Who is to blame for exacerbating the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina?

[K1052]

I read is was mostly because of industry. What did the usace do?

Channelization and use of control structures mostly. Wetlands were either cut off from the water supply needed to maintain them or eroded away.

 

[realibrad]

I cry 'foul' regarding this gross oversimplification....but will table this discussion for the time being.

Lol fair enough.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Whats with you guys? Is like the lack of wetlands being tied to global warming triggering you? You must now defend why wetlands dont matter? lmao.

I know this may be fairly difficult to for you grasp, so let me explain this at a third grade level. I'm not saying wetlands don't matter...I'm saying they had minimal impact in specific regard to New Orleans being flooded during Katrina. Got it? I sure hope so because I can't dumb it down any more than that.

 

[piasabird]

The state of Louisiana is responsible for the people of Louisiana.

I live near the Mississippi river so I know what a flood is. Some people choose to keep rebuilding in the flood plain and get flooded out every year or 2 or 3. It is their own damn fault. If you live near the ocean in a hurricane zone, you know what can happen.

Louisiana could have knocked down all those houses and built some good sturdy apartment building and turned that area into a park or something.

 

[JSt0rm]

I know this may be fairly difficult to for you grasp, so let me explain this at a third grade level. I'm not saying wetlands don't matter...I'm saying they had minimal impact in specific regard to New Orleans being flooded during Katrina. Got it? I sure hope so because I can't dumb it down any more than that.

Sorry. Im used to meaningless charts and graphs from you everytime someone mentions anything related to climate or man made anything. I guess you trigger me!

Witness!

 

[werepossum]

You are right about storm surge, but wrong about strength.

Hurricanes build or maintain power with warm wet air. Of all the types of "land" wetlands are the wettest. Wetlands do not have to be in warm or cold areas, so that is not important.

If a hurricane hits a wetland it will lose less energy than any other type of land in the same climate zone. So no, not an absolute fact.

What made NO so bad was the levees breaking down. Not having a storm surge buffer helped nothing for sure, but it would not have helped with the strength. That is dumb.

Dont just take my word for it either.

http://www.actforlibraries.org/how-wetlands-could-minimize-the-effect-of-hurricanes/

Good info, thanks.

Your post provides further proof that really stupid people do indeed abound.

Ah, come on, that was funny. Give the man credit.

Whatever the precise mechanism, wetlands appear to play a significant role in mitigating hurricane damage:

http://seagrant.noaa.gov/portals/0/..._tools_reports/value_hurricane_protection.pdf

That sounds like it's a major factor, not a minor one. I don't know the relative importance of the levees versus wetlands in the case of Katrina, but it does appear that the absence of wetlands can be significant.

Getting any land between you and the hurricane is important. As Realibrad points out, wetlands are the worst choice, but also about the only choice that won't be built over and still better than open water. That and farmland anyway. Wetlands provide a buffer - might not be the most effective, but they are the most effective we're likely to get. They also help break down toxins which wash back into the sea from the flooded land. What they don't do is turn Mardi Gras statues into the levee repairs they were intended to be. Or safely moor barges.

And since someone needs to say it:

The left is suffering from Koch envy.

 

[Darwin333]

I'm not sure why you quoted me in your post. Do you think that the flat wetlands will slow down a hurricane? That is a silly assumption on its own account. Wetland isn't stopping or making any sizable dent in a hurricane.

The very link you posted says that they do, I'm guessing you just skimmed it.

The primary damage in New Orleans was due to the failure of the levies. The levies that the state was given billions in federal dollars to rework to withstand these storms. They did not use this money on the levies but spent it on Pork Projects or should I say they wasted it. The Mayor of New Orleans and the State Government is at fault for the largest part of the disaster.

Congress allocates money to the Army Corp of Engineers, yes Louisiana politicians on the federal level helped steer money towards economic development like dredging the Mississippi river but Congress approved the projects and the funding. The levees were designed to withstand a Cat 3 storm which Katrina was not. There was never any serious talk about funding Cat 4 or 5 levees but wait, lets get into why the majority of the levee breaches happened.

Then there was another federal project called MRGO (Mississippi Gulf River Outlet Canal) that was a complete failure of a project in both economical and environmental aspects. It started off being 650' wide but by 1989 the marsh shoreline eroded so much that the average width was 1500'. By the time Katrina hit the MRGO was over 3 times wider than it was built due to erosion and saltwater intrusion. Add a heaping helping of saltwater intrusion into the surrounding marshland that eroded and destroyed even more marshlands and the fact that it served a whopping two large container ships a day. Then we get to the really juicy part, the MRGO, a completely failed federal project that destroyed a metric fuckton of marshlands, acted as a funnel for Katrina's storm surge.

"Levees along the MRGO and the Intracoastal Waterway were breached in approximately 20 places, directly flooding most of St Bernard Parish and New Orleans East. Storm surge from the MRGO is also a leading suspect in the three breaches of floodwalls along the industrial canalhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Canal."

Luckily today there is a huge barrier, largest in the country, to protect against future storms but the damage to the wetlands has already been done.

 

[werepossum]

Get driver on bus, start driving.

Cant fix stupid.

lol +1 Hard to see why that is such a baffling concept to the left. One could understand why they might not understand how buses could be moved if they were privately owned, but these are government-owned buses.

The state of Louisiana is responsible for the people of Louisiana.

I live near the Mississippi river so I know what a flood is. Some people choose to keep rebuilding in the flood plain and get flooded out every year or 2 or 3. It is their own damn fault. If you live near the ocean in a hurricane zone, you know what can happen.

Louisiana could have knocked down all those houses and built some good sturdy apartment building and turned that area into a park or something.

That would certainly have helped, but isn't foolproof. A cow-orker's son decided to ride it out with his buddies on the second floor of a three story apartment building across the street from the beach in Mississippi. In the middle of the storm they were forced to jump out of the window into chest deep water because the building was literally coming apart around them. Fortunately one of the guys had a 4WD truck with a bad starter and had thus parked on a slight hill some distance away to roll start, since their vehicles were long since flooded, and they were able to wade to the truck and escape. The building didn't collapse completely, but almost everything he had was ruined as the building did open up with large gashes open to the elements and the apparent high water mark was near his ceiling. (I say apparent since I'm assuming this represents waves rather than actual water depth - to the extent this is a real difference in a hurricane.) Even his street was broken up and carried out to sea.

 

[Fern]

-snip-
The levees were designed to withstand a Cat 3 storm which Katrina was not. There was never any serious talk about funding Cat 4 or 5 levees but wait, lets get into why the majority of the levee breaches happened.

Katrina was a Cat 3 when it made landfall in LA.

Fern

 

[Darwin333]

No.

Wetlands do not play a role, land does. As types of lands go, wetlands are least effective in weakening the storm, but most effective in storm surge. I will grant you that storm surge is a massive problem in terms of hurricanes, but not in Katrina or the context of the op.

His claim was...



That is not true. It does absorb storm surge which in terms of hurricanes typically does the most damage, but in Katrina that is not the case as the surge was not the main issue. The amounts of water put down by the hurricane overwhelmed the levees which made them fail. There is enough blame to go around on that one, but wetlands was a small factor in total damage.

So far as I can tell, they did not do what they were supposed to in terms of the wetlands. That does not mean that had the wetlands been there it would have dented the massive cost in terms of money and lives.

While you are right about the wetlands, storm surge was the leading cause of levee failure. See my post above about the MRGO funneling the storm surge causing more than 20 levee breaches in New Orleans East and St. Bernard Parish.

 

[Darwin333]

Katrina was a Cat 3 when it made landfall in LA.

Fern

Still pushing a Cat 4-5 storm surge.

Edit: BTW, trying to argue that point only makes it look worse on the Feds. Again, the levees were and still are federal projects built by the Army Corp of Engineers. If you want to argue that the Federally built levees failed under conditions they were designed to withstand by the Federal government then that's fine by me.

 

[K1052]

Katrina was a Cat 3 when it made landfall in LA.

Fern

That's accurate however significant components of the USACE designed flood protection system failed well below specifications. They eventually had to admit badly flawed designs and engineering were to blame…luckily for them they're immune to liability.

 

[Darwin333]

Read more at http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/surge_wetlands.asp#9eXqyJQ6kOCpzSEv.99

Fern

Great read, thanks. So per that study (one of the two storms being after metric tons of wetlands and most of the barrier islands were gone) do work at reducing storm surge except when the storm stalls out and sits and continues to push the water through the wetlands.

I am going to read more up on the subject now that you've got me interested though, see if they have studies on more than just two storms, so thank you for peaking my interests.

 

[Darwin333]

People need to realize the speed of the government is pretty damn slow to non-existent. Look how veterans are treated by those in congress and then decide if you want to depend on the government for anything. You know living next to the ocean in an area that is below sea level is the biggest part of the problem there is. It is just asking for trouble.

I still remember seeing all the school buses under water that could have been relocated if the governor of Louisiana had a brain.

I would put the school buses more on the mayor, Ray Nagin, then the Governor. The aftermath otoh was 10 times the shitstorm largely due to the governor.

I read is was mostly because of industry. What did the usace do?

Built the MRGO for one.

How would you move all of the school buses?

Umm, personally I would have put a key in the ignition, turned it, put it into drive and then stepped on the accelerator. They can argue about "lack of drivers" all they want but not only is that a bullshit excuse but in time of dire emergency you find people to drive the darn buses. Not trying to be offensive but there was no excuse for those buses to be sitting empty in a city with a TON of poor people with no transportation, that is protected by a levee system and had one of the largest storms in history barreling down on it.

 

[Darwin333]

That would certainly have helped, but isn't foolproof. A cow-orker's son decided to ride it out with his buddies on the second floor of a three story apartment building across the street from the beach in Mississippi. In the middle of the storm they were forced to jump out of the window into chest deep water because the building was literally coming apart around them. Fortunately one of the guys had a 4WD truck with a bad starter and had thus parked on a slight hill some distance away to roll start, since their vehicles were long since flooded, and they were able to wade to the truck and escape. The building didn't collapse completely, but almost everything he had was ruined as the building did open up with large gashes open to the elements and the apparent high water mark was near his ceiling. (I say apparent since I'm assuming this represents waves rather than actual water depth - to the extent this is a real difference in a hurricane.) Even his street was broken up and carried out to sea.

Yeah, Mississippi got shafted, at least in the news coverage. I saw an entire town, Waveland, that was completely wiped away, nothing left but friggen slabs where houses used to be. It was even more surreal than looking at the damages in NOLA, just not as widespread.

 

[Fern]

How would you move all of the school buses?

I think I understand what you're trying to get at.

If so: Have all the drivers show up at the bus yard. Drive all the buses to high ground. Park them. Have all the bus drivers get into one bus and drive it back to the bus yard/parking lot.

Pretty easy huh? (Unless you're a NOLA mayor)

Fern

 

[JSt0rm]

Pretty easy huh? (Unless you're a NOLA mayor)

Fern

If you say so.

 

[werepossum]

I would put the school buses more on the mayor, Ray Nagin, then the Governor. The aftermath otoh was 10 times the shitstorm largely due to the governor.

Built the MRGO for one.

Umm, personally I would have put a key in the ignition, turned it, put it into drive and then stepped on the accelerator. They can argue about "lack of drivers" all they want but not only is that a bullshit excuse but in time of dire emergency you find people to drive the darn buses. Not trying to be offensive but there was no excuse for those buses to be sitting empty in a city with a TON of poor people with no transportation, that is protected by a levee system and had one of the largest storms in history barreling down on it.

Yeah that's completely on Nagin. He ordered all the poor "essential workers" to stay in the city while he fled, then later claimed he had some "master plan" to evacuate them which failed because every single driver didn't show up. But after the hurricane, Nagin had nothing left. At that point Blanco just added to the shitstorm with her own power grab, and Bush had appointed a completely unqualified idiot* to run FEMA and stood back while Blanco tried to figure out a way to get federal troops under her authority and her National Guard on the federal dime. Her attempt to make herself look good (Presidential?) ended her political career.

*Granted, political appointees don't actually do much day to day, but at least appoint someone with enough smarts to do something beyond get in the way.

 

[werepossum]

Yeah, Mississippi got shafted, at least in the news coverage. I saw an entire town, Waveland, that was completely wiped away, nothing left but friggen slabs where houses used to be. It was even more surreal than looking at the damages in NOLA, just not as widespread.

This was Bay Saint Louis, just up the road. Luckily for those who tried to ride it out there is an east-west ridge with higher ground which stopped the worst of the storm surge.

 

[DrPizza]

Don't forget that on top of storm surge - which is similar to a tsunami - a massive amount of water being driven toward the land, there are also the waves on top of that water. Those waves carry a lot of energy. Land between you and those waves absorbs much of those waves, which diminishes the overall effect of the storm surge, even with that same height of water reaching further inland.

 

[pcgeek11]

It's not a matter of question, it's an absolute fact that wetlands and marshes not only significantly reduce the strength of hurricanes but also absorb a bunch of the storm surge. You see, when hurricanes hit land they can no longer absorb energy from the warm waters and quickly lose energy. That is why hurricanes don't remain cat 4 all the way to Missouri.

The wetlands could slow the storm a minimal amount ( not significantly as you stated ), however in this case it is a mute point. The area that was hit by hurricane Katrina was Mississippi Not Louisiana. Just for the facts.

 

[Darwin333]

Yeah that's completely on Nagin. He ordered all the poor "essential workers" to stay in the city while he fled, then later claimed he had some "master plan" to evacuate them which failed because every single driver didn't show up. But after the hurricane, Nagin had nothing left. At that point Blanco just added to the shitstorm with her own power grab, and Bush had appointed a completely unqualified idiot* to run FEMA and stood back while Blanco tried to figure out a way to get federal troops under her authority and her National Guard on the federal dime. Her attempt to make herself look good (Presidential?) ended her political career.

*Granted, political appointees don't actually do much day to day, but at least appoint someone with enough smarts to do something beyond get in the way.

Yeah, the entire Blanco pissing match over Federal troops is largely responsible for how long the chaos ruled NOLA. It was a damn shame really, when General Honere showed up there were dozens upon dozens of trucks loaded with water and food that had been sitting at a staging location for days. They didn't have the proper paper work and no one knew what the chain of command was. So while Blanco played politics water and food that was already on the ground and in place didn't get distributed for days.

Nagin just flat out screwed the pooch on the evacuation. The city did actually have an evacuation plan which he pretty much just threw out the window. I don't give a shit about drivers, the worst possible case scenario is baring down on you then put any damn body behind the wheel. You never got over 5mph on the highway during the evacuation anyway.

 

[Darwin333]

The wetlands could slow the storm a minimal amount ( not significantly as you stated ), however in this case it is a mute point. The area that was hit by hurricane Katrina was Mississippi Not Louisiana. Just for the facts.

The eye of the storm hit Mississippi because the storm hooked east at the last minute.

It was a pretty bigass storm, sustained winds in NOLA were recorded at 30mph lower than the highest sustained winds recorded on land, just for the facts. I do agree that the storm missed us and we should have dodged a bullet if the federal levees hadn't failed and the federally built boondoggle the MRGO, which had basically zero commercial use, hadn't been built.

ETA: And if you really want the facts Katrina's first landfall (after Florida) was in Buras Louisiana not Mississippi. So all of your "facts" are wrong, just saying.

 

[who?]

http://www.thebiguneasy.com/

 

[woolfe9998]

Getting any land between you and the hurricane is important. As Realibrad points out, wetlands are the worst choice, but also about the only choice that won't be built over and still better than open water. That and farmland anyway. Wetlands provide a buffer - might not be the most effective, but they are the most effective we're likely to get. They also help break down toxins which wash back into the sea from the flooded land. What they don't do is turn Mardi Gras statues into the levee repairs they were intended to be. Or safely moor barges.

I believe you, but every source I google talks only about wetlands mitigating hurricane damage. You or realibad should provide a link for clarification.