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It damaged more than a million housing units in the region. But after the levees broke, the city buses went underwater. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city the previous day, and an estimated 1.2 million people left ahead of the storm. When Hurricane Katrina forced New Orleans poet Shelton Alexander to evacuate his home, he took his truck and video camera to the Superdome. That night, around 6 p.m., Thornton got a phone call. In the book, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast author Douglas Brinkley takes you on a journey through the political corruption and under calculation of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina's effects. At least 1,833 died in the hurricane and subsequent floods. This is a national disgrace, he said. Some 1.2 million Louisianans were displaced for months or even years, and thousands never returned. Parishioners gather during Sunday services in the rebuilt church on May 10, 2015. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. However, there weren't enough trucks for the patients, so they had to stay in the dome. We had to chase him down, said Sgt. The day . A hurricane warning is issued for north central Gulf . In New Orleans, the evacuation plan reportedly "fell apart even before the storm hit." Finally, Mouton spoke. The Associated Press stated there were two substantial holes, "each about 15 to 20 feet (6.1m) long and 4 to 5 feet (1.5m) wide," and that water was making its way in at elevator shafts and other small openings around the building. Nagin had no solution. By some estimates, between 80 and 90 percent of New Orleans population was able to evacuate the city prior to Katrina. And we look up and see a metal beam, a massive beam, that had been windblown into the aluminum siding. Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest hurricane to strike the US Gulf Coast since 1928. [Mouton] saved thousands of lives.. Omissions? Thornton, pacing inside, turned to one of the mechanics. Sustained winds of 70 miles (115 km) per hour lashed the Florida peninsula, and rainfall totals of 5 inches (13 cm) were reported in some areas. Inside the Dome, though, a small group of women and men fought to retain whatever order they could. The smell of the air became humid, tropical. After levees and flood walls protecting New Orleans failed, much of the city was underwater. A refill was supposed to be on the way that day, but opening the door for the fuel truck would flood the room. According to National Geographic, "some argue that indirect hurricane deaths, like being unable to access medical care, should be counted in official numbers.". The majority of all federal aid, approximately $75 billion of $120.5 billion, funded emergency relief operations. All Rights Reserved. A 2008 report from the Louisiana Health Department put the total at . It was going to be the big one. She knew the destruction was bad, that water was everywhere. Katrina makes landfall near Grand Isle, Louisiana. I would rather have been in jail, Janice Jones said while being taken out of the dome. This was especially clear in the poor evacuations of nursing homes. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. The owners, Salvador and Mabel Mangano, ended up facing the only criminal charges directly related to Hurricane Katrina, as they were charged with negligent homicide due to their refusal to evacuate their residents. Severe flooding damage to cities along the Gulf Coast, from New Orleans to Biloxi, Mississippi. A neighborhood east of downtown New Orleans remains flooded on August 30, 2005. The line to get in was already a quarter-mile long. We had a very, lets just say, heated conversation with one of those guys about where they were positioning those trucks, said Thornton. 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. The massive hurricane exposed major issues with the citys infrastructure, left thousands upon thousands of people without any place to stay, destroying their homes and leaving their neighborhoods in ruins. We will investigate if the individuals come forward. [32] National Guard officials put the body count at 6, which was reported by The Seattle Times on September 26. He could only offer supplies. The guardsmans gun went off during the confrontation. Insurance companies have paid an estimated $41.1 billion on 1.7 million different claims for damage to vehicles, homes, and businesses in six states. The tropical depression that became Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005, and meteorologists were soon able to warn people in the Gulf Coast states that a major storm was. Soon after they arrived, officialsenacted contraflow, shutting down all roads leading in and opening up every lane out of the city. Bloodstains smeared the walls near vending machines that had been pried open. Out of the at least 1,800 deaths caused by Hurricane Katrina, nearly half were elderly people. He didnt realize how bad things are other there, Wells said. And,. First went the disabled and the elderly. She came up with the list, talked to the dozens of people there, her husbands employees, people she knew a little bit before the storm and now knew like family. The Superdome was, as far as Thornton was concerned, completely destroyed. This story has been shared 177,659 times. Mouton suggested checking the water level every thirty minutes. And as the media portrayed New Orleans as a lawless place filled with violence with overblown and unverified reports, police and rescue efforts were redirected against the imaginary violence. The Social Science Research Council writes that this disparity occurred because elderly people were neither evacuated nor protected effectively. Deaths in the Superdome. He started bawling. Hurricane Katrina survivors arrive at the Houston Astrodome Red Cross Shelter after being evacuated from New Orleans. Three people died one a distraught man who jumped to his death, saying he had nothing left to live for. New Orleans went from having a public school system to having a school system composed almost entirely of charter schools, most of them run by charter management organizations. Even though the dome never lost power, air conditioning, and running water during any of those storms, Superdome manager Doug Thornton recommended after Hurricane Georges for the dome to not be used as a shelter for anybody but special-needs evacuees. 2023 Cable News Network. It ran into the reserve tank. At one point, a desperate man, who had all the belongings he had brought to the Superdome stolen, tried to escape and had to be calmed by National Guardsmen. [15] Evacuees began to break into the luxury suites, concession stands, vending machines, and offices to look for food and other supplies. By late afternoon, the breaching of the London Avenue Canal levees had left 80 percent of New Orleans underwater. [46] Before that first game, the team announced it had sold out its entire home schedule to season ticket holders a first in the franchise's history.[47]. Residents of the B.W. Although most of these shootings led to criminal prosecutions, "several of the officers involved have avoided prison or [were] still awaiting a final resolution of their cases" up to a decade after the storm. But now, in the moonlight, she finally understood what had happened. A storm surge more than 26 feet (8 metres) high slammed into the coastal cities of Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi, devastating homes and resorts along the beachfront. 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. All of our employees had left town with the mandatory evacuation, he said. Hurricane Katrina made landfall off the coast of Louisiana on August 29, 2005. Thornton, whod been cooped up in the Superdome for going on five days, looked down on her city, at the soft waves lapping against the houses in the moonlight. A helicopter rescues a family from a rooftop on September 1, 2005. At 5 a.m. on August 29, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which administered the levees, received a report that water had broken through the concrete flood wall between the 17th Street Canal and the city. Sept. 1, 2006, 3:09 PM PDT / Source: The Associated Press. Lets think about that very carefully, he said. 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. Up to a month after Hurricane Katrina, over 100 children were still unaccounted for, and it took until November to find everyone. Hurricane Katrina, tropical cyclone that struck the southeastern United States in late August 2005. "[38] On that same day, 10 deaths were reported at the Superdome by CBS News. With top winds of around 80 mph, the storm was relatively weak, but enough to knock out power for about 1 million and cause $630 million of damage. [34] However, after a National Guardsman was attacked with a metal rod, the National Guard put up barbed wire barricades to separate and protect themselves from the other people in the dome, and blocked people from exiting. It hit land as a Category 3 storm with winds reaching speeds as high as 120 miles per hour. The air smelled toxic. What were Hurricane Katrinas wind speeds? An aerial view of the catastrophic flooding in Downtown New Orleans on August 31, 2005. No one had a better plan, so they agreed to go with Moutons recommendation. A storm worth worrying about had entered the gulf. 2023 A&E Television Networks, LLC. Satellite view of the Superdome showing the damaged roof with the New Orleans Arena to the right on August 30, 2005. Brown. The roof had ripped off in sheets. Although there was a "maintenance regime" theoretically in place for the levees, the Senate committee found that it was "in no way commensurate with the risk posed to these persons and their property." Socialist Alternative writes that police were given the task of "defending the private property of businesses like the GAP and casinos" rather than concentrating on rescuing people. They got it to the city and waited for their supplies. Families torn apart by the storm wouldnt re-connect for months in some cases. At St. Rita's Nursing Home, residents were reportedly abandoned by the staff, and 35 people drowned as a result. First delivery to the Superdome on August 31, 2005. Sign up for the For The Win newsletter to get our top stories in your inbox every morning. A Warner Bros. There was water pouring in every crevice, Thornton said. Those without cars were in theory going to be picked up by city buses at stops throughout the city and taken two hours north of New Orleans. However, not a single one of those reports was "verified or substantiated. Although Louisiana and Mississippi were most heavily affected, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia also suffered casualties due to the disaster. NPR reports that before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, "Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, FEMA Director Michael Brown and other top Homeland Security officials received emails on their blackberries warning that Katrina posed a dire threat." 23 Most of these pieces show the Superdome's population rising by at least 10,000, swelling to as many 25,000. Out of 60 nursing homes in New Orleans, 21 had evacuated their residents in advance of Katrina. On May 12, 2015, rubble remains at what used to be the B.W. 4:23 PM EST, Mon January 16, 2023. [10][11] On August 28, the Louisiana National Guard delivered three truckloads of water and seven truckloads of MREs (meals ready to eat), enough to supply 15,000 people for three days. 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. And with everyone scattered, it became incredibly difficult to reunite children with their birth parents. No lights. 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." Nothing.. Fights broke out. Thornton and Mouton climbed into a Humvee and drove toward the New Orleans Convention Center, dodging debris and navigating through a little standing water down Poydras Street. This is ready to break. Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. In 2004, the federal government sponsored a "planning exercise" involving local, state, and federal officials that resembled the eventual impact of Hurricane Katrina. Nagin told the men to get him a list of supplies they needed, and he would get it from FEMA. During the first ten years after the storm, FEMA provided more than $15 billion to the Gulf states for public works projects, including the repair and rebuilding of roads, schools and buildings. [25][26][27], On September 7, speculation arose that the Superdome was now in such a poor condition that it would have to be demolished. The storm spent less than eight hours over land. A FEMA medical team at the Superdome on August 31, 2005. More women are coming forward with stories of sexual. WATCH: Cities of the Underworld: Hurricane Katrina on HISTORY Vault. President Bush was otherwise occupied during this time. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. By 2007, 99% of the 1.2 million personal property claims had been settled by insurers. So that means youre going to have to be here probably another 5 or 6 days., Mr. We pee on the floor. Mouton found out that there were sandbags available on Franklin Avenue inLakefront. [12], By August 30, with no air conditioning, temperatures inside the dome had reached the 90s, and the punctured dome at once allowed humidity in and trapped it there. Only after Katrina passed were people going to be bussed to shelters. It was a good option, but one never used. The domes water supply gave out Wednesday, and toilets began to overflow, filling the cavernous stadium with a nauseating smell. 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. It's not a hotel," said the emergency preparedness director for St. Tammany Parish to the Times-Picayune in 1999. The office asked him if he could open up the Superdome as a refuge of last resort for the city of New Orleans. The Society Pages writes that there were six deaths in the Superdome: one by suicide, one by overdose, and four from natural causes. Thornton held a status meeting at 5 p.m. with Lt. Col. Doug Mouton, an old friend who had arrived to take command of the 370 National Guard troops at the Superdome. However, little to nothing was done by FEMA in response. But subsequent investigations revealed that not only was there prior knowledge that the storm was going to hit but that "long-term warnings went unheeded and government officials neglected their duties to prepare for a forewarned catastrophe," according to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. It is 250 miles south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River. Although they were meant to be used for 18 months, they were still in use up to six years after the hurricane. One of the biggest issues was communication, since landlines weren't working, cell towers were down, and offices were flooded, writes State of Emergency. Corrections? [5] Maj. Gen. Bennett C. Landreneau of the Louisiana National Guard, said that the number of people taking shelter in the Superdome rose to around 15,00020,000 as search and rescue teams brought more people from areas hit hard by the flooding.[6]. Outside, there was anarchy. [17][18] 25,000 evacuees were taken to the Astrodome in Houston, while another 25,000 were taken to San Antonio and Dallas. Food rotted inside of hundreds of refrigerators and freezers spread throughout the building; the smell was inescapable. When Hurricane Katrina first made landfall in Florida between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, it was a category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of 70 miles per hour. He needed to start getting people out. 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. Discovery Company. On top of that, since most of the department's staff was sent to assist at state shelters, there was even a challenge of tracking down "missing workers.". Across 13 nursing homes and six hospitals that were investigated in Louisiana, at least 140 patients died as a result of Hurricane Katrina. After levees and flood walls protecting New Orleans failed, much of the city was underwater. In the hours before the storm hit and thenafter it left when the levees failedand everything changed the people who remained in New Orleans streamed toward a place where usually they would go to watch football, the massive structure at the citys heart, the Superdome. Cooper housing project play on mattresses on June 10, 2007. Although New Orleans levees and flood walls had been designed to withstand a category 3 hurricane, half of the network gave way to the waters. Inside the Superdome, things were descending further into hell. Revisit the timeline, impacts, controversy, and disaster recovery of August 2005's Hurricane Katrina, the costliest Atlantic hurricane on record. Four died of natural causes, one had a drug overdose, and one committed suicide. 70% of New Orleans occupied housing, 134,000 units, were damaged in the storm. Between 20,000 and 30,000 people in New Orleans were evacuated to the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. According to CBS News, it took until March 2006 to find all of them: "All but 12 were found alive. The skies darkened, and the wind started to pick up. [9] Although 80 percent of the roof had been destroyed, ultimately, the damage to the roof proved not to be catastrophic, with the two repairable holes and the ripping off of most of the replaceable white rubber membrane on the outer layer. . They knew what that meant: The Superdome was now running on its backup generator, which could power the lights but not much more. That night, NOPD Chief of Police Eddie Compass arrived to see Thornton and Col. Mouton. This was it. Plus theyll be out in the heat.. Katrina caused over 1,800 deaths and $100 billion in . Hell if I know, the mechanic said. It had barely risen at all maybe an inch. All they could do was try to protect the generator. This is a nuthouse, said April Thomas, 42, there with her 11 children. There was a plan. It was used as an emergency shelter although it was neither designed nor tested for the task. The Blackhawks had landed on the top parking level of the Superdome, and then the sandbags were driven down to the back door by the generator room. By 11 a.m. on August 30, Katrina had dwindled to heavy rainfall and winds of about 35 mph. They found the building in better shape than the Superdome fewer windows were blown out and the building, unlike the Superdome, had a roof. Many Katrina evacuees made it to Houston, Texas, where they were housed in the Astrodome and other shelters. Miller told a reporter. And I expect they will.". A fire erupted in a trash chute inside the dome, but a National Guard commander said it did not affect the evacuation. [33][40] It was confirmed that no one was murdered in the Superdome. The men hooked up the line, fuel started flowing. The streets were still flooded, perhaps even worse than before. Katrina made landfall that morning as a Category 4 storm with sustained winds in excess of 135 mph. Some of those who left later returned, and by 2020 the population reached just over 390,000, or about 80 percent of its pre-Katrina population. Their first game, against Mississippi State University, was played on September 17 at Independence Stadium in Shreveport, Louisiana. Blood and feces covered the walls of the facility. Local residents gathering outside of the Superdome on September 2, 2005. Rumours spread in the press of reports of rapes, violent assaults, murders, drug abuse, and gang activity inside the Superdome, most of which were entirely unsubstantiated and without witnesses. And it's possible that the deaths may have even numbered as high as 10,000. A FEMA employee told Thornton and Mouton they expected to find lots ofdead bodies, and had decided to bring them here, next to the place where those left in the city were fighting to live. Security checks were conducted, and people with medical illnesses or disabilities were moved to one side of the dome with supplies and medical personnel. "Flooded offices meant records were underwater," and although there were some computerized records, according to then-Assistant Secretary of Children Welfare for Louisiana's Department of Social Services Marketa Walters, "New Orleans was notorious for not doing good data entry." The men sat in stunned silence. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. However, tens of thousands of residents could not or would not leave. The 2006 Sugar Bowl, which pitted the University of Georgia Bulldogs against the West Virginia University Mountaineers, was moved from the Superdome to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. 24 With scant food and water sources, . There were two reports of rape, one involving a child. On May 16, 2015, new homes stand in a development, built by the Make It Right Foundation, for residents whose homes were destroyed. Cooper held about 1,000 families and was the city's largest housing project. After passing over Florida, Katrina again weakened, and was reclassified as a tropical storm. If water engulfed the generator, the building would be cast into complete darkness. Most deaths were caused by acute and chronic diseases (47%), and drowning (33%). Katrinas death toll is the fourth highest of any hurricane in U.S. history, after the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which killed between 8,000 and 12,000 people; Hurricane Maria, which killed more than 4,600 people in Puerto Rico in 2017; and the Okeechobee Hurricane, which hit Florida in 1928 and killed as many as 3,000. The area east of the Industrial Canal was the first part of the city to flood; by the afternoon of August 29, some 20 percent of the city was underwater. They would later learnwhat had happened: Levees at various locations in and around the city had failed, and the pumping stations, overwhelmed with water and damaged by the storm, werent working. In addition, many of the underlying systemic inequalities and problems that resulted in the severity of the disaster still have not been addressed. Thornton felt the seconds ticking, each one more dangerous than the last. The Bayou Classic was moved from the Superdome to Reliant Stadium in Houston. Despite the strength of Hurricane Katrina, there was little about the storm that made it intrinsically deadly. Many people living in the South Florida area were unaware when Katrina strengthened from a tropical storm to a hurricane in one day and struck southern Florida on August 25, 2005, near the Miami-Dade - Broward county line. FEMA reached out that morning: It was sending 400 buses to begin an evacuation. Thornton and Mouton just needed to find a way to keep things under control for 20 hours before it could be enacted. [32] While numerous people told the Times-Picayune that they had witnessed the rape of two girls in the ladies' restroom and the killing of one of them, police and military officials said they knew nothing about the incidents.