«AN UNNATURAL DISASTER»
Katrina is believed to have killed more than 1,200 people in New Orleans and the adjoining parishes. Four-fifths of the city was flooded, with some parts under more than six meters of water. The area suffered an estimated US$28 billion in direct damage to its housing and other infrastructure.
Yet what felled New Orleans was not the windstorm that pummeled much of the Gulf coast, but the failure of the city’s flood protection infrastructure to perform as designed. New Orleans’ levees (embankments) failed because they were poorly designed and built, and because the Mississippi Delta is sinking as a result of these levees, which block sediment from returning to build up beaches and barrier islands. While many factors besides levees and dams – not least of which is global warming – are contributing to increasing the severity and frequency of floods worldwide, it is indisputable that the proponents of flood control have failed to deliver on their expensive promise of reducing flood damage.