When Will Hurricane Katrina Happen Again
Georgia Institute of Applied science
Research Horizons
10 Years after Katrina: Lessons Learned, Lessons to Learn
Equally the nation marks the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we reflect on the catastrophic touch on the tempest had on New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast region.
Katrina remains one of the deadliest and costliest hurricanes in U.S. history, with more than i,800 lives lost and amercement estimated at over $100 billion. When the levees failed, virtually 80 percent of New Orleans flooded. More than 1 one thousand thousand people across the Gulf Declension were forced to leave their homes — many never returned.
In the years since, the region has served as a laboratory for researchers from the Georgia Establish of Technology who have traveled to New Orleans and other locations to study the effects of the disaster. Their work has helped determine what went wrong; how best to rebuild the region; and how to assistance the nation ready for time to come calamities.
"The country as a whole is really not prepared for disasters of this sort," said Georgia Tech President Emeritus G. Wayne Clough, who led the Institute from 1994 to 2008.
Equally a young civil engineer, Clough worked with the Mississippi River Commission, which had governance of alluvion command systems down into New Orleans. In the days following Katrina, Clough was selected to lead a National Research Council team that formed at the asking of the Department of Defense to assess what went wrong and how all-time to respond.
He was among the first group of experts to arrive mail-Katrina. The New Orleans he had known was a vibrant, active, and joyous city. This was different. No other flights landed at the aerodrome. Few cars drove on the roads. Restaurants, hotels, and streets were empty.
"It was a very strange feeling to become into a modern American urban center and see it stripped blank, if you volition, of its essence and knowing you want to bring it back," he said.
The powerful storm, combined with fatal engineering flaws, had caused the flooding. The one-time system protecting the metropolis had picayune resilience, so when one part failed, others followed until information technology all complanate, Clough said.
The new levees and floodwalls accept been designed to withstand a 100-year storm – ane with a 1 pct take a chance of occurring in any year. This system is far more robust and resilient than the previous one, merely it still tin be overtopped by a storm that is large enough or follows a path that brings Katrina-like tempest surges, Clough said.
Video: Dr. Wayne Clough on Katrina aftermath
Because there is a risk New Orleans will inundation over again, Clough and his commission recommended that areas most at-risk for flooding not be redeveloped. Despite this advice, people have been allowed to rebuild across the city.
This makes it all the more important to go along feasible and upwards-to-date evacuation plans at paw, Clough said.
Unfortunately, Katrina didn't serve as a warning to areas beyond the Gulf Coast. New Orleans was considered unique because the urban center was built below sea level; many expected it to struggle during a hurricane.
Opinions changed after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, nonetheless.
"Sandy was a wake-up phone call that this could happen anywhere," Clough said.
Still, too many cities operate on short-term retentiveness, and if they oasis't recently felt the impact of a disaster they're unlikely to prepare, said Pinar Keskinocak, co-director of the Georgia Tech Middle for Health & Humanitarian Systems.
The centre's quantitative approach for disaster preparedness uses scientific models to demonstrate the merchandise-offs betwixt costs and outcomes, said Julie Swann, co-manager of the centre. The center offers professional education classes for regime, manufacture, and non-governmental organizations on how to meliorate decisions made during disaster preparedness and disaster response.
Cities demand to invest in stockpiles of food and water and call up about evacuation plans and transportation in and out of an area, Keskinocak said.
They must consider droppings removal issues, such every bit how to reopen blocked or damaged roads and in which society to open them, she added. Droppings must be cleared and then relief supplies can be delivered and it must be properly tending of to avert health and environmental threats. The solid waste created during Katrina would accept taken 100 million years to class under not-disaster conditions. Clean-up efforts were about 25 percentage of the total disaster costs.
Communities must also pay special attention to at-risk populations. Nearly half of the Katrina victims from Louisiana were over the age of 74.
To help leaders determine how to invest their resources and time, Swann advises communities to consider an equation related to disaster need: the magnitude of the disaster times the vulnerability of the population divided by the capacity to respond.
"With disasters you lot're investing for what might happen," Swann said.
Hurricane Katrina too showed the need to provide wellness and safety preparation for disaster recovery workers.
2005 aerial view of the Bellaire Drive levee break following Hurricane Katrina. (Source: NASA Earth Observatory)
Paul Schlumper, a inquiry engineer with the Georgia Tech Research Found, conducted grooming sessions and adult communication materials to address the occupational and safety health hazards that disaster recovery workers and others could encounter.
He and his team trained more than vii,600 people in the Biloxi, Mobile, and Gulfport areas through a one-year Susan Harwood Training Grant awarded by the U.S. Section of Labor'southward Occupational Safe and Health Administration.
The training stemmed from the lessons of the Sept. 11 attacks, when rescue and response workers were exposed to safety and health hazards. When Katrina striking, officials realized an organized occupational response was needed, Schlumper said.
"There is a mindset that we want to blitz in and respond when something happens, merely yous have to also pay attention to your own safety and wellness," he said.
In that location were no classrooms or centers in the Gulf area where Schlumper and his team could concur training classes, and so they held sessions in tents and spoke from the tailgates of pickup trucks.
They reviewed data about the proper protective equipment and possible dangers associated with construction, demolition, and removing droppings — dangers such as falling, mold, and electrical hazards.
The challenge is preparing for events that happen infrequently only have the potential to bring devastating consequences that concluding for years. Findings from the research conducted after Hurricane Katrina should convince authorities officials and communities to invest in mitigation, said Reggie DesRoches, the Karen and John Huff School Chair of Georgia Tech's School of Civil and Ecology Engineering.
He and a team supported past the American Order of Civil Engineers surveyed the harm inflicted on about 25 bridges in the Gulf Coast region.
The big difference between the bridges that sustained damage and those that did non was the connection between the deck and supporting piers, he said. Bridges that were either rigidly connected or had lateral restraints performed well, while those that did not failed.
Also, bridges that had vents in the bents, which are used to support beams and girders, performed improve considering the vents reduced the uplift forces from the h2o, DesRoches said.
DesRoches likewise studied the storm's impact on the Port of New Orleans through a National Science Foundation grant.
The Boyfriend Rivage Casino (and lighthouse) in Biloxi demonstrates the destruction acquired by storm surge during Hurricane Katrina.
Buildings designed to be hurricane-proof withstood the current of air velocity, but were destroyed by the storm surge. (Photos courtesy of Hermann Fritz)
While physical damage to the port was express, operations were impacted, he said.
Because communication systems were downwards, workers could non contact the port to know if they were needed. Employees couldn't get to work because of extensive impairment in the surrounding areas. Too, there were non enough provisions for backup power.
To prevent this in the future, back-upwards systems for communication are needed. Besides, critical equipment should be positioned to a higher place flooding levels and officials should stockpile emergency materials, such as fuel.
"The enquiry community can play a major role in really helping officials understand what mitigation might do in terms of outcome from a disaster," DesRoches said. "We have to change the culture and mindset."
One change will be in evidence when hurricane warnings go out this season: Warnings volition now include storm surge forecasts along with wind velocity, said Hermann Fritz, an acquaintance professor in civil and environmental applied science, who studied the effects of storm surge post-Katrina through a grant from the National Science Foundation.
The Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind calibration classifies hurricanes into five categories based on the intensities of the sustained winds. But wind only tells part of the story. Storm surges and waves during Katrina led to extreme coastal flooding. Fritz measured high water marks exceeding xxx anxiety in betwixt Waveland and Biloxi.
His team, which included undergraduate and graduate students, surveyed the coastlines of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi and found that the high h2o marks for Katrina surpassed those from Camille.
When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans, it weakened to a Category 3 storm. Some residents chose not to evacuate because their homes had survived Hurricane Camille in 1969, which was a Category v storm. Unfortunately, Fritz observed, buildings that were designed to exist hurricane-proof withstood the wind velocity but were destroyed by the tempest surge. Even churches and other buildings designed equally hurricane evacuation shelters were washed out by the storm surge, despite their wind-resistant pattern.
Not a single window was blown out at the high-rise Beau Rivage Casino in Biloxi, but the casino floors where the croupiers played roulette were gutted and washed away.
"Katrina was really the 1 that shifted the focus back to storm surge," Fritz said, adding that the subversive potential of rising water was further emphasized by Hurricane Ike in 2008 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Paul Schlumper and Ray Doyle were office of a team from Georgia Tech Research Institute that trained more than vii,600 people in the Biloxi,
Mobile, and Gulfport areas on the occupational and safety hazards that disaster recovery workers and others would meet mail-Hurricane Katrina.
Training sessions were oft held in tents and conducted from the tailgates of pickup trucks. (Photo courtesy of Paul Schlumper)
Clough said a deeper agreement of climatic change will affect how cities prepare for natural disasters. Climate change is exacerbating sea level ascension, which increases the frequency and severity of coastal flooding.
This increase in sea level will take time, but in the meantime, Clough said, engineers and others designing systems to protect confronting hurricanes must factor this into the design.
Engineers, he said, can provide the data and inquiry to get the unabridged nation thinking about disaster preparedness. The state came together to build the interstate highway system, and a similar approach is needed at present, he added.
"Nosotros need to have a national dialogue so nosotros tin call back creatively virtually these issues," Clough said. "Nosotros need to think of this as a common problem facing the state."
Katrina Timeline 2005
August 23
5 p.chiliad.: The National Hurricane Eye issues outset informational about a tropical system formed over the Bahama islands.
Baronial 24
11 a.chiliad.: The tempest strengthens and is named Katrina. It is about 230 miles east of Miami.
August 25
5 p.1000.: Katrina strengthens and is now a hurricane.
Baronial 26
1 a.m.: Katrina weakens and is reclassified as a tropical storm.
5 a.g.: Katrina strengthens back into a hurricane.
During the day Louisiana and Mississippi declare states of emergency.
August 27
five a.m.: Katrina's winds reach 115 miles an hour. It is a Category three storm.
August 28
9:30 a.m.: New Orleans mayor issues a mandatory evacuation social club.
11 a.m.: Winds achieve almost 175 miles an 60 minutes. It is now a Category 5 storm.
Late dark: New Orleans residents who don't evacuate go to Louisiana Superdome.
Baronial 29
xi a.thousand.: A major levee fails in New Orleans and water pours through the 17th Street Culvert.
August xxx
New Orleans floods from breaks in the urban center's levees.
Baronial 31
Public health emergency alleged for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.
September 1
New Orleans mayor pleads for help for evacuees at the Superdome and Convention Center.
September ii
U.S. National Baby-sit troops and supply trucks arrive in New Orleans and distribute food and water.
Source: National Weather Service, National Hurricane Centre, The Times-Picayune and National Geographic.
Related Video: Georgia Tech Examines Affect of Hurricane Katrina
Georgia Tech partnered with the National Academy of Engineering in Washington D.C. to host a panel of experts to discuss the nation's preparedness for natural disaster in the 10-year wake of Hurricane Katrina's landfall. FULL STORY>
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