Engineering Innovation and Ethics: The Impact of Hurricane Katrina

Running Head: ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS
Engineering Innovation and ethics
Student’s Name
Institution

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS 2
i. Introduction
Among the many catastrophic naturally occurring events that hit the USA, is hurricane Katrina.
There had been 65 hurricanes that made landfall in the USA with category three strengths or
higher from the year 1900 to 2000. However, hurricane Katrina is unique for various reasons. To
begin with, the intensity of hurricane Katrina was overwhelming in that its winds’ force stretched
103 miles from its epicenter with a tropical 230 miles storm force winds. Additionally, the
hurricane had an enormous storm surge exceeding a 30 feet height in different places down the
Gulf Coast as well as inland. This was too much for the leeves that protected the city, leading to
an 80% New Orleans city flooding. Ultimately, the flooding destroyed homes, damaged
property, dragged 118,000,000 cubic debris yard, killed and displaced people. Comparing
hurricane Katrina and hurricane Andrew produces the figure below (Richardson, Park, Moore, &
Pan, 2014).

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ii. Overview of the Disaster hurricane Katrina United State 2005
Katrina’s strength increased to category three on August 27, with circulation and top winds
covering virtually the whole of Mexico’s Gulf. Getting to August 29, the storm grew to category
4 making landfall at Plaquemines Parish (Brown, 2015).
New Orleans got spared from direct intense winds from the storm but had its leeves that hold
back Lake Borgne and Lake Pontchartrain waters completely overwhelmed. The first flooding
areas were found east of the Industrial Canal (King, 2016). Numerous inhabitants would not or
could not leave and when it reached August 30, 80% of the city was submerged in water. Most of
the local agencies would not react to the worsening situation (Hinderliter & McVeigh, 2015).

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The figures above show the areas submerged in water and the hurricane Katrina’s movement
respectively (Ledbetter, 2015).
Reaching August 31, batches of evacuees landed at the shelters put up by Red Cross. Henceforth,
potable water and food became scarce. The public health emergency worsened with the lack of
basic sanitation. September 2 marked the military involvement in the city as well as the troops
from the National Guard who distributed water and food (Powelson, 2017). The hurricane
victims were still being evacuated while crews started reconstructing the leeves that gave way.
This marked a major step towards recovery whereby other nations came in to give a hand in
delivering supplies and food (Pratt, 2016). On October 11, army troops helped to pump the
remaining floodwaters from the city. Ultimately, the storm damaged property and reduced the
city’s population below 29% (Freed, 2015).