Me: Hurricane Katrina was a large Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 deaths and $125 billion in damage in August of 2005, particularly in the city of New Orleans and the cities surrounding it. It was at the time the costliest tropical cyclone on record and is now tied with 2017’s Hurricane Harvey. The storm was the twelfth cyclone, fifth hurricane, and the third major hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, as well as the 4th most intense Atlantic hurricane on record to make landfall in the United States. However, due to large storms like Katrina, cities like New Orleans are sinking at a rate of 2 inches a year. My name is Blake Kubin and today I will be discussing what causes New Orleans to sink at the at which it is at as well as how Hurricane Katrina and many other storms have created a more prominent place for flooding and sinkholes.
Katrina originated on August 23rd, 2005, as a tropical depression from the merger of a tropical wave and the remnants of Tropical Depression 10. Early the following day, the depression intensified into a tropical storm as it headed generally westward towards Florida, strengthening to a hurricane two hours before making landfall at Hallandale Beach on August 25th. After briefly weakening to tropical storm strength over southern Florida, Katrina emerged into the Gulf on August 26 and began to rapidly intensify. On August 27, the storm reached Category 3 intensity on the Saffir- Simpson hurricane wind scale, becoming the third major hurricane of the season. An eyewall replacement cycle disrupted the intensification but caused the storm to nearly double in size. Thereafter, Katrina intensified over the “unusually warm” waters of the Loop Current from a Category 3 hurricane to a Category 5 hurricane in just nine hours. The storm turned into a category 5 over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico before weakening to a category 3 strength at its 2nd landfall on August 29th over southeast Louisiana and Mississippi. The storm weakened over land, but it regained hurricane status about one hour after entering the Gulf of Mexico, and it continued strengthening over open water. On August 27, the storm reached Category 3 intensity on the Saffir- Simpson hurricane wind scale, becoming the third major hurricane of the season. An eyewall replacement cycle disrupted the intensification but caused the storm to nearly double in size. Thereafter, Katrina intensified over the “unusually warm” waters of the Loop Current from a Category 3 hurricane to a Category 5 hurricane in just nine hours. With all of this rainfall and nowhere for it to go, flooding occurred in many of the cities that faced its path.
Flooding, caused largely as a result of fatal engineering flaws in the flood protection system known as levees surrounding New Orleans, participated in most of the loss of lives. Eventually, 80% of the city, as well as large tracts of neighboring parishes were inundated for weeks. The flooding also destroyed most of New Orlean's transportation and communication facilities, leaving tens of thousands of people who had not evacuated the city before landfall stranded with little access to food, shelter, or other basic necessities. The emergency response from federal, state, and local governments was widely criticized for these actions, resulting in the resignations of Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael D. Brown and New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Eddie Compass. Many other government officials were criticized for their responses, especially New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, and President George W. Bush. The scale of the disaster in New Orleans provoked massive natural and international response efforts; federal, local, and private rescue operations evacuated displaced persons out of the city over the following weeks. Multiple Investigations in the aftermath of the storm concluded that the U.S Army Corps of Engineers, which had designed and built the region’s levees decades earlier, was responsible for the failure of the flood-control systems, though federal courts later ruled that the Corps could not be held financially liable because of sovereign immunity in the Flood Control Act of 1928.
Dave Harris: It was crazy, the water started to pour in from the roof, then it made its way through the doors. The streets became flooded and soon after my house was flooded with it, leaving us on the roof stranded. Everyone was on their roofs just trying to stay alive.
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Me: That was Dave Harris a now Baton Rouge native and a survivor of Hurricane Katrina. Dave lived in New Orleans for 23 years before Hurricane Katrina took his home. He was rescued by boat crews from the Cajun Navy that helped him and his family back to safety.
Aircrews from the Aviation Training Center, in Mobile, staged rescue aircraft from Texas to Florida. [insert interview with a survivor of Hurricane Katrina who had to be life-flighted out of his house] All aircraft were returning towards the Gulf of Mexico by the afternoon of August 29th. Aircrews and boat crews, many of whom lost their homes during the hurricane, began a round-the-clock rescue effort in New Orleans, and along the Mississippi and Alabama coastlines. President of the United States George W. Bush declared a state of emergency in selected regions of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi on August 27th.
On August 26th, the possibility of unprecedented cataclysm was already being considered. Many of the computer models had shifted the potential path of Katrina westward from the Florida panhandle, putting the city of New Orleans directly in the center of their track probabilities; the chances of a direct hit were forecast at 17%, with strike probability rising to 29% by August 28th. The National Weather Service’s New Orlean/ Baton Rouge office issued a vividly worded bulletin on August 28th predicting that the area would be “uninhabitable for weeks” after “devastating damage” caused by Katrina, which at that time rivaled the intensity of Hurricane Camille. During video conferences involving the president later that day and on August 29, NHC director Max Mayfield expressed concern that Katrina might push its storm surge over the city’s levees and floodwalls. In one conference, he stated, “Additionally, the National Hurricane Center issued many tropical cyclone warnings and watches throughout Katrina”.This scenario was considered a potential catastrophe because some parts of New Orleans and the metro area are below sea level. Since the storm surge produced by the hurricane’s right-front quadrant was forecast to be horrendous, while the levees offered protection to people, emergency management officials in New Orleans feared that the storm surge could go over the tops of levees protecting the city, causing major flooding.
At a news conference at 10 a.m. EDT 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 Louisiana Superdome, which sheltered approximately 26,000 people and provided them with food and water for several days as the storm came ashore. People were evacuated to the Superdome to expect shelter and food, however to the 26,000 refugees' surprise they would enter a “hellhole” where they were forced to pee on walls as well as see feces all over walls just to survive the nights ahead. Worse things happened in the Superdome at night as there were accounts of rape and attempted suicides due to the lack of resources from the storm. During the day however it wasn’t much better due to the lack of electricity in New Orleans leaving people without power in the middle of the humid heat from the storm. Some estimates claimed that 8 percent of the 1.3 million of the greater New Orleans metropolitan area evacuated, leaving behind substantially fewer people than remained in the city during the Hurricane Ivan Evacuation.
The storm surge and waves from Katrina severely damaged the Chandeleur Islands, which had been affected by Hurricane Ivan the previous year. The US Geological Survey has estimated land was transformed to water by the hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Before the storm, subsidence and erosion caused the loss of land in the Louisiana wetlands and bayous. This subsidence was due to years of abusing the wetlands from oil and natural gas companies with pipelines, causing the land to sink at an alarming rate. The levees also failed due to bad engineering from The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which ultimately was the cause of 80 percent of New Orleans being submerged in water. Hurricane Katrina will forever be in the minds of New Orleanians as it has made a lasting impact that almost 20 years later we are still talking about it.
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