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" &amp;quot;DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED.&amp;quot; By the time the National Weather Service issued this ominous alert on the morning of Aug. 28, 2005, Hurricane Katrina had morphed from a relatively weak Category 1 hurricane to a Category 5 tropical monster -- and was spiraling straight toward New Orleans. The city would be &amp;quot;uninhabitable for weeks ... perhaps longer,&amp;quot; the weather service warned. Half the houses would lose their roofs. Commercial buildings would be unusable, and apartment buildings would be destroyed. Residents should expect long-term power outages and water shortages that would &amp;quot;make human suffering incredible by modern standards.&amp;quot;  In fact, the only outcome the 258-word alert didn&amp;#039;t specifically foretell was the massive flooding that would leave most of New Orleans submerged under a fetid stew of water and chemical runoff. But the likelihood of that happening has been well-known for years. The city sits as much as 10 ft. below sea level, between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, and is kept dry by a complicated system of canals, levees and pumping stations. Publications such as Scientific American, New Orleans&amp;#039;s Times-Picayune, National Geographic Magazine and Popular Mechanics have all reported on the city&amp;#039;s vulnerability in the event of a major hurricane. National Hurricane Director Max Mayfield was so concerned about the potential consequences of Katrina that he called the mayor of New Orleans, the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi, and even President Bush at his ranch in Texas. Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans issued a nonmandatory evacuation order by Sunday and, despite later misperceptions, most people left.  Highway lanes were converted to outbound traffic only, and state police estimated that 18,000 vehicles an hour were streaming away from the region by late afternoon. Before Katrina hit, 80 percent of residents had already evacuated; but an estimated 100,000 people remained. Some officials argue that they stayed by choice, but reports on the ground suggest that many residents, and quite a few tourists, were simply stranded. Estimates vary, but 26,000 to 100,000 New Orleans families did not own a car. Greyhound and Amtrak cancelled service into and out of New Orleans on Sunday, and airlines grounded planes at New Orleans&amp;#039;s Louis Armstrong airport.  &amp;quot;I know they&amp;#039;re saying &amp;#039;get out of town,&amp;#039; but I don&amp;#039;t have any way to get out,&amp;quot; said New Orleans resident Hattie Johns, 74, to the Gannett News Service. &amp;quot;If you don&amp;#039;t have no money, you can&amp;#039;t go.&amp;quot; The city established emergency shelters-of-last-resort for anyone who remained, and some 10,000 people waited out the storm in the Louisiana Superdome Sunday night.  When Katrina made landfall at 6 am the next morning, the hurricane had been downgraded to a Category 4. Its eye passed east of New Orleans. This was hardly a reprieve: The storm hovered over the region for eight long hours, ripping houses apart with winds of up to 145 mph. In neighboring St. Bernard Parish, an estimated 40,000 homes were destroyed. Wind and two-story storm surges obliterated many of Mississippi&amp;#039;s seaside communities, such as Gulfport and Biloxi, as well. In South Diamondhead, an entire subdivision of 200 homes was washed away. &amp;quot;We rode the house,&amp;quot; Don Haller, of Diamondhead, said to The New York Times. Highways were flooded for miles inland, power was out across the region, and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. Though many thought the worst was over, New Orleans was in still more serious trouble. Katrina&amp;#039;s 20-ft. storm surge was channeled directly into the city&amp;#039;s canals and levees. Three hours after the hurricane hit, a federal official reported that the downtown Industrial Canal had been breached. An hour later, the same was said of the 17th Street Canal. Engineers suspect that in some areas the surge water topped the canals&amp;#039; walls, eroding the earthen foundations. In other areas, the sheer pressure of the surge appears to have destroyed the concrete walls outright. Water from Lake Pontchartrain quickly overwhelmed the pumps and poured into the city.  &amp;quot;We were good until the canal busted,&amp;quot; resident Gregory Sontag said to The Times-Picayune, which won a Pulitzer for its reporting on Katrina, which continued even after its staff had to evacuate the offices. &amp;quot;First there was water on the street, then the sidewalk, then water in the house.&amp;quot;  By Monday night, low-lying neighborhoods, such as the Lower Ninth Ward, were in a state of total disaster. Daniel Weber sobbed as he told reporters about watching his wife drown as he tried to pull her onto their roof. &amp;quot;My hands were all cut up from breaking through the window, and I was standing on the fence. I said, `I&amp;#039;ll get on the roof and pull you,&amp;#039; and then we just went under.&amp;quot; Weber floated on a piece of driftwood for 14 hours before being rescued by one of the many boats plying the flooded streets searching for survivors.  Daybreak on Tuesday, Aug. 30, brought cable news footage that shocked the country. It quickly became apparent that Katrina was the most damaging hurricane in U.S. history. Eighty percent of New Orleans was flooded. News reports of looting, crime, rape and sniper fire in the wake of the disaster whipped media coverage into a fever pitch. But as Popular Mechanics reported in its March 2006 cover story, &amp;quot;Now What? The Lessons of Katrina,&amp;quot; the reports of violence were grossly overplayed, and most looters were simply trying to find food and water.  By Friday the conditions at the Superdome, where the crowd had grown to 20,000 people, forced many out into the misery of Louisiana&amp;#039;s infamously stifling heat and humidity. In the meantime, food and water finally arrived at the New Orleans Convention Center, where another 30,000 people had fled. Reporters from The Times-Picayune interviewed people who had waded through &amp;quot;chin high&amp;quot; water, and who told of friends and families vanishing in the flood. Those who remained in the city felt abandoned. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re being treated like animals,&amp;quot; Donyell Porter, 25, said to a Times-Picayune reporter. &amp;quot;Look around. Man, look at the bodies. And there&amp;#039;s no way for us to leave. ... It&amp;#039;s not right. We&amp;#039;re humans, too.&amp;quot;  Most of the hurricane survivors who wanted to leave New Orleans were finally able to get buses out of town on Saturday, Sep. 3. The city they left behind had been nearly wiped off the map, but Hurricane Katrina affected 90,000 square miles in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Well over 1300 people were killed across the region, and bodies were still turning up in condemned homes eight months later. The financial tally as of July 2007 was approaching $200 billion; some predict it will top $300 billion after all the checks are written. The Aftermath In the days that followed Hurricane Katrina, the wave of sentiment coursing through America was that government had failed across the board. At the federal, state and local level there was a nearly complete breakdown in communications. Despite the early-warning phone call from Mayfield, nobody seems to have been prepared for or aware of the real extent of the damage. This seemed especially true at the top, where the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reported directly to officials at the White House, cutting his superior at the Department of Homeland Security out of the loop.  A bipartisan Senate report, issued in April 2006, was not hopeful about upcoming hurricane seasons. &amp;quot;Hurrican Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared&amp;quot; cites a myriad of problems at FEMA alone, including a lack of emergency management experience at top levels, years of crippling budget shortfalls and a deficit of experienced frontline personnel to assist in emergencies.  The rescue effort that mobilized in spite of these failings was nonetheless impressive. More than 100,000 emergency personnel were on the scene within three days -- many within hours of Katrina&amp;#039;s passing. More than 50,000 people were rescued by the Coast Guard and the National Guard, not to mention ordinary citizens who piloted their own boats on impromptu rescue missions throughout the week.  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is furiously trying to rebuild the damaged levees and flood walls. Yet, the levee system is responsible for much of the coastal erosion that makes it difficult for the region to absorb the brunt of a hurricane. Many in the private and public sectors are calling for the government to fund long-delayed plans to restore the Mississippi River Delta.  In the short term, Mayor Nagin announced new mandatory evacuation orders for any hurricane above category 1. Citizens with special needs will take public transportation to the convention center and there will be able to ride buses out of town. Amtrak and Greyhound have pledged to stay open during an evacuation, and commercial airlines are being asked to delay canceling flights. Hotels will be asked to close during a storm, forcing tourists to leave the city.  FEMA, the agency in charge of coordinating the federal response, has vowed to improve communications. Its operations center will now be better linked to Homeland Security. FEMA officials armed with satellite phones will be deployed to state agencies. And to ensure the military knows when its help is needed, Defense Department coordinators will now be assigned to each of FEMA&amp;#039;s regional offices. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a1962/4219861/>