Essay About Levy System And New Orleans

Hurricane Katrina
Essay Preview: Hurricane Katrina
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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