The Effect of Hurricane Katrina Almost Two Years Later

Ms. Stella Chambers, an 85 year old woman, was one of the nearly 485,000 evacuees to evacuate New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina was one of the most dreadful hurricanes that the United States had seen. Stella had finally had the repairs to her home completed; she was waiting for the last utility to be reconnected so that she could move back home. Unfortunately, when this New Orleans resident encountered another recent natural disaster she died. Just 18 months after Katrina, a tornado ravaged Stella’s Gentilly neighborhood. The tornado flattened her home and ripped apart the FEMA trailer she was living in. Stella Chambers was reportedly found alive amid the rubble; she later died at a local hospital. If it were not for Hurricane Katrina Stella Chambers might have survived the tornado. The effects of Hurricane Katrina were catastrophic, widespread and the ripples can still be felt today. (Jet, 38)

Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005. Katrina was the 11th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1, 2005. That was seven more than typical by that time in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. The human toll from Katrina remains unclear. By one estimate there were 150,000 or more people, largely poor people with limited resources, still in New Orleans and the surrounding communities when the levees failed. A few days after the storm passed, on September 01, 2005 New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin estimated the death toll in his city to number “Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands.” The true number of lives lost is still unclear to this date. (Global, Reform)

Although Katrina will be recorded as the most destructive storm in terms of economic losses, it did not exceed the human losses in storms such as the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which killed as many as 6,000-12,000 people, and led to almost complete destruction of Galveston. A year and a half after Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, thousands of residents are still in the midst of a storm; a legal storm. Americans for Insurance Reform (AIR) documented the insurance industry’s poor response to Hurricane Katrina. They revealed a significant pattern of callousness, unfairness, and generally inept performance by many insurance companies. In some cases, insurers’ conduct worsened the suffering of policyholders, many of whom were left hungry and homeless by the hurricane. (Reform, Global)

The storm interrupted oil production, importation, and refining in the Gulf area, thus having a major effect on fuel prices. Before the storm, one-tenth of all the crude oil consumed in the United States and almost half of the gasoline produced in the country came from refineries in the states along the Gulf Coast. An additional 24% of the natural gas supply is extracted or imported in the region. Furthermore, the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve is also stored in this region. Power outages in the wake of Katrina have also caused distribution problems for oil and natural gas. Pipelines which move petroleum products from places like Houston to areas of the east coast have had their flows interrupted because power outages shut down the pumps that kept materials flowing. Dick Cheney personally