Post-Katrina New Orleans braced for anniversary hurricane

Drawing on the lessons of a disaster that killed more than 1,800 people, displaced more than a million and caused over $80bn of damage, it is better prepared and better equipped than it was seven years ago.

Much of the “Big Easy” is back to normal, whatever normality can be after such devastation. The tourist heartland of the French Quarter has been mopped up, refurbished and is attracting the visitors again.

The city’s flood defences are immeasurably stronger than those that cracked under the strain of the torrents of a category-three storm that had peaked at category five.

And officials are much better informed and ready to act, whether to supervise evacuations or deal with ensuing emergencies.

However, much of New Orleans’s change relates to its people. The majority of its almost half a million population abandoned it as 80 per cent of the city became submerged.

But according to officials, more than 125,000 have never returned – some 7,000 of them from the New Orleans East area, which once housed more than 100,000.

Anniversary

And many of those who have are different people, chastened by the physical and emotional damage it brought, and made more cynical and less trusting by the shambles of a response by the authorities that failed to react quickly and positively enough.

Hurricane Isaac, which, as a tropical storm killed at least 24 people in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, is expected to be a category-one or two hurricane by the time it hits the Gulf coast, either on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning – the seventh anniversary of Katrina.

Evacuation is not yet compulsory, but President Barack Obama warned all those who might be in the path of the impending hurricane to heed the directions of officials – “including if they tell you to evacuate”.

However, the US’s emergency supremo, Craig Fugate, points out there are significant differences with the storm that is hitting the country seven years on.

“This is not a New Orleans storm. This is a Gulf Coast storm,” he said, pointing out that Isaac’s worst impact may come in neighbouring Mississippi and Alabama.

The National Hurricane Center warned that the storm could hit towns and cities in at least those three US states and flood the northern Gulf coast with a storm surge of up to 3.6m (12 feet) in some areas.

Read Matt Frei's latest blog on how the stormy weather is affecting the Republican convention

Mr Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), said organisations had learned that state, local and federal officials all had to be better prepared.

“Rather than waiting for a storm to hit, we have folks in place,” he said, although he added: “It still requires people to heed evacuation orders.”

Mr Fugate, 53, a former volunteer firefighter who headed Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, has been in the post for three years.

He is described as obsessive about planning and has put his staff through a variety of mock-disaster scenarios.

Not that everyone is happy to wait around to test his mettle. Queues of traffic were reported heading west out of New Orleans towards higher ground.

But in the city itself, where defences are being reinforced and residents stock up on fuel and provisions, workman Charles Neely, 69, said: “We usually ride out (category) ones and twos and get the hell out for threes and fours.”

Restaurant proprietor Cindy Mandina said: “We’re going to hold tight and hope for the best. Pre-Katrina you’d never close. You’d stay open, maybe lose power and then reopen as soon as possible.”

Elizabeth Ferris, co-director of foreign policy on the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement, told Channel 4 News: “As the whole world knows, governmental response – at all levels – to Hurricane Katrina was poor.

“Since then, a lot of effort has been devoted to strengthening capacity of government agencies, strengthening co-ordination systems between federal, state and local authorities – a big weakness in Katrina response – and in taking preventive action.”

Under-prepared

She said some $10bn had been spent on flood-control works, including reinforcing the levees – the protective floodbanks intended to regulate and limit flows – and on better barriers and pumping systems.

Fema has also stationed supplies throughout the region, buses have been readied for evacuation and prison inmates already moved.

President Obama is determined not to be accused of being under-prepared, as his predecessor was during the Katrina disaster.

Charities and public bodies have been working on providing accommodation for those displaced – at least, those who chose to stay or return to the area.

At its peak, said Ms Ferris, there were 23,000 people living in trailers in New Orleans. But programmes co-ordinated by the federal government have enabled those in temporary accommodation to be moved into rental properties.

Yet, New Orleans remains in some ways a shadow of its former self.

After Hurricane Katrina, the city’s population plummeted from around 485,000 to 208,000 (2006 figures).

The 2010 US Census revealed that it was back up to 344,000, and Ms Ferris says that figure has probably risen since – “but still in the 75-80 per cent range of its pre-Katrina level”.

She added: “Since Katrina, there have been a lot of very positive changes in new Orleans – for example, the sub-standard school system has been almost totally turned around.”

But with a physical storm – if not a political one – heading for the slowly recovering city, she points out: “While I expect the government response to Isaac to be much better than to Katrina, it’s almost always the most vulnerable and marginalised who are most impacted by disasters.

“And recovery always takes longer than expected. Some of the real challenges occur long after the TV cameras have moved on.”

Hurricane Isaac vs. Hurricane Katrina

Channel 4 News weather presenter Liam Dutton compares the storm expected to hit New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf coast with the one that devastated the region seven years ago.

Wind strength

Isaac is forecast to be a category-one hurricane when it makes landfall, with sustained winds of around 85mph. Hurricane Katrina had sustained winds of 125mph when it made landfall back in 2005 and was a strong category-three storm.

To get a sense of the level of damage that can be expected from storms from each respective category, the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale is a good reference.

For a category one storm (Isaac) it states that "very dangerous winds will produce some damage", whereas for a category three storm (Katrina) it says "devastating damage will occur".

Storm surge

A storm surge is where a temporary rise in sea level occurs in coastal areas because of an approaching storm.

Hurricane Isaac is expected to produce a maximum storm surge of 2-4m (6-12ft) for south-east Louisiana and Mississippi.

In comparison, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 produced a storm surge of 8-9m (25-28ft) - more than twice as high, breaching levees and causing devastating extensive flooding.

Rainfall

Isaac is expected to produce 18-36cm (7-14 inches) of rain close to the Gulf Coast in the next 48 hours, with some places seeing as much as 50cm (20 inches).

Hurricane Katrina produced similar amounts of rain in 2005, but the tipping point then was the fact that the levees breached in addition to the copious amounts of rain that fell.