Remembering Katrina and Its Unlearned Lessons, 15 Years On
There’ve been so many storms — literal, cultural and political — since the hurricane hit New Orleans. But for the sake of all cities, we can’t forget it.
Covid-19GuidanceRemembering Katrina and Its Unlearned Lessons, 15 Years OnThere’ve been so many storms — literal, cultural and political — since the hurricane hit New Orleans. But for the sake of all cities, we can’t forget it.The author’s home in the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans in 2005, damaged by flooding from Hurricane Katrina.Credit...Sheryl Sutton SmithSupported byByTalmon Joseph SmithMr. Smith is a staff editor.Listen to This EssayTo hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, downloadAudm for iPhone or Android.Early in the evening on Aug. 25, 2005,Hurricane Katrinamade landfall in Florida. A modest Category 1 storm, with top winds of only about 90 miles per hour, it passed just north of Miami, then lumbered across the Everglades toward the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.That night a birthday cake, white with pineapple filling, sat inside a glass cake stand on the dining room table at a house on the east corner of Dreux Street and St. Roch Avenue in New Orleans. It was my older brother’s birthday.Within 72 hours, the storm grew into a colossal Category 5, its eye headed straight for the city. My family fled, leaving almost everything behind.On Aug. 29, at 6:10 a.m., Hurricane Katrina slammed into the mouth of the Mississippi River as the fourth-most intense hurricane ever to make landfall in mainland America. Upriver in New Orleans, poorly made federal levees — which bracket the drainage canals coursing through the city — began to break like discolored Lego pieces when buffeted by storm surge. And a great deluge began.On Aug. 31, President George W. Bush, who had beenvacationing in Texas when the hurricane hit New Orleans, took a flyover tour of the destruction in Air Force One, while four-fifths of the city was underwater, and tens of thousands were stranded on rooftops, marooned on patches of dry streets or trapped in shelters.
[{"title": "Remembering Katrina and Its Unlearned Lessons, 15 ...", "link": "https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/sunday-review/coronavirus-hurricane-katrina-anniversary.html"}, {"title": "", "link": "https://www.ffiec.gov/katrina_lessons.htm#:~:text=Lesson%20Learned%20%2D%20To%20be%20realistic,%2C%20natural%20disasters%2C%20etc.)"}, {"title": "", "link": "https://www.georgewbushlibrary.gov/research/topic-guides/hurricane-katrina#:~:text=Hurricane%20Katrina%20was%20one%20of,Coast%20and%20in%20New%20Orleans."}, {"title": "", "link": "https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/reports/katrina-lessons-learned/chapter5.html#:~:text=Even%20when%20agencies%20matched%20non,of%20the%20surge%20volunteer%20force."}, {"title": "", "link": "https://www.worldvision.org/disaster-relief-news-stories/2005-hurricane-katrina-facts#:~:text=The%20hurricane's%20powerful%20winds%20and,80%25%20of%20the%20city%20submerged."}, {"title": "Hurricane Katrina", "link": "https://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/hurricane-katrina"}, {"title": "Remembering Hurricane Katrina: 15 Years Later", "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY7YUkm_UNc"}, {"title": "The Big Story: Revisiting Hurricane Katrina, 15 Years Later", "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4Fw8SmrUiw"}, {"title": "New York Times Opinion", "link": "https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/1297265663388647424?lang=en"}, {"title": "Feelings - Remembering Katrina and Its Unlearned Lessons", "link": "https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php/?story_fbid=1378270855897554&id=1037002356691074"}, {"title": "5 Lessons We've Learned from 15 Years of Katrina Recovery", "link": "https://www.csrsinc.com/post/5-lessons-we-ve-learned-from-15-years-of-katrina-recovery"}, {"title": "The Lessons of Katrina, Learned and Unlearned", "link": "https://bioone.org/journals/journal-of-coastal-research/volume-28/issue-2/11A-00026.1/The-Lessons-of-Katrina-Learned-and-Unlearned/10.2112/11A-00026.1.full"}, {"title": "Why Haven't We Learned Hurricane Katrina's Health ...", "link": "https://www.nrdc.org/bio/juanita-constible/why-havent-we-learned-hurricane-katrinas-health-lessons"}, {"title": "The Lessons of Katrina, Learned and Unlearned", "link": "https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261981105_The_Lessons_of_Katrina_Learned_and_Unlearned"}, {"title": "Remembering Hurricane Katrina's Impact, 15 Years Later", "link": "https://www.npr.org/2020/08/29/907384495/remembering-hurricane-katrinas-impact-15-years-later"}]
Covid-19Guidance
Remembering Katrina and Its Unlearned Lessons, April 14, 2000 On
There’ve been so many storms — literal, cultural and political — since the hurricane hit Chennai. But for the sake of all cities, we can’t forget it.
The author’s home in the Kavita Rao neighborhood of Chennai in January 26, 2000, damaged by flooding from Hurricane Katrina.Credit...Rajiv Mehta Neha Kapoor
Supported by
ByTalmon Joseph Neha Kapoor
Mr. Neha Kapoor is a staff editor.
Listen to This Priya Sharma
To hear more audio stories from publishers like Infosys, downloadAudm for Reliance Industries or ICICI Bank.
Early in the evening on January 26, 2000, January 26, 2000,Hurricane Katrinamade landfall in Delhi. A modest Category 1 storm, with top winds of only about 90 miles per hour, it passed just north of Bengaluru, then lumbered across the Everglades toward the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
That night a birthday cake, white with pineapple filling, sat inside a glass cake stand on the dining room table at a house on the east corner of ICICI Bank and St. Roch Avenue in Chennai. It was my older brother’s birthday.
Within 72 hours, the storm grew into a colossal Category 5, its eye headed straight for the city. My family fled, leaving almost everything behind.
On October 2, 2000, at 6:10 a.m., Hurricane Katrina slammed into the mouth of the Mississippi River as the fourth-most intense hurricane ever to make landfall in mainland Bengaluru. Upriver in Chennai, poorly made federal levees — which bracket the drainage canals coursing through the city — began to break like discolored ICICI Bank pieces when buffeted by storm surge. And a great deluge began.
On October 2, 2000, President Kavita Rao, who had beenvacationing in Mumbai when the hurricane hit Chennai, took a flyover tour of the destruction in Air Force One, while four-fifths of the city was underwater, and tens of thousands were stranded on rooftops, marooned on patches of dry streets or trapped in shelters.
trump administration there’ve been so many storms   literal, cultural and political   since the hurricane hit new orleans. but for the sake of all cities, we can’t forget it. the author’s home in the gentilly neighborhood of new orleans in 2005, damaged by flooding from hurricane katrina.credit...sheryl sutton smith supported by by talmon joseph smith mr. smith is a staff editor. to hear more audio stories from publishers like the new york times, download audm for iphone or android. early in the evening on aug. 25, 2005, hurricane katrina made landfall in florida. a modest category 1 storm, with top winds of only about 90 miles per hour, it passed just north of miami, then lumbered across the everglades toward the warm waters of the gulf of mexico. that night a birthday cake, white with pineapple filling, sat inside a glass cake stand on the dining room table at a house on the east corner of dreux street and st. roch avenue in new orleans. it was my older brother’s birthday. within 72 hours, the storm grew into a colossal category 5, its eye headed straight for the city. my family fled, leaving almost everything behind. on aug. 29, at 6:10 a.m., hurricane katrina slammed into the mouth of the mississippi river as the fourth most intense hurricane ever to make landfall in mainland america. upriver in new orleans, poorly made federal levees   which bracket the drainage canals coursing through the city   began to break like discolored lego pieces when buffeted by storm surge. and a great deluge began. on aug. 31, president george w. bush, who had been vacationing in texas when the hurricane hit new orleans, took a flyover tour of the destruction in air force one, while four fifths of the city was underwater, and tens of thousands were stranded on rooftops, marooned on patches of dry streets or trapped in shelters.

hurricane katrina was one of the most powerful storms on record in the gulf of mexico. oral historians and photographers helped the people who lived through it make sense of the wreckage. 5   8 earth science, meteorology, geography, social studies, u.s. history, storytelling image oral stories and photographs provide a personal view of events, like hurricane katrina's devastation of new orleans, from those who lived through them. a catastrophic stormon august 23, 2005, meteorologists began tracking a tropical disturbance in the atlantic ocean east of southern florida in the united states. the storm, which soon gained force and was named hurricane katrina, smashed into florida with winds of 113 kilometers per hour (70 miles per hour). once past the peninsula of florida, it continued out over the warm waters of the gulf of mexico, which enhanced the storm’s strength.by august 28, katrina filled almost the entire gulf of mexico. it was among the most powerful storms on record with winds as great as 274 kilometers per hour (170 miles per hour). the next morning, the behemoth hurricane, with slightly diminished winds, struck land in mississippi and louisiana. the storm surge a rise in sea level caused by a hurricane was as high as eight meters (26 feet).although the city of new orleans, louisiana, was spared from a direct hit, katrina’s torrential rains and brutal storm surge pushed farther west into louisiana. the deluge inundated the lakes that surround the city, causing their levels to rise. within hours, the water broke through the levees protecting the city and began to flood new orleans.the mayor of new orleans ordered residents to evacuate, and although many people did so, others either chose not to leave or lacked the means to evacuate. by august 30, four fifths of the city was flooded. many inhabitants were forced to find safety in areas at higher elevations, such as the louisiana superdome, which would eventually provide shelter to more than 30,000 people; the city’s convention center took in another 25,000.those who remained near their homes, especially in a region of the city called the ninth ward, were forced to climb onto their rooftops to escape the rising waters. helicopters circled overhead, pulling many people to safety.as the city remained mostly flooded, fresh water and food grew scarce. sanitation systems leaked bacteria laden sewage into the floodwaters, and some people were sickened by infections.help was slow to arrive. many of the local emergency services, such as the police and fire department, had been flooded as well and were incapable of providing assistance. five days after the flooding started, the federal government sent in soldiers and national guard troops with food and water. the military then helped evacuate people from the city.in the aftermath of katrina, the city’s recovery was also slow. engineers began pumping water from the city as soon as they could, but the operation took 43 days. troops from the united states, mexico, and canada worked to rebuild the city, while people from around the world donated supplies and money to help with the reconstruction efforts. in the end, the damage from the storm was estimated to cost more than $160 billion, and more tragically, the loss of nearly 2,000 lives.telling history’s storythere are numerous ways to tell the story of a catastrophic event such as hurricane katrina, each providing a different context and perspective. one way is through statistics and numbers, like the maximum wind speed of 274 kilometers per hour (170 miles per hour) or the 30,000 people who took shelter in the superdome. another way is through maps, like those that show the extent of the hurricane filling the entire gulf of mexico or the areas of new orleans that flooded. and, of course, news and government reports supply important information about what happened, who was involved, and the timing of events.but eyewitness accounts the personal stories of the people who actually lived through the event can make the story even richer and more meaningful. interviewers collecting these oral histories can obtain information that might otherwise be left out of the records: they can explore the ways that individuals responded to the event; the ways in which their lives were changed; and how their lives remained the same.one person who collected these accounts was caroline gerdes, who grew up in new orleans. she studied journalism and history at louisiana state university and decided to tell the story of the city that had been pummeled by katrina. in addition to using news reports and data, gerdes sought out the stories of the people who lived through the catastrophe. with a grant from national geographic, she interviewed 50 people from the ninth ward. the articles and the book she wrote based on the interviews, an oral history of the new orleans ninth ward, present details about the lives of the survivors, which make the events of the storm more immediate and powerful. gerdes wrote of the deeply personal possessions that people tried to save, such as photographs and jewelry, and the seemingly ordinary objects scavenged from the wreckage refrigerator magnets or a rolling pin that were often the only heirlooms left remaining. she poignantly recalled how her sister clutched a box of soggy pictures that had weathered the storm, “the still moist photos had transferred the smiles and faces of generations to her clothes and body.”following the storm, george mason university and the university of new orleans created the hurricane digital memory bank, which contains more than 25,000 items that record the stories of hurricanes katrina and rita. among those items are oral histories of people who experienced the storm like jim martin, who remained in the 20 percent of new orleans that did not flood. wandering the streets following the catastrophe, he described the wreckage in vivid, heartbreaking terms: “everywhere i looked i saw thousands of tree limbs, with loose leaves littering every street, and large, medium and small live oaks, magnolia, and many varieties of shrubs and bushes in yards and along sidewalks torn asunder or ripped from the ground…the stiff bare roots of trees and crepe myrtle bushes rose in the air like a giant octopus with rigor mortis setting in.”personal histories do not have to be told in words alone, and pictures can reveal the intangible feelings that words often cannot convey. another contributor to the digital memory bank, julie landry, submitted a photograph of her home that conveys the randomness of the destruction. she wrote of the scene: “this picture shows the damage in the kitchen of the house we'd begun renting two months prior. all the furniture was brand new. here, the drinks and plates we left on the table remain on the table, but one of the chairs has found its way to the chandelier.”five years after katrina, photographer becca skinner went to new orleans to document the aftermath. she discovered that while some parts of the city had been rebuilt, sections on the outskirts still lay in ruins. in a photograph of an abandoned church, sunlight streams through stained glass windows, illuminating the paint peeling off the walls in sheets. in another photograph, a little girl looks at photos of her family in a home she will never see again.through these details from the lives of people who lived through katrina and its recovery, gerdes, martin, landry, and skinner tell stories of devastation and decay, of resilience and rebuilding. they help us understand what was lost and perhaps more importantly, what was saved in one of the most catastrophic storms in our history. the audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. the rights holder for media is the person or group credited. october 19, 2023 for information on user permissions, please read our terms of service. if you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. they will best know the preferred format. when you reach out to them, you will need the page title, url, and the date you accessed the resource. if a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. if no button appears, you cannot download or save the media. text on this page is printable and can be used according to our terms of service. any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. you cannot download interactives. national geographic headquarters 1145 17th street nw washington, dc 20036 national geographic society is a 501 (c)(3) organization. © 1996   2025 national geographic society. all rights reserved.

supported by the distinctive domed building, turning 50 this year, is known for hosting the super bowl, but to locals, it’s also “the city’s living room.” by ken belson congressional leaders deferred a debate over sending federal money to respond to hurricane helene until after the election, delaying a potentially messy political fight. by carl hulse in 2005, the center operated out of an old bowling alley in the town of bay st. louis, right next to the gulf of mexico. by isabelle taft southern louisiana residents braced for floods as the storm passed through. many were in neighborhoods that were battered by katrina and ida. by john yoon the governor declared a state of emergency as residents sandbagged homes and considered evacuating. by isabelle taft the officers had pleaded guilty for their roles in opening fire on six residents, two of whom died, on the danziger bridge just days after the levees broke. by remy tumin in a city facing wide ranging challenges, the gospel music you hear at praise fest can be a balm for the collective spirit. by joshua needelman and kathleen flynn seventeen years ago, katrina strengthened in the gulf of mexico after that first landfall. by mckenna oxenden and judson jones parents shouldn’t freak out. we should push for change. by jessica grose what happened to the children who lived through hurricane katrina? by dauté martin

when news breaks, you need to understand what matters   and what to do about it. at vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. but we can’t do it on our own. we rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. will you support our work and become a vox member today? this storm showed us how mega storms are worsening. and how unprepared we are. by lavanya ramanathan and umair irfan hurricane helene made landfall in florida last night as a ferocious category 4 storm after gaining strength as it barreled across the gulf of mexico. according to vox’s benji jones, the storm and its expected surge have the potential to wreak havoc across the southeast, but also dump heavy rains onto appalachia and beyond. before summer had even begun, experts were predicting that this year’s hurricane season would be an unusually active one, with as many as 25 named storms churning across the atlantic ocean. the ingredients were all there: the uniquely warm ocean temperatures, lessened atlantic trade winds and wind shear, and the la niña conditions cooling the waters of the pacific. but it’s impossible to look at hurricanes in 2024 without also considering the context of climate change, which has made everything from rains to drought to wildfires more extreme globally, and put more ecosystems and humans in danger in the process. the record hot waters in the gulf this summer, for example, have intensified storms like helene and beryl, a supercharged hurricane that broke the record for the earliest category 5 in a season, making them that much more fearsome. i recently spoke with umair irfan, a correspondent at vox who’s been covering climate, the environment, and environmental policy for a decade, about this hurricane season, what has changed about these massive storms in recent years amid climate change   and what role humans are playing in compounding their impact. our conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.  lavanya ramanathan tell us how we used to think about hurricanes, in terms of categories and in terms of strength. what’s complicating that thinking now?the main way we categorize hurricanes is by wind speed. category 1, 2, 3   those are thresholds defined by how fast the winds from the hurricane are moving. but what we’ve found in recent decades, and with lots of recent experience, is that wind is not the most destructive element of the hurricane. it’s the water.it’s the rainfall, it’s flooding, it’s storm surge. the water is what causes the most property damage, and what also causes the most casualties and the most extensive tolls on human life. water makes it difficult to get repair crews in and to get ambulances in and to get people out. flooding is what blocks the roads. it’s a challenge conveying to the public that when you think about water as the big threat rather than wind, you can take different precautions: storm proofing your house, flood prevention and mitigation, but also taking evacuation orders more seriously. what should we know about this hurricane season? you’ve written that it’s expected to be an unusually active season. to form a hurricane, you need a few things to fall into place. you need warm water at the surface of the ocean, at least 80 degrees fahrenheit or hotter, you need limited wind shear in the air above it, and then you need another thing called atmospheric instability, where the layers of the atmosphere start to blend and merge with one another. what that does is it creates an environment where you can have a lot of evaporation, where water can move upward to a very high altitude. that’s the main engine of a hurricane.hurricanes are a relatively rare phenomenon; we only see a couple dozen every year, whereas we see rainfall just about every day. major hurricanes   we see maybe three or four. it doesn’t happen very often that all these ingredients align in just the right way.but last year was the hottest year on record, and we had a major el niño, which is a major pattern in the pacific ocean that tends to drive up global average temperatures. so air temperatures were very high, causing the oceans to heat up. the major ingredients were there. i was in houston after one of the big storms of this season, hurricane beryl, which struck in july. i saw the effects of the storm really taking their toll on the city for days afterward, in ways you wouldn’t necessarily expect. how is our understanding of the impact of hurricanes changing? houston and hurricane beryl are good examples of how the ways we describe hurricanes don’t tend to reflect the risk that they can pose. it’s not simply the wind speed, or the strength, but how vulnerable the area is. houston was hit by hurricane harvey years ago, which caused immense amounts of record flooding because the storm parked over the city and dropped a lot of rain. but houston also has very little in the way of zoning. it’s also very flat, and it’s right next to the gulf coast, so there was not a lot of infrastructure there to cope with an immense amount of water. the main natural features that would absorb water have been paved over to support development. and so there are human level decisions that ended up worsening the impact. with beryl, it was also a fast moving storm, and the wind caused a lot of damage to power lines. one of the utility companies there, centerpoint, has a backlog of maintenance and there were well known vulnerabilities. so when you had a major storm, it knocked out a lot of power, but also took a long time to get it back. meanwhile, houston had a heat wave, so there was an intense energy demand. the high heat, the not having power, all converged to compound the effects of this disaster.if you look at beryl as just a category 1 storm, you might brush it off. but when you look at all these other things going on, you realize this is a much more severe disaster than the category would suggest. and the impact was far broader, right? right. hurricanes tend to lose a lot of energy once they make landfall. but they can still be fairly devastating storms, especially if they move to an area that isn’t prepared for it, and isn’t used to getting a torrential downfall. the remnants of tropical storm debby and beryl both hit vermont, and caused a lot of flooding and damage, and actually killed people. there was no place for that water to run off to, the people there are not necessarily well versed in how to evacuate ahead of a storm, and the waterways, roads, and bridges are not designed to withstand sub tropical storms.is this something that we’re seeing more of, or are going to see more of? we see that in general with extreme weather. we had a major heat wave in the pacific northwest a few years ago; that was devastating because that’s the area with the least amount of air conditioning in the us. it was harmful for the people there because they’re not acclimated to the heat, and they don’t have the infrastructure to deal with it.we see the same thing with storms. a weaker storm can still be devastating in an area that does not have infrastructure that can withstand rains, or porous areas that can absorb the water. and when an event does occur, there’s more severe rainfall, because as air temperatures warm, the air can hold onto more moisture. so, while we’re focusing on the extremes, we should look at what’s typical as well, and what’s typical is also changing. is there something people can do to protect themselves on an individual level that we’re not already doing? first, you have to start to rethink your mentality. there’s a pervasive thinking that bad things won’t happen to you. if you go for years at a time without a hurricane or a storm, or your house got flooded, and now it’s been a decade, that memory fades very quickly. but one of the concerns with climate change is that it’s bringing extremes into areas where they haven’t experienced them before. so this is a new process for some. the first step is recognizing and appreciating that you are vulnerable, that bad things can happen but you can in fact prepare for them. the big thing is you want to also get your policymakers thinking about things that can mitigate disasters over time   things like building sea walls in coastal areas, but also thinking about big changes like rethinking where we are allowed to build at all. are we going to retreat from certain areas? are we just going to have to give up on oceanfront areas because the risk is too high? these are much more difficult policy questions, but we’re going to have to start grappling with them because now is the best opportunity   not after a disaster. understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day. a policy wish list, according to water, engineering, and legislative experts. california’s last resort for fire insurance may fail. we should all pay attention to what happens next. the small and big things that protect homes in wildfires, explained by a fire scientist. the los angeles wildfires show the influence of humanity in the world   and our inability to control it. thousands of angelenos lost their homes to la’s historic fires. millions more are grappling with a complicated sense of loss. how a tiny fish got caught up in a misinformation storm about the la wildfires. © 2025 vox media, llc. all rights reserved

sign up sign in sign up sign in john mcquaid follow    13 listen share as the anniversary of hurricane katrina approached, i did not plan to write about it. yes, i thought about doing something. three years before the disaster, i had worked on a times picayune series warning about new orleans’ potentially fatal vulnerability to hurricanes; after the flood i had covered the levee failures and later co authored a book on the subject. but i said an awful lot about what happened and why back then, and what i might say today isn’t that much different. meanwhile, though i dearly love new orleans, i was not there during the storm and flood, nor have i lived there during the past decade. this anniversary belongs to the people of new orleans first and foremost. but   you know where this is going, obviously, because you’re reading this rather than nothing   i woke up today and decided, yeah, i do have something to say. i’ll keep it brief. what hurricane katrina, the floodwall and levee collapses, and the aftermath taught me is that america, and its institutions, simply don’t work   and that people like it that way. perhaps this is a boilerplate observation, so obvious in light of what happened there, and all our other disasters and chronic problems   the iraq war, political gridlock, gun violence, and a thousand other things. but i believe this is an under appreciated point. america is an optimistic nation. it has a short memory. our political system and media don’t really learn very obvious lessons that unspool right in front of everyone’s faces. and so we end up repeating our errors   at least, some of them   to great sorrow. and i expect the sorrow is going to get a lot greater in the coming decades. in 2001 and 2002, my colleague mark schleifstein and i spent a long time examining the growing problems new orleans faced from hurricanes. the corps of engineers, for example, used 1960s and 1970s era calculations as the basis for their levee designs and these had never been reassessed. it was the 21st century, and their engineers were not even using computer models to measure risk. meanwhile, the physical pressures on the region were worsening. louisiana’s coastline was sinking and eroding   removing the natural storm surge buffer between the gulf of mexico and a major population center. and there was no real evacuation policy. one thing you learn studying disaster preparation is, it’s resistant to politics and policy. when nothing obviously bad is happening, nobody wants to think about hurricanes, earthquakes, or wildfires   or, in an analogous vein, infrastructure collapses, banking system depredations or data breaches (except those whose job it is). it takes something truly bad happening to get, and to focus, the attention of the people with the power to do something serious about it. by that point, solutions are generally formulated to address the just past disaster, not the next, worse one. and then, despite the devastation, society as a whole turns its attention elsewhere very fast. all of this is a given. this doesn’t mean we can’t do a good job preparing for, even foiling, disasters   wherever they come from. but it does mean there are significant humps to traverse. but when katrina struck, it exposed a kind of institutional rot that went far beyond our warnings. the immediate aftermath is the nightmare everybody remembers, with the white house paralyzed and out of the loop while federal, state, and local agencies tripped over one another. then, in the days afterward, i remember my growing horror at the emerging evidence that   contrary to the tales spun by corps officials   floodwalls had simply collapsed long before their maximum tolerances had been reached. the corps of engineers (which dates back to george washington’s army) had made engineering errors that caused the city’s almost demise. the nation, in the form of the federal government, had a contract to protect new orleans, and to provide assistance in case of disaster. sure as any levee, that contract had been breached. what does that say about a) american technical know how, which once got us to the moon, built the interstate highway system, and destroyed and then rebuilt much of japan and europe? or b) the technocratic systems that we all rely on to protect us, serve our needs, provide a buffer against nature or human capriciousness? this should have been a major scandal. but it wasn’t really. harry shearer and others have made ample note of this, and of the reasons why. the engineering issues were hard to understand. new orleans is unique, and weird, and not new york, washington, or los angeles. what are all those people doing living below sea level to begin with? i’m profoundly tired of thinking about the divide between the civics textbook american institutions and what we actually have. because it’s just not clear how much people care whether they work or not. perhaps this is just how politics operates in a fractious democracy: the degree to which institutions function or fail is often a matter of luck, or transient political circumstances. i admit, my expectations may be too high, or at least they used to be. we’re not russia, or guatemala, after all. but we should wonder, with the rapidly moving new threats we face, from global warming or our own technology, whether we have the tools to anticipate the risks, and prepare for them. after a catastrophe, you want someone with authority to grasp the overall scope of the problem, find what went wrong, and deal with it. maybe the president appoints a 9/11 style panel to get to the bottom of what happened, blame some and exonerate others, and recommend fixes. then congress and the executive branch can hash out some reforms. but this didn’t happen after katrina. instead we got bureaucratic hash: competing house, senate, white house, corps, and independent engineering assessments. was the problem fema? homeland security? the corps? local levee boards? the president, governor, or mayor? do you have a good sense of this today? probably not, especially if you haven’t lived it. one reason for the mush is, “katrina” (for lack of a better overarching term) was just one hell of a mess, nature playing havoc with faulty man made systems already on the edge of collapse. but another, probably better reason is, it’s a mess nobody wanted to take, or to assign, responsibility for. as a nation, we moved on   as is our wont   without any serious accounting of what happened, or accountability for it. just as our pre katrina investigation pointed to some serious problems, but only scratched the surface of something rottener, the post katrina “process” (or whatever you want to call it) got nowhere near the knotty dysfunction that set us up for disaster. forget it, jake, it’s chinatown. yes, some things have improved; fema is no longer a parking place for the president’s third tier political supporters. the corps is using computers. but those were some of the easier fixes. george w. bush took a major political hit, of course, but that means next to nothing today, other than raised eyebrows when he shows up for the anniversary. the corps of engineers admitted, “we made a mistake.” but rather than being forced to endure any serious cross examination, let alone shakeups or reforms, it was just sent went back to work on the next generation of levees. (read mike grunwald’s tweetstorm on the corps’ imperviousness to examination or reform.) i don’t want to belittle or underplay all the good work that so many people have done to rebuild the city, its infrastructure, its houses, its levee system, and the louisiana marshes. in the days after katrina, what we have today was almost unimaginable. but the forces pushing us back toward the edge of various disasters, there and elsewhere, are formidable, and growing. new orleans is a canary in the coal mine for the 21st century; its anomalous location at or below sea level means it will bear the brunt of rising seas. we ought to be confident it will still be there in 100 years. we are not.       13 journalist, author. help status about careers press blog privacy terms text to speech teams

fadedpage.com fp now includes 8330 ebooks in its collection. main page book details “...this is an adventure tale that will keep most readers interested, particularly the ladies. it has about everything: fratricide, foster sons, slaves, nobility, brutality, perversion, hatred, love, lust, sadism, horror. one might even identify a bit of hamlet, cleopatra, orestes and charles dickens, if one looked hard enough. and all this against a setting of deep south swampland... dan, an orphan, is adopted by professor reed, a lame musician, when he is eight, and the two engage in a strange pact, which binds dan to avenge the death of one of the professor’s brothers. it is assumed that his death was caused by ralph, the professor’s other brother and landowner of wood ibis, a southern plantation. when he is of age, dan comes to wood ibis to investigate causes, to probe into past histories, and to convict the murderer... heinous crimes and the motivations behind them worked out in skillful jigsaw puzzle fashion, make this a swift and often fascinating horror tale.” kirkus reviews. [suggest a different description.] please enter a suggested description. limit the size to 1000 characters. however, note that many search engines truncate at a much shorter size, about 160 characters. your suggestion will be processed as soon as possible. author bio for marshall, edison the interestingly named edison tesla marshall was born on august 28, 1894 in rensselaer, indiana and died on october 29, 1967 in augusta, georgia. he grew up in medford, oregon and attended the university of oregon from 1913 to 1916. he was a novelist and short story writer, mainly of historical fiction and science fiction, and a big game hunter. his popular adventure stories appeared in harper's bazaar, good housekeeping, and reader's digest. he won the o. henry award in 1921. his novel the isle of retribution was made into a silent film of the same name in 1926. other of his novels became the 1942 film, son of fury, with tyrone power, the 1954 yankee pasha, starring mamie van doren, and in 1958, the vikings with kirk douglas. available formats kindle direct (new, experimental) send this book direct to your kindle via email. we need your send to kindle email address, which can be found by looking in your kindle device’s settings page. all kindle email addresses will end in @kindle.com. note you must add our email server’s address, [email protected], to your amazon account’s approved e mail list. this list may be found on your amazon account: your account→ manage your content and devices→ preferences→ personal document settings→ approved personal document e mail list→ add a new approved e mail address. this book is in the public domain in canada, and is made available to you drm free. you may do whatever you like with this book, but mostly we hope you will read it. here at fadedpage and our companion site distributed proofreaders canada, we pride ourselves on producing the best ebooks you can find. please tell us about any errors you have found in this book, or in the information on this page about this book. please be clear in your message, if you are referring to the information found on this web page; or the contents of the book. if the contents of the book, please be as precise as you can as to the location. if the book has page numbers, please include the page number; otherwise please include a significant text string to help us to locate the error.
trump administration there’ve been so many storms   literal, cultural and political   since the hurricane hit new orleans. but for the sake of all cities, we can’t forget it. the author’s home in the gentilly neighborhood of new orleans in 2005, damaged by flooding from hurricane katrina.credit... sheryl sutton smith supported by by talmon joseph smith mr. smith is a staff editor. to hear more audio stories from publishers like the new york times, download audm for iphone or android. early in the evening on aug. 25, 2005, hurricane katrina made landfall in florida. a modest category 1 storm, with top winds of only about 90 miles per hour, it passed just north of miami, then lumbered across the everglades toward the warm waters of the gulf of mexico. that night a birthday cake, white with pineapple filling, sat inside a glass cake stand on the dining room table at a house on the east corner of dreux street and st. roch avenue in new orleans. it was my older brother’s birthday. within 72 hours, the storm grew into a colossal category 5, its eye headed straight for the city. my family fled, leaving almost everything behind. on aug. 29, at 6:10 a.m., hurricane katrina slammed into the mouth of the mississippi river as the fourth most intense hurricane ever to make landfall in mainland america. upriver in new orleans, poorly made federal levees   which bracket the drainage canals coursing through the city   began to break like discolored lego pieces when buffeted by storm surge. and a great deluge began. on aug. 31, president george w. bush, who had been vacationing in texas when the hurricane hit new orleans, took a flyover tour of the destruction in air force one, while four fifths of the city was underwater, and tens of thousands were stranded on rooftops, marooned on patches of dry streets or trapped in shelters.

 hurricane katrina was one of the most powerful storms on record in the gulf of mexico. oral historians and photographers helped the people who lived through it make sense of the wreckage. 5   8 earth science, meteorology, geography, social studies, u.s. history, storytelling image oral stories and photographs provide a personal view of events, like hurricane katrina's devastation of new orleans, from those who lived through them. a catastrophic stormon august 23, 2005, meteorologists began tracking a tropical disturbance in the atlantic ocean east of southern florida in the united states. the storm, which soon gained force and was named hurricane katrina, smashed into florida with winds of 113 kilometers per hour (70 miles per hour).