which a CNN writer described as "gambling
  with their own lives. Reasons were numerous,
  including a belief that their homes or the
  buildings in which they planned to stay offered
  sufficient protection, lack of financial
  resources or access to transportation, or a
  feeling of obligation to protect their property.

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Super Dome
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Effects of the Storm

• On August 29, Katrina's storm surge caused 53
  different levee breaches in greater New Orleans
  submerging eighty percent of the city.
• The extensive flooding stranded many residents,
  who remained long after Hurricane Katrina had
  passed. Stranded survivors dotted the tops of
  houses citywide. Some were trapped inside attics,
  unable to escape. Many people chopped their way
  onto their roofs with hatchets and sledge
  hammers, which residents had been urged to keep
  in their attics in case of such events. Clean
  water was unavailable, and power outages were
  expected to last for weeks.
• By 1100 p.m. on August 29, Mayor Nagin described
  the loss of life as "significant" with reports of
  bodies floating on the water throughout the city,
  though primarily in the eastern portions.

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Flooding
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Flooding

• Flood water was toxic, containing oil, bacteria
  from rotting corpses, heavy metals, pesticides,
  and human and animal waste.

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Death Toll

• As of May 19, 2006, the confirmed death toll
  (total of direct and indirect deaths) stood at
  1,836, mainly from Louisiana (1,577) and
  Mississippi (238). However, 705 people remain
  categorized as missing in Louisiana and many of
  the deaths are indirect, but it is almost
  impossible to determine the exact cause of some
  of the fatalities.

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The Levees

• Levee failure and collapse of flood walls near
  lake Pontchatrain were the reasons for the
  severity of the flooding.
• Many of the levee breaches occurred where two
  different types of levees were joined together.
  At these joints of two different kinds of
  materials the weaker one would fail. This is why
  standardization of levees will be key in the
  solution. In the past, different groups built on
  top of each others work at different times
  causing discontinuities in the system.

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Controversy

• Many people near the levees said to have heard
  explosions. Implying that the collapse to the
  levee system was intentional.
• Some accounts of explosive material found on the
  breeched levees, non of which have been
  confirmed.

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After the Storm

• Katrina redistributed over one million people
  from the central Gulf coast elsewhere across the
  United States, which became the largest diasopra
  in the history of the United States. Houston,
  Texas, had an increase of 35,000 people Mobil,e
  Alabama, gained over 24,000 Baton Rouge,
  Louisiana, over 15,000 and Hammond, Louisiana
  received over 10,000, nearly doubling its size.
  Chicago received over 6,000 people, the most of
  any non-southern city. By late January, 2006,
  about 200,000 people were once again living in
  New Orleans, less than half of the pre-storm
  population.

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After the Storm

• Finally, as part of the cleanup effort, the flood
  waters that covered New Orleans were pumped into
  Lake Pontchartrain, a process that took 43 days
  to complete. These residual waters contained a
  mix of raw sewage, bacteria, heavy metals
  pesticides, toxic chemicals, and about
  6.5 million U.S. gallons (24.6 million L) of oil,
  which has sparked fears in the scientific
  community of massive numbers of fish dying

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Criticism

• Criticism was initially prompted by televised
  images of visibly shaken and frustrated political
  leaders, and of residents who remained stranded
  by flood waters without water, food or shelter.
  Deaths from thirst, exhaustion , and violence ,
  days after the storm had passed, fueled the
  criticism, as did the dilemma of the evacuees at
  facilities such as the Louisiana Superdome and
  the New Orleans Civic Center. Some alleged that
  race, class, and other factors could have
  contributed to delays in government response.
• The criticisms of the government's response to
  Hurricane Katrina primarily consisted of
  condemnations of mismanagement and lack of
  leadership in the relief efforts in response to
  the storm and its aftermath. More specifically,
  the criticism focused on the delayed response to
  the flooding of New Orleans

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Lessons Learned

• There must be more attention paid to public
  safety A June 2007 report released by the
  American society of Civil Engineers states that
  the failures of the federally built levees in New
  Orleans were found to be primarily the result of
  system design flaws
• There must be better, more prompt evacuation, and
  relocation procedures in the future.
• Infrastructure must be built to better withstand
  such events. For example putting houses of
  concrete stilts.