Social, Economic And Social Effects Of Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and Morgan City, Louisiana, Biloxi, Mississippi, and Mobile, Alabama. At landfall it was a category 3, and it increased to a category 5. This was one of the strongest and most destructive storms to ever hit the US. It left thousands dead, homes and buildings destroyed, and the cities underwater leaving a negative impact on America socially, economically and politically.
Socially, America was impacted because of how much damage was done due to the strength of the storm. There were orders of evacuation before the storm hit, and 80% of the population did evacuate. However, more than 112,000 people did not have access to a car, about 10,000 people sought shelter in the superdome, …show more content…
and tens of thousands chose to wait it out at home. The storm hit New Orleans the hardest, and many people who lived there had been there their whole lives; some of them had never been outside the city so they had nowhere else to go. The storm surge was 20 ft high, literally putting the entire city underwater. There were approximately 1,833 fatalities, but this number is not definite there could have been more. People were left in devastation losing loved ones, their homes, cars, jobs, schools, and everything they’ve ever known. Over 134,000 housing units were either damaged or completely destroyed. The population in New Orleans fell from 484,674 to 230,172 since the hurricane due to either deaths or people moving out of the city. Unfortunately, more than half of the fatalities were senior citizens. Older people do not usually have escape plans for a state of emergency which is something that people advocated for after the storm. Economically, the storm caused over $100 billion in damage.
In all, the storm impacted over 93,000 square miles. Not only did the storm cause billions of dollars in damage, but it also destroyed 19% of U.S oil production. It destroyed 113 offshore oil and gas platforms combined with Hurricane Rita, which occurred shortly after. 457 oil and gas pipelines were destroyed, causing oil prices to increase by $3 a barrel. The oil prices increase cause gas prices to increase to almost $5 a gallon. In response, the U.S. government released oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves. This reserve has the largest emergency supply of oil in the world, it holds up to 727 million barrels. It’s located underground in Louisiana and Texas. Before Katrina hit the U.S economy grew by 3.8%, but afterwards it plummeted to 1.3%. In New Orleans alone, the hurricane caused $260 million in damage to the port. Before the hurricane the city generated $9.6 billion a year in tourism and attracted 7.1 million visitors a year. After the hurricane, the profit from tourism was only $2.6 million. Also, the hurricane destroyed 40% of the crop in the heart of Louisiana’s sugar industry. The annual crop value was estimated at $500 million, but after the storm it was reduced to almost nothing because it was destroyed. This area of Louisiana also had 50 chemical plants that produced 25% of the nation’s chemicals. About 190,000 barrels of oil were spilled in Louisiana after Katrina. When the amount of oil spilled in Alabama is included, there were about 8 million gallons of oil spilled total due to Katrina. 540 individual oil spills were recorded after Katrina and Rita. Also, there were 54 superfund sites that were scattered around Louisiana because of the hurricane. Tests by the Natural resource defense council revealed that the levels of arsenic were present at a level 30 times higher than the EPA’s safety limits. There were other cancer causing contaminants found in the sediment around New Orleans.
The damage caused by Katrina was unusual, because usually the worst hurricanes are in the East because there is a concentration of expensive high rise buildings. The recovery process after a tragic disaster like Hurricane Katrina is just as difficult as going through the actual storm. Because of the extent of the damage caused by Katrina the emergency period was extended over 6 weeks. On September 5, 2005 residents were allowed to come back and inspect their homes after the storm. First they had to go through the “dewatering” process, when flood waters were pumped and drained from the city. The end of emergency shelter was December 3, 2005, months after the initial hurricane. This shows people just how long residents went with no homes, and even after the shelter closed they were still left homeless. The services that were needed such as electricity, gas, transportation, schools, hospitals and food stores were functioning at less than half the capacity pre-Katrina. On September 6, there were new orders of evacuation put into place by the Mayor due to contaminated waters and unlivable conditions. There was electricity coming back in a few places, but sufficient food and supplies was still going to take many, many weeks. The Corps of Engineering repaired the 55 levees that failed to keep the city from flooding shortly after the hurricane. They also worked to improve the levees to prevent them from failing again in the event of another hurricane. The water and sewage services were gradually restored, and by March 2006 the EPA declared all parts of New Orleans safe; no soil was contaminated and the air quality was pure. Some people questioned whether or not it was worth using federal funding to rebuild the city of New Orleans. Others, argued that the city was much to important and historical to the U.S not to rebuild. It was also argued that most of the damage was due to the levee failure, who’s construction was funded by the federal government, people believed that the federal government was especially responsible for paying for rebuilding the city. Therefore, the federal government did end up paying for majority of the rebuilding process of course with the help of donations and relief organizations. Frederic Schwartz, the architect selected by the citizens of New Orleans and the New Orleans City Planning Commission thought the rebuilding of the city would be an opportunity to strengthen the community and social life. They wanted to make every effort to involve the residents and the community in rebuilding their city, because they are the ones who built it to begin with and gave it the historical value it had before and even after Katrina. After Katrina, politically, the people had no faith in the government to help. These citizens who were in need and distress were looking to the government for assistance, but the United States government did not satisfy their needs. Because of the unsatisfied needy people, the political structure was altered. The hurricane caused the people to look past the government and begin depending on faith-based organizations. Before the hurricane hit, the government thought they were prepared to deal with the aftermath of the storm. They were fully staffed and prepared with employees whose sole responsibility was to be first responders in the event of a disaster. When the storm actually hit it was nothing like they expected and it was clear that they were unprepared and inefficient. FEMA is the government agency that was supposed to be in charge of the recovery. However, an organization like this is simply not large enough to handle a situation with damage as extensive as Hurricane Katrina. Senator Jeff of Alabama made a statement basically saying there was no way the federal government would be able to maintain enough people on its payroll to respond immediately to every problem that comes up. He also said that FEMA would never be able to handle a disaster this large and that he wouldn’t want them to. This statement raised the question of the government and how much they really care. I say this because why wouldn’t they want an organization large enough to handle this situation? You would think they would want to hire as many people as possible to assist and save the people who needed saving. Apparently their explanation was that if FEMA became large enough to handle a situation like this they would be “too powerful” and undermine the concept of a self government. They also explained how it was unrealistic to expect any government to be large enough to handle a disaster like Hurricane Katrina. So, when the storm actually hit and the government realized that they weren’t going to be able to handle the impact of the hurricane they turned to other organizations for help, mostly faith based organizations. President Bush stated that the faith based organizations were better to turn to because they were closer to the communities. He thought they would be able to deliver better results than the government, and that they would feel more welcomed as a brother or sister because they had more of the human touch. Coming from a president of the United States, his comments were very unprecedented. It was unheard of for a president to not recommend that his own people to turn to the government for help. How were they supposed to feel any support or have any hope when those words came from his mouth? The government is supposed to at least offer their hand in assistance and support, but they barely even did that. In a recent study, the department of health and human services estimated that over 65% of the general welfare came from community and faith based organizations, and these organizations also provided roofs to sleep under, food and clothing for thousands of people. Such organizations were much more helpful and efficient than the United States government in almost every characteristic of aid after Hurricane Katrina. These statistic definitely altered the way people viewed the United States government, and faith in our government was most definitely very thin if not gone. The way these organizations stepped in to help out when out own government did not will always have an impact on how we look at the government and how much we depend on them. Clearly, even in the darkest time periods they are not dependable and their legitimacy is questionable in the eyes of the American people. Following Hurricane Katrina there was a significant drop in ratings for president George W. Bush. Katrina showed that he was incompetent and unreliable, and not there for his people when he was needed. Everybody believes that if there is a problem American would always be there to fix it, and this hurricane proved that not to be true. While we have been involved in world wars that had nothing to do with us, they couldn’t even be there for the cities that were affected by this awful disaster. In the final days of Bush’s presidency he was not able to make any changed in regards to tax cuts and immigration policies because he did not have the support of the American people. His approval ratings completely dropped and he was not able to regain the popularity he needed to do his job as president of the United States of America. Hurricane Katrina cause displacement of millions of citizens across the United States and billions of dollars in damages. In the long run, the government was proved to be even less effective than thought before, more corrupt than previously known, and put into a category of non approval by the American people.
On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and Morgan City, Louisiana, Biloxi, Mississippi, and Mobile, Alabama. At landfall it was a category 3, and it increased to a category 5. This was one of the strongest and most destructive storms to ever hit the US. It left thousands dead, homes and buildings destroyed, and the cities underwater leaving a negative impact on America socially, economically and politically.
Socially, America was impacted because of how much damage was done due to the strength of the storm. There were orders of evacuation before the storm hit, and 80% of the population did evacuate. However, more than 112,000 people did not have access to a car, about 10,000 people sought shelter in the superdome, …show more content…
and tens of thousands chose to wait it out at home. The storm hit New Orleans the hardest, and many people who lived there had been there their whole lives; some of them had never been outside the city so they had nowhere else to go. The storm surge was 20 ft high, literally putting the entire city underwater. There were approximately 1,833 fatalities, but this number is not definite there could have been more. People were left in devastation losing loved ones, their homes, cars, jobs, schools, and everything they’ve ever known. Over 134,000 housing units were either damaged or completely destroyed. The population in New Orleans fell from 484,674 to 230,172 since the hurricane due to either deaths or people moving out of the city. Unfortunately, more than half of the fatalities were senior citizens. Older people do not usually have escape plans for a state of emergency which is something that people advocated for after the storm. Economically, the storm caused over $100 billion in damage.
In all, the storm impacted over 93,000 square miles. Not only did the storm cause billions of dollars in damage, but it also destroyed 19% of U.S oil production. It destroyed 113 offshore oil and gas platforms combined with Hurricane Rita, which occurred shortly after. 457 oil and gas pipelines were destroyed, causing oil prices to increase by $3 a barrel. The oil prices increase cause gas prices to increase to almost $5 a gallon. In response, the U.S. government released oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves. This reserve has the largest emergency supply of oil in the world, it holds up to 727 million barrels. It’s located underground in Louisiana and Texas. Before Katrina hit the U.S economy grew by 3.8%, but afterwards it plummeted to 1.3%. In New Orleans alone, the hurricane caused $260 million in damage to the port. Before the hurricane the city generated $9.6 billion a year in tourism and attracted 7.1 million visitors a year. After the hurricane, the profit from tourism was only $2.6 million. Also, the hurricane destroyed 40% of the crop in the heart of Louisiana’s sugar industry. The annual crop value was estimated at $500 million, but after the storm it was reduced to almost nothing because it was destroyed. This area of Louisiana also had 50 chemical plants that produced 25% of the nation’s chemicals. About 190,000 barrels of oil were spilled in Louisiana after Katrina. When the amount of oil spilled in Alabama is included, there were about 8 million gallons of oil spilled total due to Katrina. 540 individual oil spills were recorded after Katrina and Rita. Also, there were 54 superfund sites that were scattered around Louisiana because of the hurricane. Tests by the Natural resource defense council revealed that the levels of arsenic were present at a level 30 times higher than the EPA’s safety limits. There were other cancer causing contaminants found in the sediment around New Orleans.
The damage caused by Katrina was unusual, because usually the worst hurricanes are in the East because there is a concentration of expensive high rise buildings. The recovery process after a tragic disaster like Hurricane Katrina is just as difficult as going through the actual storm. Because of the extent of the damage caused by Katrina the emergency period was extended over 6 weeks. On September 5, 2005 residents were allowed to come back and inspect their homes after the storm. First they had to go through the “dewatering” process, when flood waters were pumped and drained from the city. The end of emergency shelter was December 3, 2005, months after the initial hurricane. This shows people just how long residents went with no homes, and even after the shelter closed they were still left homeless. The services that were needed such as electricity, gas, transportation, schools, hospitals and food stores were functioning at less than half the capacity pre-Katrina. On September 6, there were new orders of evacuation put into place by the Mayor due to contaminated waters and unlivable conditions. There was electricity coming back in a few places, but sufficient food and supplies was still going to take many, many weeks. The Corps of Engineering repaired the 55 levees that failed to keep the city from flooding shortly after the hurricane. They also worked to improve the levees to prevent them from failing again in the event of another hurricane. The water and sewage services were gradually restored, and by March 2006 the EPA declared all parts of New Orleans safe; no soil was contaminated and the air quality was pure. Some people questioned whether or not it was worth using federal funding to rebuild the city of New Orleans. Others, argued that the city was much to important and historical to the U.S not to rebuild. It was also argued that most of the damage was due to the levee failure, who’s construction was funded by the federal government, people believed that the federal government was especially responsible for paying for rebuilding the city. Therefore, the federal government did end up paying for majority of the rebuilding process of course with the help of donations and relief organizations. Frederic Schwartz, the architect selected by the citizens of New Orleans and the New Orleans City Planning Commission thought the rebuilding of the city would be an opportunity to strengthen the community and social life. They wanted to make every effort to involve the residents and the community in rebuilding their city, because they are the ones who built it to begin with and gave it the historical value it had before and even after Katrina. After Katrina, politically, the people had no faith in the government to help. These citizens who were in need and distress were looking to the government for assistance, but the United States government did not satisfy their needs. Because of the unsatisfied needy people, the political structure was altered. The hurricane caused the people to look past the government and begin depending on faith-based organizations. Before the hurricane hit, the government thought they were prepared to deal with the aftermath of the storm. They were fully staffed and prepared with employees whose sole responsibility was to be first responders in the event of a disaster. When the storm actually hit it was nothing like they expected and it was clear that they were unprepared and inefficient. FEMA is the government agency that was supposed to be in charge of the recovery. However, an organization like this is simply not large enough to handle a situation with damage as extensive as Hurricane Katrina. Senator Jeff of Alabama made a statement basically saying there was no way the federal government would be able to maintain enough people on its payroll to respond immediately to every problem that comes up. He also said that FEMA would never be able to handle a disaster this large and that he wouldn’t want them to. This statement raised the question of the government and how much they really care. I say this because why wouldn’t they want an organization large enough to handle this situation? You would think they would want to hire as many people as possible to assist and save the people who needed saving. Apparently their explanation was that if FEMA became large enough to handle a situation like this they would be “too powerful” and undermine the concept of a self government. They also explained how it was unrealistic to expect any government to be large enough to handle a disaster like Hurricane Katrina. So, when the storm actually hit and the government realized that they weren’t going to be able to handle the impact of the hurricane they turned to other organizations for help, mostly faith based organizations. President Bush stated that the faith based organizations were better to turn to because they were closer to the communities. He thought they would be able to deliver better results than the government, and that they would feel more welcomed as a brother or sister because they had more of the human touch. Coming from a president of the United States, his comments were very unprecedented. It was unheard of for a president to not recommend that his own people to turn to the government for help. How were they supposed to feel any support or have any hope when those words came from his mouth? The government is supposed to at least offer their hand in assistance and support, but they barely even did that. In a recent study, the department of health and human services estimated that over 65% of the general welfare came from community and faith based organizations, and these organizations also provided roofs to sleep under, food and clothing for thousands of people. Such organizations were much more helpful and efficient than the United States government in almost every characteristic of aid after Hurricane Katrina. These statistic definitely altered the way people viewed the United States government, and faith in our government was most definitely very thin if not gone. The way these organizations stepped in to help out when out own government did not will always have an impact on how we look at the government and how much we depend on them. Clearly, even in the darkest time periods they are not dependable and their legitimacy is questionable in the eyes of the American people. Following Hurricane Katrina there was a significant drop in ratings for president George W. Bush. Katrina showed that he was incompetent and unreliable, and not there for his people when he was needed. Everybody believes that if there is a problem American would always be there to fix it, and this hurricane proved that not to be true. While we have been involved in world wars that had nothing to do with us, they couldn’t even be there for the cities that were affected by this awful disaster. In the final days of Bush’s presidency he was not able to make any changed in regards to tax cuts and immigration policies because he did not have the support of the American people. His approval ratings completely dropped and he was not able to regain the popularity he needed to do his job as president of the United States of America. Hurricane Katrina cause displacement of millions of citizens across the United States and billions of dollars in damages. In the long run, the government was proved to be even less effective than thought before, more corrupt than previously known, and put into a category of non approval by the American people.