President Bush on board Marine One takes an
ariel tour over Louisiana in areas devastated
by Hurricane Katrina, Friday, Sept. 2. |
|
Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans at dawn on Monday,
Aug. 29.
The storm’s devastation has been called America’s
worst natural disaster since a hurricane wiped out Galveston,
Texas in 1900, killing more than 6,000 people. Katrina
moved up the Gulf Coast, destroying or flooding vast areas
of Mississippi, including Waveland, Biloxi, Mobile, Alabama
and parts of the Florida panhandle.
Katrina was a Category 4 storm when she hit New Orleans,
with winds reaching 140 miles an hour. The storm had been
downgraded from Category 5 status over the weekend, carrying
165 mile per hour winds.
More
than a million people have been displaced and nearly 90,000
square miles have been affected. Damage related to the
storm has been reported in 12 states, including the Emmitsburg
area in Frederick County and in Adams County, Pa.
Economic fallout is just beginning. Fishing, oystering,
shipping, oil refineries and other Gulf Coast industries
are all impacted. Nearly 60 per cent of the nation’s
oil imports arrive at Gulf Coast ports. And nearly half
of the U.S. oil refineries are in this area. Oil and natural
gas prices have already skyrocketed.
New Orleans, a city of nearly a half-million people, lies
in a saucer between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain,
and is mostly below sea level. The city was spared the
full brunt of the hurricane. But breaches in the city’s
earthen levees, combined with the storm’s water
surges (some 29 feet high) over the concrete floodwalls,
and flooded pumping stations left more than 80 per cent
of the city flooded. Some parishes (counties) outside
the city were completely destroyed.
With nearly one-fifth of New Orleans residents living
below the poverty level, and one- in-five without a car,
thousands could not evacuate and were left to face the
rising waters for days without emergency assistance.
Thirty thousand residents fled to the Superdome, twenty-five
thousand or more went to the convention center and the
New Orleans arena. Crime increased and local and state
officials became overwhelmed. The flood waters became
a toxic stew, a mixture of sewage, gas chemicals and floating
bodies.
On Aug. 31, buses began evacuating survivors to the Houston
Astrodome. By Sept. 1 limited federal assistance had begun
to arrive.
Evacuation and cleanup efforts continue. Relief efforts
from around the world have provided emergency assistance
to thousands. The Federal Emergency and Management Authority
(FEMA) Director, Michael Brown, was first pulled from
the Gulf area, and has now resigned, replaced by a new
acting director, R. David Paulison, former head of the
U.S. Fire Administration.
