Katrina (August 30, 2005): Blown Away

GOES-12 Visible imagery of Katrina

GOES-12 Infrared (IR4) imagery of Katrina 

GOES-12 Water Vapor (IR3) imagery of Katrina

As Katrina continued to gain latitude, it rounded the subtropical ridge and became subject to the full force of the mid-latitude westerlies. The resulting wind shear caused rapid weakening, and the storm was reduced to tropical depression status at 7:00 am CDT. As the system began to take on extratropical characteristics its' cloud coverage expanded immensely and it accelerated to the northeast. At 7:00 pm, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) declared the system to be an extratropical low. By early the next morning, the remains of Katrina were last identified merging with a frontal zone over the eastern Great Lakes. In the end, the most disastrous hurricane in US history was vanquished by an everyday cold front.

Katrina is captured in this true color image from the MODIS unit on the Aqua satellite at around 1:00 pm CDT (1800 UTC), shortly before becoming extratropical. At each bar, the maximum sustained winds in knots are on the left and the central pressure in millibars is on the right. The thick segment of the track line roughly shows the storm's track for 8/30/05 and its' last notice the next morning. Its' center is near the second '30' mark. Notice how large the cloud cover is and how much of is being sheared to the east.

Katrina's reach extended beyond southern Florida and the Gulf Coast. Heavy rain from the storm was observed all across the southeastern US. The individual storm cells that comprised the outermost rainbands produced hazardous weather as well. In total, 43 tornadoes were reported that were a result of Katrina. One tornado was observed in the Florida Keys, 20 in Georgia, 11 in Alabama, and 11 in Mississippi. One of the Georgia tornadoes caused the only August tornado fatality on record in that state.

The total cost in lives and property were staggering. At least 1833 fatalities occurred that were directly or indirectly related to Katrina. This makes Katrina one of the deadliest hurricanes in US history, after the Galveston hurricane of 1900 (8000 lives), the San Felipe/Lake Okeechobee hurricane of 1928 (over 2500 lives), and two disastrous hurricanes in 1893. In monetary cost, Katrina is by far the most expensive hurricane in US history at $125 billion, nearly five times as expensive as Hurricane Andrew (1992), which held the record of being the costliest at the time of Katrina. Summarized in to table form:

Distribution of Fatalities
State:      Number:
Louisiana   1577
Mississippi 238
Florida     14
Georgia     2
Alabama     2

Costliest Storms
Storm:  Year: Cost:
Katrina 2005  $125.0 billion
Sandy   2012  $71.4 billion
Ike     2008  $37.5 billion
Wilma   2005  $29.3 billion
Andrew  1992  $26.5 billion
Ivan    2004  $23.3 billion
Irene   2011  $16.6 billion
Charley 2004  $15.1 billion
Rita    2005  $12.0 billion

What happened after the storm was both a bureaucratic and social mess. From the countless issues regarding the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the US Federal government to the many individual acts of prejudice and negligence, Katrina had far reaching impacts; some which extend to the present day. Even in a meteorological blog, it is important to touch upon these issues as no weather phenomenon can exist in isolation from the world around it, humans included. To cover everything would require volumes (and no doubt they exist), so here is a run down of some noteworthy facts, quoted from the web:


General Facts:

Combining all of the areas it impacted, Katrina left about three million people without electricity, some for several weeks.

Several million gallons of oil were spilled from damaged facilities scattered throughout southeastern Louisiana.

Data provided by FEMA indicate that over 1.2 million people along the northern Gulf coast from southeastern Louisiana to Alabama were under some type of evacuation order.

Depth of floodwater after Katrina

On August 29, Katrina's storm surge caused 53 different levee breaches in greater New Orleans, submerging eighty percent of the city. A June 2007 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers indicated that two-thirds of the flooding was caused by the multiple failures of the city's floodwalls.

People's Lives:

A "town" of FEMA trailers

FEMA provided housing assistance (rental assistance, trailers, etc.) to more than 700,000 applicants-families and individuals. However, only one-fifth of the trailers requested in Orleans Parish were supplied, resulting in an enormous housing shortage in the city of New Orleans. Many local areas voted to not allow the trailers, and many areas had no utilities, a requirement prior to placing the trailers. To provide for additional housing, FEMA has also paid for the hotel costs of 12,000 individuals and families displaced by Katrina through February 7, 2006, when a final deadline was set for the end of hotel cost coverage. After this deadline, evacuees were still eligible to receive federal assistance, which could be used towards either apartment rent, additional hotel stays, or fixing their ruined homes, although FEMA no longer paid for hotels directly. As of March 30, 2010, there were still 260 families living in FEMA-provided trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Two weeks after the storm, more than half of the states were involved in providing shelter for evacuees. By four weeks after the storm, evacuees had been registered in all 50 states and in 18,700 zip codes—half of the nation's residential postal zones. Most evacuees had stayed within 250 miles (400 km), but 240,000 households went to Houston and other cities over 250 miles (400 km) away and another 60,000 households went over 750 miles (1,200 km) away.

Katrina displaced over one million people from the central Gulf coast to elsewhere across the United States, becoming the largest diaspora in the history of the United States.

As of July 1, 2008, New Orleans had a population of 311,853, a decrease in population from the 445,000 residents of the city prior to Hurricane Katrina.

FEMA's Failures:

In accordance with federal law, President George W. Bush directed the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, to coordinate the Federal response. Chertoff designated Michael D. Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as the Principal Federal Official to lead the deployment and coordination of all federal response resources and forces in the Gulf Coast region. However, the President and Secretary Chertoff initially came under harsh criticism for what some perceived as a lack of planning and coordination. Brown claimed that Governor Blanco resisted their efforts and was unhelpful. Governor Blanco and her staff disputed this. Eight days later, Brown was recalled to Washington and Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad W. Allen replaced him as chief of hurricane relief operations. Three days after the recall, Michael D. Brown resigned as director of FEMA in spite of having received recent praise from President Bush.

Seven months after the storm, two-thirds of the requested FEMA trailers (designed for short term emergency housing immediately after a disaster) had been delivered. Many of these trailers, however, could not be occupied or, if occupied, were not properly functional. Delays of weeks or months in hooking up electricity and water to trailers were common, and mechanical and bureaucratic problems prevented use of the trailers

There were accusations of health problems caused by high formaldehyde levels in the trailers, produced by formaldehyde emissions from manufactured materials used in construction of the trailers. Residents reported breathing difficulties, persistent flu-like symptoms, eye irritation, and nosebleeds. Tests on a number of FEMA trailers by the Sierra Club showed some 83% had levels of formaldehyde in the indoor air at levels above the EPA recommended limit. In July 2008, researchers conducting a federally funded analysis reported that the toxic levels of formaldehyde in the trailers probably resulted from faulty construction practices and the use of substandard building materials.

Social and Racial Injustice:

A larger percentage of white residents returned to their homes than did black residents. This was attributed to an unwillingness of planners to rebuild low-income housing. In September 2005, the Washington Post noted former 10-term Republican Congressman Richard H. Baker from Baton Rouge reportedly told lobbyists, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did", and criticized his lack of concern for the lower income residents.

A challenge facing New Orleans was the exceptionally large homeless population created by Katrina. The number of homeless people living in New Orleans doubled to 12,000 people between the hurricane and mid-2007. With a post-Katrina population of 300,000 people, this meant that 1 in 25 people were homeless, an extremely high number and nearly three times that of any other US city. Most of the homeless were Katrina evacuees who returned to higher rents or who fell through the cracks of the federal system that was to provide temporary housing after the disaster. There were also some workers who came from out of state for the post-Katrina rebuilding boom but who subsequently lost their jobs. Compounding this problem, the number of beds for the homeless in the city decreased from a count of 2,800 before the storm, to 2,000, as of May 2008.

As of 2008, just over half of the city’s adult residents (56 percent) were African American, roughly one in three (35 percent) were Caucasian, and 5 percent were Hispanic. The Census Bureau’s 2005 (pre-storm) American Community Survey (ACS), found that the adult population was 60 percent African American and 32 percent Caucasian.

Rent has spiked an average of 40% since the storm in the city, with the small rental program instituted after the disaster having been ineffective in assisting small holding landlords to rebuild and improve properties previously inhabited by renters.

All around FEMA response was found to be slow and unfair. A study conducted by graduate students at The University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy found that FEMA trailers were offered 63% in St. Bernard Parish, a predominantly white area, and 13% in the Lower Ninth Ward, a predominantly black neighborhood.

Katrina victims were often characterized as poor, black, and - sometimes - unworthy of public support in the media. Stories of looting, lawlessness, and criminal damage were prominent, even though this was quite rare. Where African-Americans broke into shops to obtain food, it was 'looting', whereas the same behavior by others was seen as an act of survival. Just as many white victims featured in TV interviews as black victims, even though blacks were more numerous in the New Orleans population and probably suffered greater loss.

Government, Policy, and the Army Corps of Engineers:

The hurricane surge protection failures in New Orleans are considered the worst civil engineering disaster in U.S. history and prompted a lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the designers and builders of the levee system as mandated by the Flood Control Act of 1965. Responsibility for the failures and flooding was laid squarely on the Army Corps in January 2008 by Judge Stanwood Duval, U.S. District Court, but the federal agency could not be held financially liable because of sovereign immunity in the Flood Control Act of 1928.

There was an investigation of the responses from federal, state and local governments, resulting in the resignation of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael D. Brown, and of New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) 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 storm's devastation also prompted a Congressional investigation, which found that FEMA and the Red Cross "did not have a logistics capacity sophisticated enough to fully support the massive number of Gulf coast victims." Additionally, it placed responsibility for the disaster on all three levels of government.

Notably, Cuba and Venezuela (both considered as hostile to US government interest) were the first countries to offer assistance, pledging over $1 million, several mobile hospitals, water treatment plants, canned food, bottled water, heating oil, 1,100 doctors and 26.4 metric tons of medicine, though this aid was rejected by the U.S. government.

Britain's donation of 350,000 emergency meals did not reach victims because of laws regarding mad cow disease.

On April 5, 2006, months after independent investigators had demonstrated that levee failures were not caused by natural forces beyond intended design strength, Lieutenant General Carl Strock, Chief of Engineers and Commander of the Corps of Engineers, testified before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Water that "We have now concluded we had problems with the design of the structure." He also testified that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not know of this mechanism of failure prior to August 29, 2005. The claim of ignorance is refuted, however, by the National Science Foundation investigators hired by the Corps of Engineers, who point to a 1986 study by the Corps itself that such separations were possible in the I-wall design.

In February 2008, the Bush administration requested that the state of Louisiana pay about $1.5 billion of an estimated $7.2 billion for Corps of Engineers levee work (in accordance with the principles of local cost sharing required by Congress as early as the Flood Control Act of 1928), a proposal which angered many Louisiana leaders.

On May 2, 2008, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal used a speech to The National Press Club to request that President Bush free up money to complete work on Louisiana's levees. Bush promised to include the levee funding in his 2009 budget, but rejected the idea of including the funding in a war bill, which would pass sooner.

Law, Order, and the Military:

As the U.S. military and rescue services regained control over the city, there were restrictions on the activity of the media. On September 9, the military leader of the relief effort announced that reporters would have "zero access" to efforts to recover bodies in New Orleans. Immediately following this announcement, CNN filed a lawsuit and obtained a temporary restraining order against the ban. The next day the government backed down and reversed the ban.

Many prisoners were abandoned in their cells during the storm, while the guards sought shelter. Hundreds of prisoners were later registered as "unaccounted for”.

Acts of unrest occurred following the storm, particularly with the New Orleans Police Department. In the aftermath, a tourist asked a police officer for assistance, and got the response, "Go to hell, it's every man for himself." Also, one-third of New Orleans police officers deserted the city in the days before the storm, many of them escaping in their department-owned patrol cars. This added to the chaos by stretching law enforcement thin. Additionally, several NOPD officers were arrested weeks after Katrina for suspicion of vehicle theft.

Some concern over the availability and readiness of the Louisiana National Guard to help stabilize the security situation was raised. A Guardsman Lieutenant Colonel commented that "dozens of high water vehicles, humvees, refuelers, and generators were abroad." At the time of the hurricane, approximately 3,000 members of the Guard were serving a tour of duty in Iraq. With total personnel strength of 11,000, this meant that 27% of the Louisiana National Guard was abroad.

Some 40% of Louisiana's National Guard was deployed to Iraq at the time, and critics claim that use of the National Guard to boost troop numbers in Iraq left them unready to handle disasters at home.

Activists re-enact the trip across the Crescent
 City Connection Bridge in protest, later in 2005. 

The City of Gretna received considerable press coverage when, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, people who attempted to escape from New Orleans by walking over the Crescent City Connection bridge over the Mississippi River were turned back at gunpoint by City of Gretna Police, along with Crescent City Connection Police and Jefferson Parish Sheriff's deputies, who set up a roadblock on the bridge in the days following the hurricane. According to eyewitnesses, some officers threatened to shoot those coming from New Orleans as they attempted to cross into Gretna on foot, and shots were fired overhead.