An article by Alan Cain, pictured, Head of Security Services at the University of Leeds, on Hurricane Katrina.
On Tuesday, August 23, 2005 the interaction of a tropical wave and the remains of Tropical Depression Ten led to the forming of Tropical Depression Twelve over the southeastern Bahamas. By the morning of Wednesday, August 24, the system had been upgraded to tropical storm status and given the name ‘Katrina’, becoming a moderate Category 1 hurricane with 80 mph winds two hours before it made landfall in southern Florida on the morning of Thursday 25th August. Whilst it caused some flooding and casualties (two people were killed by falling trees) it appeared to be just another hurricane in an active hurricane season.
Once over water again, Katrina stalled beneath a very large upper-level anticyclone that dominated the entire Gulf of Mexico, and rapidly gained strength. By Sunday 28th August Katrina had attained Category 5 status, with 175 mph winds. On Monday 29th August Katrina made its second landfall near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana, as a Category 3 hurricane with 125 mph winds. After moving over southeastern Louisiana and Breton Sound, Katrina made its third landfall near the Louisiana / Mississippi Border with 120 mph winds, still a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina maintained hurricane strength well into Mississippi, before dissipating on Tuesday, August 30.
By the time it had dissipated Hurricane Katrina had caused 1,836 fatalities in five states, primarily in Louisiana (1,577) and Mississippi (238). Many of the Louisiana casualties occurred in New Orleans, where Katrina’s 18 to 25 feet storm surge led to the catastrophic failure of the floodwall and levee system, resulting in an estimated 80 percent of New Orleans being covered by floodwaters at least 10 feet deep. Thousands sought refuge in the Louisiana Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center, which were overwhelmed. The National Guard was called in to help with evacuations. With the disaster affecting 90,000 square miles, an area almost as large as the UK, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff described the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as “probably the worst catastrophe, or set of catastrophes” in the history of the United States.
Prevention
Far from being a single category of events with broadly similar effects, disasters (and thus the policies required for their prevention) can vary significantly. Some disasters (like earthquakes) are localized, while others (like major hurricanes) are widespread. Some disasters are ‘once in a lifetime’ events, while others recur on an almost annual basis. As Bellavita (2008) so eloquently puts it,
“Florida has hurricanes. Montana has wildfires. Ohio has floods. Arkansas has tornadoes. The northwest has earthquakes. The Great Lake states have severe winter storms. New York City, Washington DC and other urban areas risk more terrorist attacks.”
One year prior to Hurricane Katrina, during the 2004 Atlantic hurricane season Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Ivan had all caused significant damage to the US. The occurrence of a hurricane such as Katrina was therefore not unprecedented, either in magnitude or trajectory.
Given this high level of predictability, the preventative measures that were in place fell under two broad categories: (1) a system for providing accurate hurricane weather tracking forecasts, and (2) a federal built system of floodwalls and levees. The former provided accurate and timely hurricane weather tracking forecasts. The later, as we shall see, failed catastrophically.
Responsibility for hurricane weather tracking forecasts rests with the National Weather Service (NWS) and National Hurricane Centre (NHC). The NHC issued its first advisory about the tropical system that would later become Hurricane Katrina on Tuesday 23rd August. On Friday 26th August, approximately 56 hours before Katrina’s second landfall near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana, the NHC reported that Katrina was “rapidly strengthening” and correctly predicted that the Greater New Orleans area could face a direct hit by the storm. By the next morning, on Saturday 27th August, the NHC had issued a hurricane watch that included the New Orleans metro area, which was upgraded to a hurricane warning later that same evening.
On the morning of Sunday 28th Robert Ricks, a meteorologist with the New Orleans / Baton Rouge NWS office, issued the following statement as part of the event synopsis text of an inland hurricane wind warning being issued,
“Devastating damage expected… Hurricane Katrina… a most powerful hurricane with unprecedented strength… Rivaling the intensity of Hurricane Camille of 1969… most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks… perhaps longer.”
If the NHC / NWC hurricane weather tracking forecasts were a preventative success story, their antithesis was to be found in the New Orleans system of floodwalls and levees.
Built by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in the 1960’s the floodwalls and levees failed catastrophically. Seed (2005) states that Katrina’s 18 to 25 feet storm surge “rolled by about five to 10 feet over the levee protection system along the north eastern edge of the protected basin” containing the Ninth Ward and adjacent St Bernard Parish. Eventually 80 per cent of the city became covered by floodwaters at least 10 feet deep. Levee breaches in New Orleans caused a significant amount of the 1,836 fatalities. A total of over 700 dead bodies were recovered in New Orleans, either lying in the city streets or floating in the still-flooded sections in the east of the city.
A subsequent June 2007 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers concluded that many of these failures occurred when water overtopped the floodwalls and eroded their foundations; other failures occurred without overtopping, due to inadequate foundations or other construction problems. Lawrence H. Roth, Deputy Executive Director of the American Society of Civil Engineers, stated that,
“The worst engineering catastrophe in US history… (was) borne out of a failure to recognize how fragile the levees were and how devastating the consequences would be.”
First response
On Saturday 27th August, the NHC issued a hurricane watch that included the New Orleans metro area. As part of its first response to the anticipated disaster the United States Coast Guard began prepositioning aircraft, small boats, patrol boats and cutters in a ring around the expected impact zone and activated more than 400 reservists. A state of emergency was declared in selected regions of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. That same evening the NHC upgraded the hurricane watch to hurricane.
On Sunday 28th the sheer size of Katrina became clear, voluntary and mandatory evacuation orders were issued for large areas of southeast Louisiana as well as coastal Mississippi and Alabama. About 1.2 million people were evacuated out of harm’s way. However up to 100,000 people in New Orleans had no access to public transportation, and remained in the city.
Many were directed to the Louisiana Superdome, designated in the State of Louisiana Emergency Operations Plan as a ‘Last Resort Refuge’. The Emergency Operations Plan states that,
“The definition of Last Resort Refuge is a place for persons to be protected from the high winds and heavy rains during the storm. Unlike a shelter, there may be little or no water or food and possibly no utilities. A Last Resort Refuge is intended to provide best available survival protection for the duration of the storm only.”
In terms of this definition the Superdome performed reasonably well. Although the high winds tore away most of the rubberised covering from the roof, the structure largely withstood the hurricane. However, flooding caused by the storm surge resulted in the failure of both the electricity and the plumbing inside the dome. With some 30,000 refugees inside conditions deteriorated rapidly. It would be a week before evacuation from the Superdome was possible. Six deaths occurred, four from natural causes, one from a drugs overdose, and one by suicide.
A further 19,000 people went to the New Orleans Convention Centre to ride out the storm. Unlike the Superdome the Convention Centre was not a designated ‘Last Resort Refuge’. Therefore no food or water had been stockpiled in advance. Significantly no security personnel were provided. As with the Superdome, it would be a week before evacuation from the Convention Centre was possible. Four deaths occurred inside the Convention Centre, one of which was a homicide.
Outside the Superdome and the Convention Centre, poor communications served to hinder rescue operations. A lack of interoperability of equipment made communication between federal, state and local officials difficult. The Louisiana National Guard’s communications infrastructure had been badly damaged by the hurricane, rendering communication between members of the National Guard all but impossible. Cell phone towers had been destroyed and many of the satellite phones issued to the first responders did not work.
In these chaotic conditions, some residents of New Orleans who remained in the city began looting stores. Although many were in search of food and water that were not available to them through any other means, non-essential items were also being looted. Thousands of National Guard were mobilized and sent to Louisiana, along with numbers of local law enforcement agents from across the country who were temporarily deputized by the state. A number of arrests were made throughout the affected areas, and a temporary jail set up in the New Orleans bus station.
In addition to National Guard and deputized local law enforcement agents, the private military company ‘Blackwater’ (now known as ‘Academi’) deployed 250 Blackwater troops to New Orleans for ‘airlift services, security services and crowd control’. In his 2007 book ‘Blackwater, The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army’ the journalist Jeremy Scahill notes that,
“Its forces beat most federal agencies to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, as hundreds of heavily armed Blackwater mercenaries – some fresh from deployment in Iraq – fanned out into the disaster zone.”
Other companies including DynCorp, American Security Group, Wackenhut, Kroll and ISI also became involved in the first response operation, guarding private businesses and homes as well as government projects and institutions.
Disaster management
At the federal level the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 426 page ‘all-hazards’ National Response Plan (NRP),
“… establishes standardized training, organization and communication procedures for multi-jurisdictional interaction; clearly identifies authority and leadership responsibilities; enables incident response to be handled at the lowest possible organizational and jurisdictional level; ensures the seamless integration of federal government when an incident exceeds state or local capabilities; and provides the means to swiftly deliver federal support in response to catastrophic incidents.”
The basic premise of the NRP is that incidents should be handled at the lowest level possible. Disaster management is thus first and foremost a local government responsibility, and lay in this instance with Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans. When local government exhausts its resources it then requests specific additional resources from the state, in the person of Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the Democratic governor of Louisiana. This request process proceeds similarly from the state to the federal government as additional resource needs are identified, with responsibility resting with the Principal Federal Officer, originally Michael DeWayne Brown, the Administrator of FEMA, and later Thad Allen, the US Coast Guard Chief of Staff.
At the local level Mayor Ray Nagin was particularly criticized for his decision to delay the emergency evacuation order until 19 hours before landfall, a decision which ultimately led to the deaths of hundreds of people consequently unable to find a way out of the city. Further criticism of Mayor Nagin centered both on his failure to implement the New Orleans background plan and for his ordering people to ‘Last Resort Refuges’ lacking adequate provisions of food, water, toilets or security.
At the state level opinion is divided concerning the performance of Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the Democratic governor of Louisiana. Despite one-third of her National Guard troops being on active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, governor Blanco strenuously objected to requests from President George W. Bush to deploy the Armed Forces and give the Pentagon command over her remaining National Guardsmen. President Bush argued that this step was necessary because only the Armed Forces were “capable of massive logistical operations on a moments notice.” Blanco countered that federalizing the National Guard would result in the losing of much needed policing powers (granted to the National Guard under the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act), and she instead negotiated with 50 other state governors to borrow troops from their National Guard in order to bring her own troop numbers up from a total of 7,841 on the day Katrina hit to a peak of 46,838 on September 10.
At the federal level the DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff originally appointed Michael DeWayne Brown, the Administrator of FEMA, as the Principal Federal Officer. Brown’s performance attracted much criticism, in part due to his limited experience of disaster management prior to joining FEMA. When his limitations became clear he was relieved of his duties by Chertoff on September 9th 2005, resigning as Administrator of FEMA shortly afterwards on September 12th 2005. The appointment of US Coast Guard Chief of Staff Thad Allen as his replacement was widely seen as the correct decision, putting the federal response back under the control of an experienced professional rather than a political appointee.
Assessment
Several agencies including the National Hurricane Centre (NHC), the National Weather Service (NWS) and the United States Coast Guard (USCG) proved to be highly effective during the operations surrounding Hurricane Katrina. All three agencies were subsequently commended for their actions.
The NHC and NWS provided accurate hurricane weather tracking forecasts with sufficient lead time. The NHC correctly predicted that the Greater New Orleans area could face a direct hit by the storm some 56 hours before Katrina’s second landfall near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana. In the months following the disaster,
Congress appointed a committee to investigate the response to Hurricane Katrina and the preparations prior to its landfall. The committee concluded that the forecasts given by the National Weather Service were both timely and likely responsible for saving thousands of lives.
The Coast Guard responded quickly to the anticipated disaster, prepositioning aircraft, small boats, patrol boats and cutters in a ring around the expected impact zone and activating more than 400 reservists as soon as the NHC issued a hurricane watch. Despite the fact that rescue operations were made difficult by the chaotic conditions and lack of co-ordination between agencies, the Coast Guard still managed to conduct immediate post-hurricane search, rescue and humanitarian aid operations. Of the 60,000 people ultimately rescued more than 33,000 were rescued by the Coast Guard.
The effectiveness of the Coast Guard during Hurricane Katrina was later attributed to a combination of “training, readiness and flexibility”, though practical experience of similar operations during Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Ivan in 2004 no doubt also played a role.
The National Guard managed to initially deploy 7,841 soldiers on the day Katrina hit, and following negotiations by Governor Blanco bought in troops from 50 other states to bring troop numbers up to a peak of 46,838 on September 10. These troops assisted in search and rescue, medical treatment, evacuation and security. The parallel command structure operated by the Louisiana National Guard and the US Army, which had Major General Bennett Landreneau (the Senior Louisiana National Guard officer) and Lieutenant General Russel Honore (US Army) working alongside each other, worked well and was largely without incident.
Less successful in terms of effectiveness was the performance of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This was roundly criticized for its bureaucratic culture and for being slow and cumbersome. Bier (2006) in the book ‘On Risk and Disaster – Lessons from Hurricane Katrina’ states that,
“Perhaps most disturbingly, FEMA was apparently unable to waive its requirement for signed original requests for assistance, even in the face of an overwhelming emergency that severely disrupted normal mail service, Federal Express, and so forth.”
Other widely publicized examples of FEMA’s apparent inability to waive requirements that did not appear to make sense in a catastrophic situation included its insistence on all first responders undergoing routine training on sexual harassment before they could be sent out into the field. Despite these shortcomings however FEMA was still responsible for the rescue of some 6,000 people, a total only surpassed by the Coast Guard.
