Hurricane Katrina

The Event: Category 3 hurricane that struck east of New Orleans, Louisiana, causing massive damage to the city

Date: August 29, 2005

Place: Southeast Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama Gulf coast

Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf coast just east of New Orleans, Louisiana, causing levee breaches within the city and surrounding communities. Massive flooding destroyed much of city’s residential and commercial areas; destruction along the Mississippi and Alabama coastline was also catastrophic. More than eighteen hundred lives were lost. Official damage estimates exceeded $108 billion (in 2005 US dollars), while total economic cost estimates reached as high as $250 billion, making the event the costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States.

Katrina, the eleventh storm of the 2005 hurricane season, formed on August 23, 2005, in the Atlantic Ocean as a tropical depression and reached hurricane strength the next day. After passing over the southern tip of Florida, the hurricane entered the Gulf of Mexico and quickly rose in intensity to category 5, the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Its predicted track took it straight up the delta of the Mississippi River toward New Orleans. Government officials at every level feared Katrina would bring catastrophe to the city, much of which sits below sea level between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. The city’s mayor, Ray Nagin, vacillated for some time about issuing a mandatory evacuation order but finally did so the day before the storm hit. Nagin designated the Superdome, a massive football stadium and entertainment complex in the central business district, as an emergency evacuation center for those unable or unwilling to leave. While approximately 1.2 million people left the region ahead of the storm, more than one hundred thousand people remained inside New Orleans when Katrina passed through.

Storm Damage

Just before Katrina came ashore on August 29, its velocity subsided to category 3, suggesting that it would be a dangerous storm but not necessarily as deadly as Hurricane Betsy, which flooded 20 percent of New Orleans in 1965, or Hurricane Camille, which destroyed most of the structures along the Mississippi Gulf coast in 1969. Katrina made landfall in extreme southeast Louisiana then veered slightly eastward to strike the Mississippi Gulf coast.

The storm surge, which exceeded twenty-five feet in some places, obliterated structures along the coastline from Mississippi to Florida, destroying nearly all buildings within a mile of the coast. Initially New Orleans was spared the worst of the storm, because winds in the city were high but not excessive. Unfortunately, the storm surge that came up from the Mississippi Delta and westward across Lake Borgne and Lake Pontchartrain placed inordinate stress on the complex levee system that guards much of the Greater New Orleans area from flood damage.

The massive earthen levees along the Mississippi River worked effectively; however, levees and flood walls lining the drainage canals that crisscross the city were breached in several places. Large steel retaining walls collapsed, allowing waters from three major canals to swirl unimpeded into residential neighborhoods and commercial areas. Within hours, 80 percent of the city was flooded; water depth in some places reached twenty feet. Nearly half of the thirty-five hundred miles of levees protecting the area were damaged or destroyed. On the east bank of the Mississippi, only those sections of New Orleans built close to the river and along the Metairie and Gentilly ridges, the only areas of the city above sea level, escaped total devastation.

Thousands of individuals who had decided to remain home or who lacked transportation to evacuate were forced to seek refuge in attics or on rooftops or to flee to higher ground. Many were trapped in their homes and did not survive. Virtually every roadway in the city was under water. Flooding was indiscriminate, as both working-class neighborhoods such as the city’s Lower Ninth Ward and the affluent subdivision of Lakeview were inundated and made uninhabitable.

Failure of Emergency Response

Despite years of planning for a hurricane disaster such as Katrina, rescue and relief efforts were woefully inadequate. Much of the communications equipment normally used for coordinating police, fire, and rescue operations was under water for days, as were police, fire, and rescue vehicles; agencies outside the city had a difficult time bringing in replacement equipment. Many local police and fire department personnel had evacuated with their families, and those who remained could not carry out their responsibilities. Hospitals could not get emergency supplies because most roads were impassable, and helicopters were allocated for rescue efforts. The situation would have been even worse had it not been for the heroic efforts of both the US Coast Guard, which evacuated people from precarious locations, and the "Cajun flotilla," a hastily organized group of small boats from southwest Louisiana that entered the city and collected stranded residents.

Compounding problems for first-line responders was a failure of leadership at the executive level. Federal officials outside the city, especially in Washington, DC, refused to accept on-scene reports as accurate; few wanted to believe the extent of the disaster. President George W. Bush, vacationing in Texas, seemed unaware of, or unconcerned about, the magnitude of the disaster. Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco seemed unable to exert sufficient leadership to muster state resources. Blanco and Bush argued over command of the National Guard in the area, further delaying effective response from a group equipped and trained to deal with catastrophes of this magnitude. Consequently, supplies arrived slowly and a coordinated effort to evacuate storm victims took a full week.

Federal officials on site, especially those at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), were overwhelmed and unable to coordinate any rescue or resupply efforts. FEMA director Michael Brown, who had traveled to Louisiana ahead of the storm, was unable to get government agencies to respond to emergency requests for resources needed to conduct rescue operations or to care for the people who were congregated at the Superdome or on the elevated interstate highway and overpasses in the city. Within forty-eight hours, he asked the Department of Defense to take over federal responsibility for managing disaster relief. Ironically, television crews, unfettered by the bureaucratic red tape that kept officials from getting out to survey the disaster or deliver relief, broadcast a steady stream of images showing people trapped on rooftops or milling about on the few spots of dry ground awaiting rescue.

Conditions worsened during the first seventy-two hours after the storm hit. The evacuee population at the Superdome quickly exceeded twenty-five thousand; the crowd had insufficient food and water, and restroom facilities became inoperative. Word of problems at the Superdome caused many residents fleeing their homes to congregate at the New Orleans Convention Center; within days approximately twenty thousand were housed there. This facility also had no food, water, or bedding for evacuees. Rumors that armed gangs were committing various crimes within the facility made rescue personnel hesitant to enter. Similar rumors hampered rescue efforts within the city, where police reported looting and even sniper fire. The situation deteriorated to the point that officials authorized the military to restore order.

Relief efforts were hampered because, despite prior planning, requests from designated agencies never reached federal supply centers or neighboring states. Notwithstanding this bureaucratic failure, some states acted immediately. Both Florida and Texas mobilized their emergency response crews to help Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, sending relief supplies and opening evacuation shelters. The assistance provided by Texas for those displaced in Louisiana was particularly important, since many who escaped Katrina were unable to return home for months. Temporary lodging in places such as Houston and Austin often turned into semipermanent residences as federal and state officials were unable to offer immediate help to those wishing to return to New Orleans.

Systemic Problems Exposed

Hurricane Katrina exposed the long-term failure of the US Army Corps of Engineers to provide adequate flood protection for the city of New Orleans and surrounding areas. Over the years, more expensive construction was avoided as the Corps experienced budget cuts, and relatively cheap but questionable construction methods were adopted. Compounding the problem was the requirement that the Corps coordinate with the New Orleans Levee District and the Sewerage and Water Board when designing new levees or upgrading existing ones; these political bodies often placed development interests ahead of flood protection. For example, pressures on the Corps to limit the footprint of protective structures running through the city caused engineers to construct flood walls that were insufficient to withstand even modest surges; swirling waters ate away the supporting earthworks that held up steel retaining walls.

The storm also revealed the failure of government and social-service agencies to address the long-standing problems of racial and economic injustices in New Orleans. Evacuation plans failed to provide guaranteed transportation for thousands of poor who had no personal vehicles. When the city began rebuilding, assistance programs were targeted almost exclusively at homeowners; renters, who were predominantly poor and African American, received virtually no financial assistance to rebuild their lives.

Housing projects in the city, also occupied mostly by African Americans, were torn down and replaced with new neighborhoods where rental payments were beyond the means of most who had lived in the projects. In fact, repopulating New Orleans became a major problem because the city lacked sufficient housing. FEMA attempted to alleviate the problem by providing trailers, but many took months to arrive, and some never made it out of staging areas hundreds of miles away. Ironically, wages for service industry jobs increased as businesses tried to attract workers, but at the same time, rates skyrocketed on available rental properties, making it impossible for the poorest residents to find affordable accommodations. Some viewed the actions of government agencies and local businesses as a systematic attempt to keep African Americans from returning to New Orleans.

Impact

More than eighteen hundred people lost their lives during Hurricane Katrina and the chaos that ensued in its aftermath. Exact statistics are hard to determine, however, because more than 1.5 million people were forced to evacuate from regions in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama that were affected by the storm. Catastrophic damage and the presence of floodwaters that remained inside New Orleans for weeks prevented many from returning to their homes for as long as a year or more. Some chose not to return, permanently reducing the city’s population. The African American community in New Orleans, disproportionately affected by neighborhood flooding, made up a large percentage of semipermanent or permanent refugees. In cities such as Baton Rouge and Houston, rising crime rates were blamed on the refugees, causing further hardships for this population.

The economic impact on the region and the nation was also significant. The city’s transportation, water, sewer, electric, gas, and communications systems were ravaged. Federal, state, and local agencies spent billions of dollars to restore homes, businesses, and infrastructure. Official damages were estimated to exceed $108 billion in 2005 dollars, making Katrina the costliest storm in American history. Factoring in economic damages, many estimates of the storm's cost were far higher, with some reaching approximately $250 billion. During the following seven years, the federal government allocated nearly $15 billion to construct or upgrade a levee system to protect New Orleans from future storm surges, while about $75 billion in relief operations and $6.7 billion in recovery aid were also spent.

Reputations were affected as well. The image of the Corps of Engineers was permanently damaged. FEMA director Brown resigned within weeks of the storm, as the FEMA response to Hurricane Katrina became a major scandal. Although Mayor Nagin won reelection in May 2006, Governor Blanco gave up her bid for a second term. President Bush was blamed for federal inaction after the storm. His political influence and legacy were both weakened considerably by the catastrophe. In 2006, Democrats used Katrina as a rallying cry to win a majority of seats in Congress.

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