HURRICANE KATRINA: THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY

It has been five years since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans is still rebuilding from the desolation left behind by this Category 3 hurricane.

Hurricane Katrina near peak strength on August 28, 2005. (Formed August 23, 2005, dissipated August 30, 2005)

Many people concentrate on the buildings and homes destroyed by Katrina.

But, the loss of human life was more tragic.

“Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall. At least 1,836 people lost their lives in the actual hurricane and in the subsequent floods, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane; total property damage was estimated at $81 billion (2005 USD), nearly triple the damage wrought by Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005 and crossed southern Florida as a moderate Category 1 hurricane, causing some deaths and flooding there before strengthening rapidly in the Gulf of Mexico. The storm weakened before making its second landfall as a Category 3 storm on the morning of Monday, August 29 in southeast Louisiana. It caused severe destruction along the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas, much of it due to the storm surge. The most severe loss of life occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana, which flooded as the levee system catastrophically failed, in many cases hours after the storm had moved inland. Eventually 80% of the city and large tracts of neighboring parishes became flooded, and the floodwaters lingered for weeks. However, the worst property damage occurred in coastal areas, such as all Mississippi beachfront towns, which were flooded over 90% in hours, as boats and casino barges rammed buildings, pushing cars and houses inland, with waters reaching 6–12 miles (10–19 km) from the beach.

The hurricane protection failures in New Orleans prompted a lawsuit against the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) the builders of the levee system as mandated in the Flood Control Act of 1965. Responsibility for the failures and flooding was laid squarely on the Army Corps in January 2008, but the federal agency could not be held financially liable due to sovereign immunity in the Flood Control Act of 1928. There was also an investigation of the responses from federal, state and local governments, resulting in the resignation of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael D. Brown, and of New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) Superintendent Eddie Compass. Conversely, the United States Coast Guard (USCG), National Hurricane Center (NHC) and National Weather Service (NWS) were widely commended for their actions, accurate forecasts and abundant lead time.

Five years later, thousands of displaced residents in Mississippi and Louisiana are still living in temporary accommodation. Reconstruction of each section of the southern portion of Louisiana has been addressed in the Army Corps LACPR Final Technical Report which identifies areas not to be rebuilt and areas and buildings that need to be elevated.^“

SOURCE

The loss of life was incalculable, and the displaced survivors numbered in the hundreds of thousands (at the time, 300,000 survivors). Even five years after Hurricane Katrina, the names of the hundreds of deceased remain a mystery and the death toll remains bogged down in recriminations and accusations.

The city of New Orleans, the state of Louisiana, and the federal government under the direction of FEMA, all drastically and abandoned the mission to find and catalogue the bodies of dead and missing victims. The state of Louisiana’s efforts to track down and compile lists of dozens of related cases of missing persons and unidentified bodies ran out of money in 2006 and has never been revived. One wonders if the government’s efforts fell flat due to lack of funds (or better yet, due to the stinginess to allocate funds) to find and identify the remains of so many dead, or, because of a lack of compassion for the humanity of the deceased, not to mention a lack of interest in acknowledging the massive magnitude of the casualties.

Hundreds of victims of America’s most horrific modern natural disaster remain anonymous. Many came from New Orleans Parish. The dead were racially diverse: 56 percent black; 40 percent white; 4 percent Asian; 4 percent Native American and 2 percent Hispanic. Many were elderly and poor. About 64 percent of the storm victims were older than 65, based on a study by Louisiana State University pathologists who oversaw a massive temporary morgue in Baton Rouge that processed more than 900 cases from 2005-06.

Many were left behind due to their inability to leave the city: lack of transportation or any other physical means to leave; fear of leaving their homes–the only home many ever knew; no financial means to leave the city.

When the levees broke, life for so many in New Orleans changed forever.

DNA, X-rays and other technological forms of identifying remains are years off into the future, if additional remains get found or family members of the missing submit evidence that gets linked to the nameless.

Some individuals have been doing what they can to give names to the faceless bodies, images that are burned into millions of Americans minds:

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** EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT ** The remains of an unidentified woman, victim of Hurricane Katrina, is seen decomposing in a wheelchair Sept. 10, 2005, in St. Bernard Parish, La. The hurricane hit the region on August 29 causing numerous deaths and severe property damage. (AP Photo/Mandatory Credit:Ron Haviv/VII). Creation Date 09/10/2005 03:10:30. Submit Date 09/19/2005 13:59:36. (SOURCE)

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** EDS, NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT ** A corpse is tied to a tree in floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Thursday, Sept. 15, 2005. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya) (SOURCE)

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A makeshift tomb at a New Orleans street corner conceals a body that had been lying on the sidewalk for days in the wake of Hurricane Katrina on Sunday, Sept. 4, 2005. (AP Photo/Dave Martin) (SOURCE)

One such man who has attempted to find out who the many deceased are is John Mutter.

A Columbia University professor, Mr. Mutter has been gathering personal testimonials and accessing public records of those who died during Katrina for a project he started called Katrinalist. Mr. Mutter estimates the true death toll may exceed 3,500 if those killed by the storm and by its many after-effects are accurately compiled.

We have to ask ourselves why did such a massive loss of life occur on 2005? As Mr. Mutter opines:

“This is a mass fatality event — one that is more common in the Third World,” Mutter said. “To find another one as large in the U.S. in terms of the people who died – you have to go back to 1900 to the Galveston flood when there was no (National Weather Service), there was no Internet … and there were no automobiles.

“Why on earth did so many people die in 2005? The injustice of it is just amazing.”

Another person attempting to put names to the deceased is Wayne Filmore.

Mr. Filmore is a storm survivor who hails from Metairie, LA. He runs the website Katrina Connection. His attempts to gather, update, and post information on Katrina-related missing-persons cases — he believes the true number is closer to 500 — often get no response. His conclusion is that city/county/state/federal government are not concerned and do not care to do anything more concerning the aftermath of Katrina five years later.

The disregard shown towards the deceased of New Orleans still resonates years later.

The massive crowds of the New Orleans Superdome.

The bloated bodies floating in water.

One image to this day still remains with me.

A news reporter, I forget which station walks around filming the great city of New Orleans laid low by the wrath of Katrina. He comes upon the body of a woman who had drowned from Katrina’s flooding. So overcome with emotion, he remarks: “This should not be. This should not happen. This woman is a human being, and should not be left like so much trash by the side of the road. She had a life. She was a person who lived.”

With tears in his eyes, he covered her remains.

New Orleans, Louisiana. Gulfport, Mississippi.

Katrina hit them, and hit them hard.

If any lesson can be learned from this castosrophe, it should be that this nation had better learn to be more prepared and caring when—not if—another Katrina strikes.

This nation, in the form of its so-called government, showed its contempt for the citizens of the Gulf when Katrina stuck, and continued to show that contempt days, weeks, months—-and years later.