What went wrong in New Orleans after Katrina hit and why?

Question

I'm writing a paper for school and would love feedback from different people around the country and most of all people from New Orleans.

Answer 1

New information comes out every day - Check out the Spike Lee Documentary on Katrina - I think it's called "When the levy's broke" - It's supposed to be really good.

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/whentheleveesbroke/

Also, they're doing a year anniversary thing on Katrina on NPR this week - check that out too:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5704652

* You will get alot of well researched answers from people who were not there and have their own political agendas to promote. Be wary of this: The idea that New Orleans was built in the wrong spot is just silly and uncaring... yes, it is swamp land but It's one of the oldest cities in the Americas because it has withstood the test of time. Secondly, the storm did not ruin the city, faulty levees did.

Lastly, the evacuation didn't happen because no one evacuates during a hurricane - If you live in Florida you know that the media has been pulling this code red crap with us every five minutes since hurricane Andrew and 9/11 - you get desensitized... it's easy to think "Yeah, I won't fall for that again.."

Response on the local level was slow and confused at best but they were LIVING IN DISASTER - what can you expect?

The poor were affected most. End of story. People want to blame them because they feel powerless to help them. End of story. (That's my perspective as someone who experienced Katrina in Florida)

Answer 2

The failing of Katrina is a multi headed problem.

1) We are destroying the wetlands that surround New Orleans. These wetlands are a barrier against tidal waves for that area. Over the last half century those wetlands have shrunk by a third and will continue to shrink due to the commercial waterway development in the area. No portion of the government is willing to fix this problem as it is a multi-billion dollar problem.

2)The levies where not built up for that strong of a storm. Even today the reinforcements aren't predicted to hold up to a level 4 hurricane, and there is debate of wheter or not they will hold against a level 3.

3) Government isn't communicating effectively. FEMA supposively didn't find out that the levies had broken until news organizations displayed them on TV. Then FEMA didn't know about the local shelters holding thousands of people. Also help evcuating people was never called in. FEMA relied on no more than what they had immediately available. Hospitals were not checked until 2 days later. Most of them were not fully evacuated until 4 or 5 days later.

4) Political arguments over who had control. The national guard was probably delayed by this.

5) Federal Government failed on its promises. Instead of fix the problems, they just handed out money. They didn't deliver the trailer homes as promised. All of them were late, if they came at all. That state has been promised 20 some billion in aid. They have been granted from that fund 117 million to date. There is a lengthy application process to get money.

There is just so much more crap going on in New Orleands. I'll be surprised if the region ever recovers.

Answer 3

This is a tough question....I feel that Katrina was a event of biblical proportions....there can be no adequate preparations....It's not the city of New Orleans that is important, but rather the people...Even if the people have moved, they have carried the spirit and essence of the old New Orleans with them....New Orleans Will never be the same...Let the new New Orleans begin....Not a "Chocolate City." It is a city for all Americans....It has a rich rich history and a future that is up the the people who re-inhabit it.

Answer 4

This is what went wrong in New Orleans: Building the city below sea level.

Oh yeah, simple as that sounds, if you look at the history of the city (which you should do if you are writing a paper about it), you will see that it was founded by the French, and engineers said it was a stupid place to put a city then. They were right. No matter what kind of walls, levees, or water containment systems of any other description are put there, it's a stupid place to put a city because the possibility of flooding is so high.

It's below sea level and surrounded by water on most sides - in short, it's a disaster waiting to happen. Hurricane Katrina showed this, and we respond by using taxpayer dollars to rebuild it IN THE EXACT SAME LOCATION! We certainly didn't learn the true lesson of Katrina.

Mother Nature, sooner or later, will reclaim her territory, and you don't want to be around when it happens.

Answer 5

The biggest problem was not Bush, and it was not Katrina specifically. The biggest problem is that New Orleans is built on a swamp in the middle of the Mississippi river. Even under the best of circumstances, they have to keep reclaiming land to keep it habitable. For millennia, the Mississippi River deposited millions of pounds of sediment daily into the Gulf outside of New Orleans. This created millions of acres of wetlands that slowed hurricanes, reduced storm surges and, until modern times, protected the city from flooding. These wetlands were producing an "ecosystem service" to society.overnment levees have channeled the Mississippi away from the wetlands, leaving no opportunities for controlled flooding to replenish the essential sediments. Private companies have sliced waterways through the wetlands to get at energy sources buried there. Starved of essential soils and weakened by a thousand cuts, the wetlands shrink by the size of Manhattan Island each year. New Orleans is being stripped of its natural shield and left naked to weather the storms of the Gulf.

And the local politicians in New Orleans are all corrupt. New Orleans has a history of political corruption. Congressman Billy Tauzin once put it, "half of Louisiana is under water and the other half is under indictment." Recent scandals include the conviction of 14 state judges and an FBI raid on the business and personal files of a Louisiana congressman. In 1991, a notoriously corrupt Democrat named Edwin Edwards ran for governor against Republican David Duke, a former head of the Ku Klux Klan. Edwards, whose winning campaign included bumper stickers saying "Elect the Crook," is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for taking bribes from casino owners. Duke recently completed his own prison term for tax fraud.

Answer 6

What went wrong is that the city and state government failed the people who elected them to office in the first place. The government did a mock storm drill in 2004 and told the state and local govenment that they were not prepared for a category 4 strom. They did nothing to prepare. Ray Nagin failed to order the evacuation early enough, he did not use school or city buses to evacuate and did not request federal help in advance of landfall. FEMA was ill prepared because there had not been a storm of this magnitude to deal with since FEMA inception. The levees failing was another kind. The members of the levee board had taken millions of dollars of federal money and bought themselves a provate plane instead of maintaining the levees. If they had done their jobs the levees would have held and the damage would not have been as bad. All of this is public records and was widely spread by the media after the storm. My community took a direct hit from Hurricane Rita and our officials learned a lot from what happened with Katrina so that we would not have happen to us what happened to them. We were smart enough to evacuate when told to but when you have years of storms threatening and you evacuate only to have the storm turn then you get lazy and decide not to leave only to regret that decision.

Answer 7

What happened was that a lot of people were told to evacuate and they didn't listen! Maybe if they would have listened a lot more lives could have been saved! The damages would still be there but everything in this life is replaceable except our lives!