Monday, October 5, 2015

The Devastation of Hurricane Katrina

  
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.
[6] “How Hurricane Katrina Formed”,  2.47.
[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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