Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina was one of the worst natural disasters to ever strike America.. What made it

a disaster though was not just the storm itself. Most disasters do not occur because of a single

event. It takes the failure of multiple systems or stages, and for a number of incidents to happen

in the precise order or systematically to make an incident so horrible it is considered a disaster.

New Orleans is a city that lays on average 12ft below sea level and is also a coastal city. To

the south is the Gulf of Mexico, to the west the Mississippi River, and to the east Lake

Pontchartrain.

Being that New Orleans is surrounded by water, shaped like a bowl, and below sea level, it

relies on a levy system to protect it from flooding and storm surges from hurricanes such as

Katrina. The levy system rises in some parts more then 50 feet above the low laying city of New

Orleans. Since the city’s founding in 1718, it was notorious for flooding. In the last 287 years

the Levy systems have improved tremendously. Unfortunately, when Hurricane Katrina

struck, the levy system protecting the city was only built to withstand a category 3 hurricane.

Many improvements have been made to the levy system, but at the time of Hurricane Katrina was

only capable of withstanding a small category 3 hurricane. Unfortunately, when Hurricane

Katrina struck New Orleans it was a category 4 storm. In just a matter of hours the levies were

topping, and in some places overflowing.

New Orleans, however, is still for the most part safe due to the fact that the city is protected by

more then 30 large pumping stations. The pumping stations were designed to quickly pump

flood waters from the city into nearby Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi river. The

designers of the pumping stations never took into consideration that flood waters could possibly

top the levies. At this point, the pumps are now pumping water directly back into and over the

levies that have already topped. It was only a matter of time before the pumps could no longer

keep up with the waters coming over the top of the levies. Something had to give. Just 15 short

hours after the storm hit, 3 of the levies buckled under the pressure of billions of gallons of

water. The water from the levies rushed into the city, in a wave more then 15 feet tall, and

estimated to be moving at more then 40mph. With in 20 minutes more then 1/4 of the pumping

stations were flooded, and unable to pump water any longer. Another short 90 minuets later, only

3 pumps remained functional. Even though functional, they were merely pumping flood waters

from the city into the levy system, and from the broken levy system the waters flowed directly

back into the city.

It is estimated that more than 60% of the New Orleans residents heeded the warning of the

mandatory evacuation, while the remainder stayed with their homes in the city and surrounding

areas. An estimated more than 300,000 people waited to be evacuated from the toxic flood

waters. Of the estimated 300,000 people who remained, only 29,000 of them did not have

vehicles or access to an evacuation. The mayor of New Orleans had set up the Super dome as a