The
Devastation of Hurricane Katrina
Katie Walsh
Anthology 101: Introduction to Geography
On August 29, 2005 the United States
experienced one of the most devastating storms in the history of the country;
this storm was Hurricane Katrina. A hurricane is a large storm that forms when
warm water in the ocean evaporates into the atmosphere and condenses into storm
clouds creating a low pressure zone (with warm and moist air). As the warm air
rises, a cycle begins as the high pressure area (cool and dry air) around the
storm begins to flow in and replace the rising warm air. As the storm grows and
more and more air converges in the sky, the winds begin to swirl; in the
northern hemisphere, like Hurricane Katrina, the winds will spin in a
counterclockwise rotation and in the southern hemisphere they will spin in a
clockwise rotation and this is due to the Coriolis effect and Earth’s rotation
on its axis. Warm ocean water fuels the hurricane and can cause it to grow
exponentially. Conversely, when a hurricane reaches land it loses its fuel and
can dissipate quickly; unfortunately devastating damage doesn’t take long to
accumulate.
The Saffir-Simpson scale which
categorizes hurricanes into five sections based on their intensity was created
by Engineer Herbert Saffir and director of the National Hurricane Center Robert
Simpson.[1]
“Category one hurricanes have winds from between seventy-four and ninety-five
miles an hour. These hurricanes do some damage to plants, trees, and mobile homes
and usually feature a five foot storm surge. Category two hurricanes have winds
from ninety-six to one hundred and ten miles per hour. They feature severe
damage to plants, trees, and mobile homes and feature an eight foot storm
surge. A category three hurricane has winds that range from one hundred and
eleven to one hundred and thirty miles per hour. These hurricanes can do damage
to buildings, blow trees down, destroy mobile homes and feature a twelve foot
storm surge. Hurricanes that are considered category four have winds from one
hundred thirty-one to one hundred fifty-five miles per hour. These hurricanes
feature severe flooding to shoreline housing, severe damage to buildings and
homes and feature a storm surge of eighteen feet. The last category for
hurricanes is category five and the winds rush to over one hundred and
fifty-fives miles per hour. The storm surge is over eighteen feet high and
entire buildings can be blown over.”[2]
In Hurricane Katrina’s case, she
started off very slow, “sometimes moving as slow as six miles per hour”.[3] As
Katrina breezed by the coast of Florida as a category one hurricane, she was
only just beginning. She passed Florida with minimal damage and continued on a
three day journey through the warm eighty-seven degree waters of the Gulf of
Mexico – growing.[4]
Quickly the hurricane turned into a category five storm with winds raging over
one hundred and sixty miles an hour.[5]
When it finally hit the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi it had been,
“downgraded to a category four storm with winds at a steady one hundred and
fifty-five miles per hour, but that was little consolation” to the people
living within the point of landfall considering Katrina has a storm surge of
over twenty feet high.[6]. After
twelve hours Hurricane Katrina had descended into tropical storm territory with
winds at sixty-five miles per hour, after sixteen hours, “she had dissipated
and only destruction was left in her wake”.[7]
In the early hours of the aftermath it, “seemed
as though New Orleans had escaped with no more damage than might have been
expected, but the worst was yet to come.”[8]
During the storm the levies protecting the city of New Orleans had been
severely damaged and the waters of the Mississippi River were slowly flooding in.
During the next two days, “about eighty percent of New Orleans was flooded with
anywhere from one to three meters of water.”[9]
Almost two thousand people were killed during Hurricane Katrina in over five
states (Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Georgia) and over one
million people were without homes.[10] Entire
towns were destroyed and families separated. The devastation of Louisiana and
Mississippi still has a long way to go before it will ever be able to be back
to normal.
There are a lot of things that have
been done to prevent the havoc of Hurricane Katrina from ever happening again.
For example, one of the largest issues: the levies that were destroyed have
been built with safe holds so that the same issue cannot occur again. There is
also a lot that can be done in the area of emergency preparedness. If you live
in an area where hurricanes can easily decimate you, there should be protocols
you should have to endure in regards to housing and building regulations,
appropriate amount of supplies in danger areas, and emergency evacuation
procedures. Overall I think a lot of effort has been put into making sure an
event of this magnitude will not cause the immense destruction it did last
time.
Hurricane Katrina may have been one
of the worst storms in the history of the United States but the amount of
kindness, generosity, and hospitality it brought out in the American people was
unprecedented. It shows that no matter how large a storm or how much
devastation occurs we will always ban together to help others in need.
Annotated
Bibliography
CNN U.S. “Hurricane Katrina Statistics Fast Facts.” Last modified
August 22, 2014. Accessed November 9, 2014. http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/23/us/hurricane-katrina-statistics-fast-facts/.
This
website featured a lot of statistics on Hurricane Katrina. There was
information available for death tolls, insurance premiums, and impacts of the
hurricane.
Getis,
Arthur, Mark Bjelland, and Victoria Getis. Introduction to Geography. 14th ed.
New York, NY: McGraw Hill Education, 2014.
I used our textbook to
feature information in my paper regarding the levies in Hurricane Katrina and
the Saffir-Simpson Scale. I also referenced information on how hurricanes are
created.
“How
Hurricane Katrina Formed” (video). September 5, 2005. Accessed November 9,
2014. http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/katrina-formation?source=relatedvideo.
This website featured
an amazing example on how hurricanes are formed as well the exact information I
needed to describe Hurricane Katrina’s path from Florida to Louisiana.
The Weather Channel. “Hurricanes and Tropical Storms.” Accessed
November 9, 2014.http://www.weather.com/encyclopedia/charts/tropical/saffirscale.html.
This website featured information on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane
Scale.
[1] “Hurricanes and Tropical Storms,” The Weather Channel,
accessed November 9, 2014,http://www.weather.com/encyclopedia/charts/tropical/saffirscale.html.
[2] Arthur Getis, Mark Bjelland, and Victoria Getis, Introduction to Geography, 14th
ed. (New York, NY: McGraw Hill Education, 2014), 92.
[3] “How Hurricane Katrina Formed” (video), September 5, 2005,
3:00, accessed November 9, 2014, http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/katrina-formation?source=relatedvideo,
1.64.
[4] “How Hurricane
Katrina Formed”, 1.82.
[5] “How Hurricane
Katrina Formed”, 1.97.
[7] “How Hurricane
Katrina Formed”, 2.85.
[8]
Getis, Bjelland, and Getis, 75.
[9] Getis, Bjelland,
and Getis, 75.
[10] “Hurricane Katrina Statistics Fast Facts,” CNN U.S., last
modified August 22, 2014, accessed November 9, 2014,http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/23/us/hurricane-katrina-statistics-fast-facts/.
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