Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
is the costliest natural disaster in American history. Striking the Gulf States
in late August 2005, it affected over 90,000 square miles along the coastal
regions of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, including the city of New
Orleans. The human cost of the storm is estimated at more than 1,400 deaths. More
than 250,000 buildings were destroyed. The economic cost is hard to calculate,
but will greatly exceed the $110 billion the federal government pledged to spend
in the year following Katrina. Above and beyond the financial and human costs,
Hurricane Katrina exacted a high psychological cost on Americans who felt
embarrassed by the inability of all levels of government to manage the
emergency. Moreover, Katrina reopened the question of race in American society in
a dramatic and unexpected way.
Katrina officially
became a hurricane on August 24, 2005 near the Bahamas. The following day it moved
across Southern Florida between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, causing flood damage,
destroying buildings, and killing nine people before it passed out to the Gulf
of Mexico as a category one storm. On the Gulf, Katrina gained strength at an
astonishing rate. As Katrina grew in intensity, she moved north toward New
Orleans. On Friday, August 26, Governor Kathleen Blanco issued a state of
emergency for Louisiana. By Saturday it was becoming clear that the storm’s
path would take it close, if not directly over, New Orleans. Saturday evening Max
Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, conducted
a conference call with Blanco, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Mississippi
Governor Haley Barbour in which he urged them to issue mandatory evacuations to
all areas in Katrina’s path.
Later that evening,
Mayor Nagin issued a voluntary evacuation order for New Orleans, and
authorities made all lanes of traffic on the interstate highways open to
northbound vehicles only. On Sunday, August 28, Katrina was upgraded to a
category five hurricane with winds of 170 miles per hour. While over 80 percent
of New Orleans’s population of 460,000 followed Mayor Nagin’s advice and evacuated,
many of the city’s poorest citizens remained, including the sick and the
elderly. As best they could, those left behind migrated to the Superdome or Convention
Center, the officially designated shelters of last resort. At 10:00 Sunday
morning, after receiving a National Weather Service advisory that predicted
severe flooding, Mayor Nagin issued a mandatory evacuation for the entire city.
But it was too late. City plans for using school buses and Amtrak trains to
evacuate New Orleans were not fully implemented. While some buses ferried
citizens to the designated shelters of last resort, the failure of a large
number of drivers to report because they had already evacuated or the city to
post designated pick up locations greatly blunted the effectiveness of the
operation. Neither the Superdome nor the Convention Center was prepared for the
onslaught of over 30,000 people that came seeking shelter. Both facilities lacked
adequate space, medicine, food, and water.
Between 2001 and
2005 a number of well publicized disaster scenarios had predicted a massive
hurricane that could cause significant flood damage to New Orleans, a city which
is mostly below sea-level protected by eighteen feet high levees that held back
the canals, Mississippi River, and Lake Ponchartrain. Some of these models,
such as the fictional “Hurricane Pam,” bore an eerie resemblance to Katrina. Stories
about these scenarios appeared in the New
Orleans Times-Picayune, which won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of
articles, and National Geographic magazine,
among others. However, complacency
gripped many New Orleans residents who had seen several hurricanes, including
Ivan in 1998, suddenly change course and skirt past the city. With tourism as
the primary industry, Mayor Nagin and city leaders were fearful of scaring off
visitors or damaging the economy by issuing a mandatory evacuation.
At 4:00, Sunday
afternoon, the first rain fell in Louisiana and continued all night. On Monday,
August 29, the full force of Katrina ripped through coastal Louisiana
devastating Plaquemines and St. Barnard Parishes before slamming into New
Orleans. Approximately 8 to 10 inches of rain and 120 mile-per-hour winds of
Katrina swelled Lake Ponchartrain and overwhelmed the levees, causing them to
fail for two reasons. First, they were
overtopped by waves of water stemming from the rain and the high velocity winds.
Second, and more serious, the levees breached, or broke open, filling New
Orleans like an empty bowl as water from the canals and Lake Ponchartrain
poured in. The breeches created surge waves that, measured as high as 17 feet which
decimated all in their path and led to rapid flooding. The lower Ninth Ward,
the poorest area of New Orleans, quickly lay under 8 feet of water. About 80
percent of the city was flooded during Katrina.
After hitting New
Orleans, Katrina moved north and brought its destructive power to the coastal
regions of Mississippi and Alabama. Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi, were both
hit hard. In addition to the destruction of homes and businesses all 13 of Biloxi’s
casinos were destroyed. Some were thrown off their moorings and moved several
blocks by the sheer force of Katrina’s winds.
Lack of
communication between local and federal officials hampered efforts to manage the
storm. For example, on National Public Radio Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland
Security, the department that oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
which handles disaster relief, stated that he had no knowledge of the thousands
who were trapped in the New Orleans Convention Center, even though that story
had been widely reported the day before by all the major television networks. Two
days later President George W. Bush congratulated FEMA head Michael Brown for
doing “a great job.” To many it seemed undue praise to a man who bungled the federal
rescue operations from the start. With Brown drawing too much heat, President
Bush replaced him on September 9 with Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen.
Scenes from New
Orleans and the Gulf Coast were horrifying, and the nation watched in shock as
these events unfolded. The floodwaters rushed in so quickly that many residents
could only escape to the upper floors or attics of their homes. Helicopters and
boats rescued people trapped on roofs and treetops, sometimes using axes or
chainsaws to get to those in attics. Lower floors of hospitals were flooded and
patients had to be moved to the upper levels. In St. Bernard Parrish of New
Orleans 34 residents at St. Rita’s nursing home were killed by flood waters. Many
people were stranded on the overpasses of highways without water, food, or
protection from the blazing sun, as temperatures soared into the upper 90s and
the humidity level remained above 100 percent. Looting was rampant, but also exaggerated.
Rescue workers could not tell if gunshots were snipers, or pleas for help from
trapped residents. Floating bodies drifted in the floodwaters. Fearing the
worst Mayor Nagin ordered 25,000 body bags, and Governor Blanco announced that
the National Guard had authority to shoot looters or those hampering rescue
operations on site. Uncontrolled fires, chemical contamination of the flood
water, sewage, piles of garbage, rotting bodies, concern for alligators,
snakes, and disease all added to the dangerous and toxic environment in the
city. Homes were leveled in New Orleans and Mississippi to such an extent that
some compared the scene to Hiroshima or Nagasaki, Japan after the atomic bombs
of August 1945. Rescue workers searched through homes and spray painted the
number of bodies found inside on the exterior of the building. Katrina knocked
oil refineries, off-shore drilling facilities, and pipelines off line causing a
nationwide spike in gasoline prices.
Conditions in the
Superdome and Convention Center rapidly deteriorated. With failing electricity,
poor ventilation and sanitation, and inadequate supplies, lawlessness prevailed,
including cases of assault and rape. White sheets covered the elderly invalids who
were found dead in their wheelchairs from want of medical care. While the
police department attempted to protect the public good, many officers abandoned
the city and did not show up for duty. With little disaster training and
breakdown at the highest level of the department, officers on the street were
not in a position to provide much help.
On Friday,
September 2, the National Guard arrived at the Superdome and Convention Center
with food, water, and supplies. Busses followed and mass evacuations began.
Evacuees were taken to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and the Astrodome in Houston,
Texas. Eventually Katrina refugees would be dispersed throughout the United
States to such places as Dallas, Texas, Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Denver,
Colorado, to name a few. Often it took weeks or months for evacuees to locate
friends and family.
Katrina left as
much controversy as destruction in its wake. Immediately questions emerged as
to the lack of preparedness. The situation in New Orleans led the city and
state officials to blame the federal government for the shortcomings of
disaster relief. State officials launched a litany of charges against the
Administration of President George W. Bush, including de-funding levee repair,
leaving Louisiana without sufficient National Guard troops, and a lack of
leadership. In an interview with the Wall
Street Journal, Mayor Nagin declared that the city’s plan for the hurricane
was to “get the people to higher ground and have the feds and the state airlift
supplies to them.” The city, however, had several emergency plans that were
never implemented.
The Bush
administration and Republicans in Congress responded that the state and city
governments did not follow their own emergency plans, and misdirected federal
grant money for disaster preparedness. In
fact, all levels of government were overwhelmed. Many Americans asked how national
leaders could be so unprepared for a large scale emergency four years after the
terrorist attack of September 11, 2001.
Speaker of the
House Dennis Hastert, among others, questioned the wisdom of rebuilding a city
so vulnerable to flooding. Environmentalists called a number of practices into
question including the elaborate system of unnatural levees which have destroyed
tens of thousands of acres of wetlands that might have buffered the impact of
Katrina. President Bush put the matter of re-building to rest on September 15,
2005 when in a televised address to the nation from Jackson Square in New
Orleans, he pledged federal assistance to rebuilding from the hurricane.
Katrina exacerbated
racial tensions as well. Nearly 68 percent of New Orleans was black and
disproportionately poor. Many blacks felt that they did not get the help they
needed from the national government because of their race. President Bush’s
publicized trip to the destroyed home of white Mississippi Senator Trent Lott,
and his failure to make a similar trip to the devastated areas of New Orleans led
many blacks to consider that reconstruction of their homes was at the bottom of
the administration’s recovery priorities.
Controversy
plagued other aspects of the federal recovery effort as well. When FEMA
provided debit cards valued at $2,000 to over 900,000 victims of Katrina, examples
of fraud and mismanagement made headlines across the nation. Suspension of
federal contract and wage regulations in favor of large national firms at the
expense of local businesses also led many to question federal priorities. Finally,
Mississippi, which had more power in the Congress, received disproportionately
more in aid than harder hit Louisiana.
The levee breeches
were repaired on September 5, and, after seven weeks of pumping, New Orleans
was declared dry. While many residents trickled back to their homes, more
remained away. Entire neighborhoods in New Orleans and Mississippi remained
piles of rubble one year after Katrina hit. Mayor Nagin attempted to lift the
spirit of the city by conducting business as normal. In 2006 the Mardi Gras and
Jazz Festival celebrations went on according to their normal schedule. Nagin
also created the seventeen-member Bring New Orleans Back Commission to build
excitement around rebuilding. But with one-quarter the pre-hurricane tax base,
one-third the student body in the public schools, power shortages, and tens of
thousands not yet returned, Katrina has left a scar that will heal slowly, if
at all.
--Gregory
J. Dehler
Further Reading
Brinkley, Douglas. The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New
Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. New York: Harper Collins, 2006.
Cooper, Christopher and Robert
Block. Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and
the Failure of Homeland Security. New York: Times Books, 2006.
Dyson, Michael Eric. Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina
and the Color of Disaster. New York: Basic Books, 2006.
Heerden, Ivor van and Mike Bryan. The Storm: What Went Wrong During Hurricane
Katrina -- The Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist. New York: Viking,
2006.
Horne, Jed. Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great
American City. New York: Random House, 2006.
Syzerhans, Douglas, ed. Federal Disaster Programs and Hurricane
Katrina. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2006.
No comments:
Post a Comment