GROUP C: Source 1

Excerpt from Kates RW, Colten CE, Laska S, and Leatherman SP (2006) Reconstruction of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: A research perspective. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103, 14653-14660.

…the long history of marginal increases in safety that encouraged new development made New Orleans a catastrophe waiting to happen. Its estimated pre-Katrina population of 437,186 (Frey and Singer 2006) lived in a bowl, half located below sea level, between the natural levees of the Mississippi River and the built levees (pierced by canals) along Lake Pontchartrain. In the 4 years preceding Katrina, there were extensive and repeated warnings from both scientists and the media that the “big one” would eventually hit the city. These included specific concerns for the evacuation of an estimated 130,000 residents without vehicles, homebound, or in hospitals and in-care facilities (Fischetti 2001, McQuaid and Mark 2002, Laska 2004, FEMA 2004).

Beginning on the morning of August 29th, 2005, Katrina brought severe but not catastrophic winds, record rainfalls (up to 14 inches in 24 h), and stormwater damage as the city's pumping system failed to keep up with the rain. Then, within hours of the initial impact, major floodwalls along the 17th Street Canal, London Avenue Canal, and Inner Harbor Navigation Canal (Industrial Canal) failed, allowing water to surge into ≈80% of the city and essentially fill the bowl to depths ranging from 5 cm to 5 m (USACE). Days later, parts of New Orleans would be reflooded from intensive rains accompanying Hurricane Rita.

As many as a million residents in the metropolitan area may have responded to public calls for evacuation on August 27th and 28th, leaving an estimated one-quarter of New Orleans residents unable or unwilling to leave. These residents took refuge in the Superdome, the Convention Center, in hospitals and nursing homes, in upper stories of their homes, or on elevated highways, or died during the week before full poststorm evacuations could be completed. The evacuated residents traveled or were moved to other cities, and within a month, refugees from New Orleans could be found in every state. Extensive media coverage shared the failure of complete evacuation, the plight of those remaining in the city, and the subsequent out-migration with a global audience. The burden of these failures fell heaviest on the African-American, poor, aged, and infirm members of the population. Four months after Katrina, the population was estimated at 158,353, only 37% of the pre-Katrina number (Frey and Singer 2006).

Frey WH, Singer A (2006) Katrina and Rita Impacts on Gulf Coast Populations: First Census Findings (Brookings Institution, Washington, DC) Available at www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20060607_hurricanes.pdf.

Fischetti M (2001) Sci Am 285:77–85.

McQuaid J, Mark S (6 23–27, 2002) The Times-Picayune.

Laska S (2004) Nat Hazards Observer 29:4–6.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (2004) Hurricane Pam Exercise Concludes (news release). Available at www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=13051.

Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force (2006) Performance Evaluation of the New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Protection Sys-tem (US Army Corps of Engineers, Washington, DC) Available at https://ipet.wes.army.mil/welcome91.htm, Vol 1.