What went wrong with New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina? Well let’s see, where should I begin? First of all, “Katrina [is] arguably the best-predicted accident in American history” (Gerstein, 5). Why? Well for starters, as emphasized in PBS’ Frontline: The Storm, everyone knows that N.O. itself is a city situated below sea level and also a city smack dab in the center of Hurricane Central (just as California is in earthquake territory). Therefore, an event like Katrina is bound to occur and wreak havoc, especially since no one was prepared (federal, state, and local governments). In agreement with Marc Gerstein and his book Flirting with Disaster: Why Accidents are Rarely Accidental, we cannot label Katrina under the conventional term: “accident” (3). Yes, the storm itself was unpreventable, the wind, rain, and its course could not have been stopped. However, the aftermath that came with Katrina was preventable with foreseeable ramifications.
As mentioned above, N.O. is situated in a very susceptible area. If this isn’t a major problem already, precautions should’ve been taken to prevent further disaster from striking. But of course, this wasn’t the case, it never is. Rather than trying to avoid an aftermath as seen with Katrina, it seemed like everyone – the government, state, and private lucrative businesses (such as big oil companies) only further quickened and increased the danger that N.O. inevitably faced.
N.O.’ problem began with the environment and “the bottom line here is, when people decided to live in this fragile area, they disrupted the natural system…. What’s going to happen is the ocean’s going to take it over again,” (Roy Dokka, Louisiana State University geologist, Hiles – City Adrift, 7) and that is exactly what occurred. “The entire Mississippi River Delta, including the city of N.O. is slowly disappearing into the Gulf of Mexico.” This “slow-motion environmental catastrophe” makes the N.O. area more vulnerable to hurricanes every year. Although this process is natural, “human actions have made it far worse.” “Levees, oil and gas extraction, and shipping canals – all products of man’s attempt to control nature – are partly to blame” (7/8). These human actions have caused N.O.’ marshland to disappear. About 1,900 square miles of coastal land has been lost since the 1930’s. Although much of this was done fairly innocently in the 1950’s (not many individuals were concerned with coastal land loss then), N.O.’ citizens have now paid dearly as a result. At the time, wetlands were thought of as wastelands, stagnant water, a breeding ground for mosquitoes (9). They didn’t know (until the 1960’s, though the facts were still ignored) that wetlands reduced hurricane storm surges by 1 foot for each 2.7miles of wetland the storm crossed (18). “Wetlands would have made all the difference; about 80 miles of restored coastal marsh below N.O. would have prevented most of the flooding” (18). In a cruel and unforgiving cycle, Katrina’s waves which were magnified by the loss of coastal land, destroyed an estimated additional 100 square miles of N.O.’ already fragile coast (17).
Not only did Katrina kill more than 1,000 people, flood nearly 200,000 homes, and increase erosion, it also created a whole new set of problems in its aftermath with issues of contamination, trash disposal, and oil spills. With the hurricane flooding up 80% of N.O., its swirling water swept up dirt, pesticides, bacteria, chemical waste, and other debris. This “toxic gumbo” was then distributed throughout the city in a “layer of brown muck,” rendering the area a potential “hazardous waste dump” (13). In addition, 22 million tons of debris was left in the wake of Katrina. Two old landfills which were formerly used for construction and demolition debris, were then opened up and became the dumping ground for all sorts of waste, (household cleaning products/chemicals, food, feces, cars, metals, downed trees, moldy carpeting, etc.) left in the midst of this disaster (16). This became a big problem because construction and demolition landfills are not properly lined to “collect liquid that percolates through the garbage.” As a result, “The more you put things in that decompose… the bigger risk you’re creating that you’ll have landfill problems with gas, groundwater contamination, et cetera” (16). As for the oil spills caused by the storm, the U.S. Coast Guard estimates that more than 7 million gallons of oil leaked into the waterways of southeast Louisiana. That is only 4 million gallons shy of the “largest oil spill in U.S. history – the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 in Alaska’s Prince William Sound which released 11 million gallons” (15).
Katrina illustrates how environmental mistakes can compound themselves, leading to more disastrous effects (14). On top of all the many environmental issues that went wrong, environmental laws were also being overlooked in the aftermath of Katrina (17). The director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, Mark Davis, is “convinced that Katrina would have been less deadly if the state, the federal government, and Louisiana residents had heeded the long-ago warnings of environmental ruin” (18). “There had been plenty of warning, and no small amount of data to support the view that things were going downhill in a hurry” (Gerstein, 3). In the first five months after the hurricane, the federal government spent $85 billion. In comparison, only $14 billion was needed to restore Louisiana’s coast and “not one nickel of that went to preventing this from happening again” (Hiles, 19). It is terribly sad in retrospect, to know that N.O. and its citizens could have been saved with just a little less then 1/6th of the reluctant money that the government ultimately needed to spend.
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