[Popular Mechanic] Debunking 7 Katrina Myths

This is from the March 2006 issue of Popular Mechanic. The article is split up into 11 different pages so I'll do my best to copy it all here. If you want to make sure you get all the information, click the link.

I'll only post the parts of the article here that deal with debunking Katrina myths. The article also offers extra information on how to avoid certain aspects in the future. It's a pretty interesting article and I suggest all of you take some time to visit the PM website and check it out.
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http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/2315076.html?page=1&c=y

Now What?
The Lessons of Katrina

Published in the March, 2006 issue.

NO ONE SHOULD HAVE BEEN SURPRISED.
Not the federal agencies tasked with preparing for catastrophes. Not the local officials responsible for aging levees and vulnerable populations. Least of all the residents themselves, who had been warned for decades that they lived on vulnerable terrain. But when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, it seemed as though the whole country was caught unawares. Accusations began to fly even before floodwaters receded. But facts take longer to surface. In the months since the storm, many of the first impressions conveyed by the media have turned out to be mistaken. And many of the most important lessons of Katrina have yet to be absorbed. But one thing is certain: More hurricanes will come. To cope with them we need to understand what really happened during modern America's worst natural disaster. POPULAR MECHANICS editors and reporters spent more than four months interviewing officials, scientists, first responders and victims. Here is our report.--THE EDITORS

GOVERNMENT RESPONDED RAPIDLY
MYTH: "The aftermath of Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history."--Aaron Broussard, president, Jefferson Parish, La., Meet the Press, NBC, Sept. 4, 2005

REALITY: Bumbling by top disaster-management officials fueled a perception of general inaction, one that was compounded by impassioned news anchors. In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest--and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm's landfall.

Dozens of National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters flew rescue operations that first day--some just 2 hours after Katrina hit the coast. Hoistless Army helicopters improvised rescues, carefully hovering on rooftops to pick up survivors. On the ground, "guardsmen had to chop their way through, moving trees and recreating roadways," says Jack Harrison of the National Guard. By the end of the week, 50,000 National Guard troops in the Gulf Coast region had saved 17,000 people; 4000 Coast Guard personnel saved more than 33,000.

These units had help from local, state and national responders, including five helicopters from the Navy ship Bataan and choppers from the Air Force and police. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries dispatched 250 agents in boats. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), state police and sheriffs' departments launched rescue flotillas. By Wednesday morning, volunteers and national teams joined the effort, including eight units from California's Swift Water Rescue. By Sept. 8, the waterborne operation had rescued 20,000.

While the press focused on FEMA's shortcomings, this broad array of local, state and national responders pulled off an extraordinary success--especially given the huge area devastated by the storm. Computer simulations of a Katrina-strength hurricane had estimated a worst-case-scenario death toll of more than 60,000 people in Louisiana. The actual number was 1077 in that state.

NEXT TIME: Any fatalities are too many. Improvements hinge on building more robust communications networks and stepping up predisaster planning to better coordinate local and national resources.


KATRINA WASN'T A SUPERSTORM
MYTH: "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event."--New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, press conference, Aug. 28, 2005

REALITY: Though many accounts portray Katrina as a storm of unprecedented magnitude, it was in fact a large, but otherwise typical, hurricane. On the 1-to-5 Saffir-Simpson scale, Katrina was a midlevel Category 3 hurricane at landfall. Its barometric pressure was 902 millibars (mb), the sixth lowest ever recorded, but higher than Wilma (882mb) and Rita (897mb), the storms that followed it. Katrina's peak sustained wind speed at landfall 55 miles south of New Orleans was 125 mph; winds in the city barely reached hurricane strength.

By contrast, when Hurricane Andrew struck the Florida coast in 1992, its sustained winds were measured at 142 mph. And meteorologists estimate that 1969's Category 5 Hurricane Camille, which followed a path close to Katrina's, packed winds as high as 200 mph. Two factors made Katrina so devastating. Its radius (the distance from the center of the storm to the point of its maximum winds, usually at the inner eye wall) was 30 miles--three times wider than Camille's. In addition, Katrina approached over the Gulf of Mexico's shallow northern shelf, generating a more powerful storm surge--the water pushed ashore by hurricanes--than systems that move across deeper waters. In Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, the surge topped out at 30 ft.; in New Orleans the surge was 25 ft.--enough to overtop some of the city's floodwalls.

NEXT TIME: According to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, the Atlantic is in a cycle of heightened hurricane activity due to higher sea-surface temperatures and other factors. The cycle could last 40 years, during which time the United States can expect to be hit by dozens of Katrina-size storms. Policymakers--and coastal residents--need to start seeing hurricanes as routine weather events, not once-in-a-lifetime anomalies.


FLOODWALLS WERE BUILT PROPERLY
MYTH: "Perhaps not just human error was involved [in floodwall failures]. There may have been some malfeasance."--Raymond Seed, civil engineering professor, UC, Berkeley, testifying before a Senate committee, Nov. 2, 2005

REALITY: Most of the New Orleans floodwall failures occurred when water up to 25 ft. high overtopped the barriers, washing out their foundations. But three breached floodwalls--one in the 17th Street Canal and two in the London Avenue Canal--showed no signs of overtopping. Accusations of malfeasance were born after the Army Corps of Engineers released seismic data suggesting that the sheet-pile foundations supporting those floodwalls were 7 ft. shorter than called for in the design--a possible cause for collapse. In December 2005, PM watched Corps engineers pull four key sections of the 17th Street Canal foundation out of the New Orleans mud. The sections were more than 23 ft. long--as per design specifications. "I had heard talk about improper building before the sheet-pile pull," the Corps' Wayne Stroupe says. "But not much since."

NEXT TIME: The Corps is restoring levees at a cost of more than $1 billion in time for the 2006 hurricane season (June 1), driving foundations 50 ft. deep--almost three times the depth of the existing foundations.


ANARCHY DIDN'T TAKE OVER
MYTH: "They have people ... been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."--New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Sept. 6, 2005

REALITY: Both public officials and the press passed along lurid tales of post-Katrina mayhem: shootouts in the Superdome, bodies stacked in a convention center freezer, snipers firing on rescue helicopters. And those accounts appear to have affected rescue efforts as first responders shifted resources from saving lives to protecting rescuers. In reality, although looting and other property crimes were widespread after the flooding on Monday, Aug. 29, almost none of the stories about violent crime turned out to be true. Col. Thomas Beron, the National Guard commander of Task Force Orleans, arrived at the Superdome on Aug. 29 and took command of 400 soldiers. He told PM that when the Dome's main power failed around 5 am, "it became a hot, humid, miserable place. There was some pushing, people were irritable. There was one attempted rape that the New Orleans police stopped."

The only confirmed account of a weapon discharge occurred when Louisiana Guardsman Chris Watt was jumped by an assailant and, during the chaotic arrest, accidently shot himself in the leg with his own M-16.

When the Superdome was finally cleared, six bodies were found--not the 200 speculated. Four people had died of natural causes; one was ruled a suicide, and another a drug overdose. Of the four bodies recovered at the convention center, three had died of natural causes; the fourth had sustained stab wounds.

Anarchy in the streets? "The vast majority of people [looting] were taking food and water to live," says Capt. Marlon Defillo, the New Orleans Police Department's commander of public affairs. "There were no killings, not one murder." As for sniper fire: No bullet holes were found in the fuselage of any rescue helicopter.

NEXT TIME: "Rumors are fueled by a shortage of truth," says Ted Steinberg, author of Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disasters in America. And truth was the first casualty of the information breakdown that followed the storm. Hardening communications lines (see page 3) will benefit not just first responders, but also the media. Government officials have a vital role in informing the public. Ensuring the flow of accurate information should be part of disaster planning at local, state and federal levels.


EVAC PLANS WORKED
MYTH: "The failure to evacuate was the tipping point for all the other things that ... went wrong."--Michael Brown, former FEMA director, Sept. 27, 2005

REALITY: When Nagin issued his voluntary evacuation order, a contraflow plan that turned inbound interstate lanes into outbound lanes enabled 1.2 million people to leave New Orleans out of a metro population of 1.5 million. "The Corps estimated we would need 72 hours [to evacuate that many people]," says Brian Wolshon, an LSU civil engineer. "Instead, it took 38 hours." Later investigations indicated that many who stayed did so by choice. "Most people had transportation," says Col. Joe Spraggins, director of emergency management in Harrison County, Ala. "Many didn't want to leave." Tragic exceptions: hospital patients and nursing home residents.

NEXT TIME: All states should adopt a Florida-style registry, which enables people who will need evacuation assistance to notify their city or state officials.


GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES ENCOURAGE BAD PLANNING
MYTH: "We will rebuild [the Gulf Coast] bigger and better than ever." --Haley Barbour, Miss. Gov., The Associated press, Sept. 3, 2005

REALITY: In the past 25 years, the tiny community of Dauphin Island, Ala., has been hit by at least six hurricanes. Residents there carry insurance backed by the federal government, and they've collected more than $21 million in taxpayer money over the years to repair their damaged homes. Not bad, considering their premiums rarely go up and they are seldom denied coverage--even after Katrina almost completely demolished the barrier island at the entrance to Mobile Bay.

"It's like a guy getting inebriated and wrecking his Ferrari four or five times," says David Conrad of the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). "Eventually, a private insurer would say no. It doesn't work that way with the federal flood insurance program."

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), administered by FEMA, was started in 1968 for homeowners who live in flood-prone areas considered too great a risk by private insurers. And for more than 30 years, the program was self-supporting. But studies by Conrad's NWF team revealed a disturbing fact: Just 1 to 2 percent of claims were from "repetitive-loss properties"--those suffering damage at least twice in a 10-year period. Yet, those 112,000 properties generated a remarkable 40 percent of the losses--$5.6 billion. One homeowner in Houston filed 16 claims in 18 years, receiving payments totaling $806,000 for a building valued at $114,000.

Just as significantly, the five Gulf Coast states accounted for half the total of repetitive-loss costs nationwide. Taxpayers across the country are paying for a minute number of people to rebuild time and time again in the path of hurricanes.

That is proving to be an expensive habit. Following Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005, claims could exceed $22 billion--more than the total amount paid in premiums in the program's 38-year history. In mid-November, the NFIP ran out of money; to pay claims, Congress will have to authorize FEMA to borrow more money.

NEXT TIME: Folks in Tornado Alley and along the San Andreas fault don't get federally backed insurance, so why should taxpayers subsidize coastal homes, many of them vacation properties? Before we start rebuilding "bigger and better," Congress should reform the flood insurance program. A good start: Structure premiums so the program is actuarially sound and clamps down on repetitive claims.

Another option is for the government to buy out homeowners in vulnerable communities, just as it did along the Mississippi River following the floods of 1993. "The only problem is that it is going to cost more to buy out properties along the shore than it is to do it in North Dakota," says Andrew Coburn of Duke University's Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines. "The concept is still solid. It's just going to take more dollars."


THE ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE SURVIVED
MYTH: "You have a major energy network that is down ... We could run out of gasoline or diesel or jet fuel in the next two weeks here."--Roger Diwan, managing director, Oil Markets Group, PFC Energy, Business Week, Sept. 1, 2005

REALITY: Initially, the pictures from the gulf looked bleak: oil rigs washed up along the coast, production platforms wrecked. In truth, Katrina inflicted minimal damage to the offshore energy infrastructure. Only 86 of the gulf's 4000 drilling rigs and platforms were damaged or destroyed, and most of those were older, fixed platforms atop unproductive wells.

Then, a month later, Rita--a Category 5 storm when it tore through the gulf--knocked out 125 more. Although no offshore wells or underground pipelines ruptured, and no lives were lost, Katrina and Rita each shut down nearly all the gulf's offshore output (which represents 29 percent of domestic oil production and 19 percent of domestic natural gas production) for more than a week. A third Cat 5 hurricane, Wilma, also slowed the recovery. It took two months to get 60 percent of those wells back on line.

Refineries were hit harder. Katrina shut down nine of the gulf's 36 facilities; a month later, Rita disabled 15. Combined, the stoppages affected 30 percent of the country's refining capacity. But recovery came more quickly than many experts predicted. By the end of the year, overall production was down just 8 percent, and only three refineries were still off line. "This is by far the worst we've ever seen," says Ed Murphy, who is a refinery expert at the American Petroleum Institute. "That we've recovered so quickly is really quite extraordinary."

Despite fears that the energy infrastructure would break down, the system proved surprisingly robust. Consumers did experience a spike in gas prices. But, it was temporary and only partly attributable to the storms; a surge in worldwide demand had already driven up prices. (Two weeks before Katrina, a Newsday headline read: “Gas, Oil Prices Again Reach New Records.") Although high prices were aggravating, they helped hold down demand, encouraged new supply sources and ensured that gas stations and fuel depots did not run dry.

NEXT TIME: Three major policy changes could help make our energy system more resilient in the face of disasters. 1) Loosen restrictions on refinery construction to encourage new refineries in more diverse locations. 2) Expand port facilities for Liquefied Natural Gas to help supplement domestic supply. 3) Relax the current ban on offshore natural gas drilling along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Clearly, all three options require overcoming NIMBY resistance and striking a careful balance between environmental and energy concerns.