On August 27 Katrina strengthened to a category 3 hurricane, with top winds exceeding 115 miles (185 km) per hour and a circulation that covered virtually the entire Gulf of Mexico. Water spills over a levee along the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on August 30, 2005, in New Orleans. [52] The Mountaineers won, 3835. The Industrial Canal was later breached as well, flooding the neighborhood known as the Lower Ninth Ward. Mouton then sent two diesel mechanics from the National Guard down to Thornton, and told them to invent a way to refuel the tank without opening the door that led to the outside. An aerial view of the catastrophic flooding in Downtown New Orleans on August 31, 2005. [7] According to many, the smell inside the stadium was revolting due to the breakdown of the plumbing system, which included all toilets and urinals in the building, forcing people to urinate and defecate in other areas such as garbage cans and sinks. And food was running short. Miller told a reporter. She had heard a lot, from the National Guard, from her husband, from rumors among the employees. On the flight out west, Thornton looked down and saw his home in Lakewood South, as well as the seven feet of water surrounding it. However, according to "Deaths Directly Caused by Hurricane Katrina" by Poppy Markwell and Raoult Ratard, only about one third of those deaths were due to drowning. People had broken up into factions by race, separating into small groups throughout the building that the National Guard struggled to control. Thorntons staff opened up the concourses, allowing people to walk around the arena, stretch their legs, find neighbors and friends who were there as well. For the remainder of that night, it was just Doug Thornton and a few remaining members of his management and security teams. [15] Evacuees began to break into the luxury suites, concession stands, vending machines, and offices to look for food and other supplies. The emergency generator later failed, and engineers had to protect the backup generator from floodwaters by creating a hole in a wall and installing a new fuel line. One of the worst disasters in U.S. history, Katrina caused an estimated $161 billion in damage. Between 20,000 and 30,000 people in New Orleans were evacuated to the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. And although President Bush said on September 1, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," days before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the White House was informed that the levees were likely to overtop and breach. The skies darkened, and the wind started to pick up. A few blocks away, the strobes inside Charity Hospital flashed. This is 40 or 50 feet up in the air. Soon after they arrived, officialsenacted contraflow, shutting down all roads leading in and opening up every lane out of the city. He went to his 6 a.m. status meeting with the National Guard and SMG staff, and twenty minutes in the lights flickered off, then back on. It was Mayor Ray Nagins office. But over the Gulf of Mexico, some 165 miles west of Key West, the storm gathered strength above the warmer waters of the gulf. The White House writes that by February 2006, there were still over 2,000 people who were counted as missing, and many are still missing over 15 years after the storm. [13], On August 31, it was announced that the Superdome evacuees would be moved to the Astrodome in Houston. The water pumps had failed, and without water pumps to the elevated building, they couldnt maintain water pressure. Within an hour, nearly every building in lower Plaquemines Parish would be destroyed. And as Rob Nixon notes in "Slow Violence, Neoliberalism, and Environmental Picaresque," "Discrimination predates disaster: in failures to maintain protective structures, failures at pre-emergency hazard mitigation, failures to maintain infrastructure, failures to organize evacuation plans for those who lack private transport, all of which make the poor and racial minorities disproportionately vulnerable to catastrophe." On August 29, at about 6:20 AM EDT, the electricity supply to the dome failed. [30][31], As of August 31, there had been three deaths in the Superdome: two elderly medical patients who were suffering from existing illness, and a man who committed suicide by jumping from the upper level seats. He starts off the essay with his own personal account of the damage that Hurricane Katrina left. Michael Appleton/NY Daily News Archive/Getty Images. The lights stayed on. In April 2000, according to the Data Center, the population of New Orleans was 484,674; by July 2006, not quite a year after Katrina, it had dropped by more than 250,000, to some 230,172. He escaped the chaotic shelter a few days . The chief of police had been given bad information. Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005 as a Category 3 storm. Many local agencies found themselves unable to respond to the increasingly desperate situation, as their own headquarters and control centres were under 20 feet (6 metres) of water. 24 With scant food and water sources, . 2023 Cable News Network. A woman walks with a dog in the Lower Ninth Ward on May 16, 2015. [17][18] 25,000 evacuees were taken to the Astrodome in Houston, while another 25,000 were taken to San Antonio and Dallas. We had to chase him down, said Sgt. ", Socialist Alternative writes the budget of the Crops was slashed after 2003, largely to pay for the Iraq War and tax cuts for the wealthy: "A refusal to invest tens of millions of dollars into strengthening levees has led to a catastrophe that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars." On June 4, 2006, Pamela Mahogany was interviewed for her personal experience involving the events following Hurricane Katrina. By the following afternoon Katrina had become one of the most powerful Atlantic storms on record, with winds in excess of 170 miles (275 km) per hour. With maximum sustained winds of 175 mph, the storm killed a total of 1,833 people and left millions homeless in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. After it made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, Hurricane Katrina produced widespread flooding in southeastern Louisiana because the levee system that held back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne was completely overwhelmed by 10 inches of rain and Katrinas storm surge. You have to fight for your life. After passing over Florida, Katrina again weakened, and was reclassified as a tropical storm. Some 1.2 million Louisianans were displaced for months or even years, and thousands never returned. Thornton recruited off-duty NOPD officers to come grab sandbags and carry them from the parking lot, through the loading dock, and back to the generator room from the inside. [1], Hurricane Katrina was the third time the dome had been used as a public shelter. NBC News reports that although there were stories of freezers full of bodies, "no such pile of bodies was [ever] found.". The men had little time to celebrate though water was still coming in under the door. More women are coming forward with stories of sexual. No one had a better plan, so they agreed to go with Moutons recommendation. Cooper held about 1,000 families and was the city's largest housing project. As buses finally started arriving to pluck refugees from the Louisiana Superdome yesterday, a horrifying picture emerged of the squalor, violence and mayhem that they faced during the days spent huddled in the stadium. Up to 47% "were caused by acute and chronic diseases." As Katrina moved inland over Mississippi, it weakened to a Category 1 hurricane and later to a tropical storm. Although up to 1.7 million people were evacuated in Louisiana alone, hundreds of thousands of people were stranded during the hurricane. Local residents gathering outside of the Superdome on September 2, 2005. Upon making landfall, it had 120-140 mph winds and stretched 400 miles across the coast. Food rotted inside of hundreds of refrigerators and freezers spread throughout the building; the smell was inescapable. As general manager of the facility since 1997, he had been through this several times before. 25% were caused by injury and trauma and 11% were caused by heart conditions. A helicopter rescues a family from a rooftop on September 1, 2005. Evacuees crowd the floor of the Astrodome in Houston on September 2, 2005. He could only offer supplies. You better move back. If we had evacuated who knows what wouldve happened Thornton said. All Rights Reserved. They knew what that meant: The Superdome was now running on its backup generator, which could power the lights but not much more. This place wont be here in six days.. And according to Vox, when the Louisiana National Guard asked FEMA for 700 buses to help with the evacuation, only 100 were sent in response. FEMA had sent the trucks to act as a makeshift morgue. No lights. Twenty-five thousand miserable people - many of whom lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina - hunkered down with little food and little water, overflowing toilets, stifling heat and the. The National Flood Insurance Program paid out $16 billion in claims. On the morning of August 29, the storm made landfall as a category 4 hurricane at Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, approximately 45 miles (70 km) southeast of New Orleans. The Social Science Research Council writes that this disparity occurred because elderly people were neither evacuated nor protected effectively. "Hurricane Katrina survivors in the Superdome." . A man pushes his bicycle through flood waters near the Superdome in New Orleans on Aug. 31, 2005. The tiny jail cell down in the bowels of the Dome, which they kept for game-day security, was filling up. On Wednesday morning, Mouton and Thornton checked the water first thing. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we cant bail out the city of New Orleans.. While Mouton and Thornton worked to find space for them to operate, two massive, 18-wheeler refrigerated trucks pulled into the loading dock, not far from the door where new arrivals entered the building. Initially, the Superdome was described as a "lawless, depraved, and chaotic" place, with reports of numerous murders. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! When Hurricane Katrina forced New Orleans poet Shelton Alexander to evacuate his home, he took his truck and video camera to the Superdome. Thornton felt the seconds ticking, each one more dangerous than the last. The Washington Post reports that not only did the Corps cut costs and pinch pennies in order to save money in the short term, but the engineering of the levees was "a disjointed fashion based on outdated data" (via Vox). June 2006 - The Government Accountability Office releases a report that concludes at least $1 billion in disaster relief payments made by FEMA were improper and potentially fraudulent. He said he just wanted to get out, to go somewhere. Food rotted inside the hundreds of unpowered refrigerators and freezers spread throughout the building. We took him to the terrace and said, Look. , As he saw the floodwaters rising around the stadium, the man broke down. A violent, free-for-all riot seemed sure to break out with the next bit of bad news. Theres five feet of water on Poydras Street.. That would be sorted out soon, Thornton thought, or maybe never at all. Hurricane Katrina, the tropical cyclone that struck the Gulf Coast in August 2005, was the third-strongest hurricane to hit the United States in its history at the time. Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest hurricane to strike the US Gulf Coast since 1928. The National Weather Service writes that Hurricane Katrina is "one of the five deadliest hurricanes to ever strike the United States.". The arrival of 13,000 U.S. National Guard troops and 7,000 U.S. military troops deployed by President George W. Bush helped with evacuations and resupplying food and water to those stranded at the Superdome and convention center, all of whom were finally evacuated on September 3. The hurricane and its aftermath claimed more than 1,800 lives, and it ranked as the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Results: Hurricane Katrina was responsible for the death of up to 1,170 persons in Louisiana; the risk of death increased with age. Wind and water damage to the roof created unsafe conditions, leading authorities to conduct emergency evacuations of the Superdome. Satellite view of the Superdome showing the damaged roof with the New Orleans Arena to the right on August 30, 2005. Although they were meant to be used for 18 months, they were still in use up to six years after the hurricane. Photo credit: AP Photo/Eric Gay. The Superdome with the newly repaired roof, August 15, 2006. According to ABC News, it was claimed that "the levee breaches could not have been foreseen" and that the government had little warning before the hurricane. But after the levees broke, the city buses went underwater. It's not a hotel," said the emergency preparedness director for St. Tammany Parish to the Times-Picayune in 1999. Severe flooding damage to cities along the Gulf Coast, from New Orleans to Biloxi, Mississippi. We're not a hotel. Instead, its lethality was a direct result of people and the decisions that they made, in regards to the engineering of the levees as well as the poor evacuation plans.