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By John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein
IN HARM'S WAY (Part 1)
…Hurricanes are a common heritage for Louisiana residents, who until the past few decades had little choice in facing a hurricane but to ride it out and pray.
Today, billions of dollars worth of levees, sea walls, pumping systems and satellite hurricane tracking provide a comforting safety margin that has saved thousands of lives.
But modern technology and engineering mask an alarming fact: In the generations since those storms menaced Champagne's ancestors, south Louisiana has been growing more vulnerable to hurricanes, not less.
Sinking land and chronic coastal erosion — in part the unintended byproducts of flood-protection efforts — have opened dangerous new avenues for even relatively weak hurricanes and tropical storms to assault areas well inland.
"There's no doubt about it," said Windell Curole, general manager of the South Lafourche Levee District, who maintains a hurricane levee that encircles Bayou Lafourche from Larose to the southern tip of Golden Meadow. "The biggest factor in hurricane risk is land loss. The Gulf of Mexico is, in effect, probably 20 miles closer to us than it was in 1965 when Hurricane Betsy hit."
These trends are the source of a complex and growing threat to everyone living in south Louisiana and to the regional economy and culture:
• The combination of sinking land and rising seas has put the Mississippi River delta as much as 3 feet lower relative to sea level than it was a century ago, and the process continues. That means hurricane floods driven inland from the Gulf have risen by corresponding amounts. Storms that once would not have had much impact can now be devastating events, and flooding penetrates to places where it rarely occurred before. The problem also is slowly eroding levee protection, cutting off evacuation routes sooner and putting dozens of communities and valuable infrastructure at risk of being wiped off the map.
• Coastal erosion has shaved barrier islands to slivers and turned marshland to open water, opening the way for hurricane winds and flooding to move inland. Hurricanes draw their strength from the sea, so they quickly weaken and begin to dissipate when they make landfall. Hurricanes moving over fragmenting marshes toward the New Orleans area can retain more strength, and their winds and large waves pack more speed and destructive power.
• Though protected by levees designed to withstand the most common storms, New Orleans is surrounded by water and is well below sea level at many points. A flood from a powerful hurricane can get trapped for weeks inside the levee system. Emergency officials concede that many of the structures in the area, including newer high-rise buildings, would not survive the winds of a major storm.
• The large size of the area at risk also makes it difficult to evacuate the million or more people who live in the area, putting tens of thousands of people at risk of dying even with improved forecasting and warnings. The American Red Cross will not put emergency shelters in the area because it does not want to put volunteers or evacuees in danger.
• The Army Corps of Engineers says the chance of New Orleans-area levees being topped is remote, but admits the estimate is based on 40-year-old calculations. An independent analysis based on updated data and computer modeling done for The Times-Picayune suggests the risk to some areas, including St. Bernard and St. Charles parishes and eastern New Orleans, may be greater than the corps estimates. Corps officials say the agency is studying the problem with an updated model.
It all adds up to a daunting set of long-term economic, engineering and political challenges just to maintain the status quo. Higher levees, a massive coastal-restoration program and even a huge wall across New Orleans are all being proposed. Without extraordinary measures, key ports, oil and gas production, one of the nation's most important fisheries, the unique bayou culture, the historic French Quarter and more are at risk of being swept away in a catastrophic hurricane or worn down by smaller ones.
…The Mississippi River delta's flat, buckling geography makes it uniquely vulnerable to hurricanes, which destroy with wind, rain, tornadoes and a tidal wave known as storm surge. High winds account for most hurricane damage elsewhere. Louisiana is vulnerable to both winds and floods. When a giant storm surge hits the shallows near the shoreline, the only direction the water can move is up. Like water sloshing against the wall of a bathtub, a storm surge running into a steep, solid coast rises suddenly, then dissipates. Along a gradual slope like the Mississippi River delta's, the surge doesn't rise as high but can penetrate dozens of miles inland.
There currently is no defense against a surge from a major storm, a Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale used by meteorologists. Such storms can generate surges of 20 to 30 feet above sea level — enough to top any levee in south Louisiana. Sustained winds from major storms — 131 mph to 155 mph for a Category 4, even more for a Category 5 — can shred homes and do damage to almost any structure.
Fortunately, such storms are relatively rare events. Hurricane Camille, which struck the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969, and an unnamed 1935 storm that hit the Florida Keys were the only Category 5 storms to strike the U.S. coast in the past century. Fifteen Category 4 hurricanes made landfall on U.S. soil during that time.
For lesser, more common storms, natural and man-made defenses exist, such as levees to keep out storm waters, and barrier islands and marshes also block and dampen storm surges.
Levees choke delta growth
The problem for south Louisiana is that the natural protections are rapidly deteriorating, and that in turn is weakening man-made defenses, mainly because the entire delta region is sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. The Louisiana coast resembles a bowl placed in a sink full of water. Push it down, or just tip it slightly, and water rushes in.
Inland areas now see deeper flooding more often from storms. Tropical Storm Frances pushed a 4.5-foot storm surge into St. Charles Parish in 1998, putting U.S. 90 under water for a week, for example. The coast's sinking profile has emergency managers fretting that low points will be cut off during an evacuation -- including Interstate 10, which drops 12 feet below sea level at the railroad underpass near the Jefferson Parish line.
"The big thing that has put coastal processes in fast forward here in Louisiana relative to other systems is the rapid sinking of the land, subsidence," Louisiana State University coastal geologist Greg Stone said. "That makes it a fascinating place. What takes centuries to millennia in another place, here is happening in a decade."
Sinking is largely a natural process: The earth deposited by the river crushes the soft soil below it, and abandoned delta areas slowly disappear under water. But humans have accelerated it. Ironically, flood-protection levees are one of the chief man-made causes of subsidence. When the corps started systematically leveeing the river in the 19th century, it cut off the region's main source of silt, the raw material of delta-building. The weight of large buildings and infrastructure and the leaching of water, oil and gas from beneath the surface across the region have also contributed to the problem.
The Mississippi River delta is subsiding faster than any other place in the nation. And while the land is sinking, sea level has been rising. In the past 100 years, land subsidence and sea-level rise have added several feet to all storm surges. That extra height puts affected areas under deeper water; it also means flooding from weaker storms and from the outer edges of powerful storms spreads over wider areas.
The marshes that ring New Orleans have sunk the quickest. "We live on a platform given us by the Mississippi River," Curole said. "But Yscloskey, New Orleans, all the way to western Terrebonne Parish, we're all in the same boat, and it's sinking."
The combination of sinking land and rising sea level has put the Mississippi River delta on average 2 feet lower relative to sea level than it was 60 years ago, according to studies by University of New Orleans geologists. According to data that UNO researchers gathered for The Times-Picayune, the marshes around Bayou Teche are more than 2 feet, 9 inches lower than they were in 1942. At Schooner Bayou to the west, the figure is more than 1 foot, 4 inches. The New Orleans lakefront has been comparatively lucky, sinking 5 inches in that time.
By 2100 the area will be an additional 3.2 feet below sea level, according to a paper analyzing future trends in sea-level rise and subsidence by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Geodetic Survey and other agencies.
Most of the region's original settlements were built on a network of ridges that were relatively safe from flooding. Now they're going under.
"Areas near Shell Beach (in St. Bernard Parish) that didn't flood during (Category 5 Hurricane) Camille did flood during (Category 2 Hurricane) Georges," said University of New Orleans geologist Shea Penland. "The ridges had subsided, trees had died because of saltwater intrusion, and the wetlands are converting from a brackish marsh system to a fragmented salt marsh."
…Models predict dire floods, erosion
Computer modeling shows how the threat of flooding has spread and deepened across a wide area. Using digitized maps of the delta landscape from the 1800s up to a projected map for 2020, Louisiana State University engineers Joseph Suhayda and Vibhas Aravamuthan showed how flooding from a hypothetical storm got deeper and spread steadily westward and northward as erosion and subsidence took their toll.
Houma, dry in a 1930 simulation of a Category 3 hurricane, would be surrounded by water in the same storm in 2020. At the same time, flood levels are lower along the coast because there is no longer anything to block the water and cause it to build up; it all flows inland.
As the Mississippi delta sinks, the coastline grows ragged. Saltwater flows farther inland and kills sensitive plants that hold the marshes together. Human activities -- such as canal-building, drilling and dredging -- have sped up the fragmentation of marshes and worn down barrier islands.
Erosion has created a distinct set of problems. Unlike subsidence, erosion doesn't make flooding much deeper or worsen direct hits by major storms. But it has amplified the weaker storms and glancing blows by stronger ones because there is less marsh to slow the floodwaters and wind. Storms in turn tear up marshes and islands and accelerate the cycle of decay.
Marshes are a rough surface that produces drag on moving masses of water and wind, causing a storm-surge wave to lose energy and height and the wind to die down as they move inland. As the marsh disappears, so does the benefit.
Scientists working for the state Department of Natural Resources measured some of these effects during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Andrew's surge height dropped from 9.3 feet at Cocodrie to 3.3 feet at the Houma Navigation Canal 23 miles to the north. For every mile of the marsh-and-water landscape it traversed, it lost 3.1 inches of height, sparing some homes farther north from more flooding.
Barrier islands are low-lying, eroding outcroppings of delta, but their role in storm surges looms large. Every extra mile of barrier beach and each vertical inch keeps some water from flowing inland during a storm. Even small changes in the islands' shape change the speed and height of storm surges, tides and wave action behind them.
LSU scientist Suhayda has done computer modeling that shows that if barrier islands had not been there during Hurricane Andrew, then Cocodrie would have seen an extra foot of water. If island heights were raised and inlet channels between them narrowed, the surge hitting Cocodrie would have been cut by as much as 4 to 5 feet.
…'We're still recovering'
The emerging new landscape of open water and levees ringing cities and towns is in some ways more dangerous than the old.
The risks vary dramatically depending on where you live. Communities outside federally built hurricane levees -- which protect New Orleans, East Jefferson and parts of St. Bernard, the West Bank and Lafourche Parish -- have little protection from storm surges, depending mostly on smaller levees likely to be topped.
Hurricanes have frayed these communities over the years. Many residents -- mainly younger people -- have moved north. In Dulac, every other block contains businesses that never reopened after Hurricane Andrew pushed a 10-foot flood through town in 1992: a shrimper's supply store, a branch office of the energy exploration company Unocal, Dwayne's barber shop.
On Orange Street, damaged homes and trailers sit shuttered, waiting for the next flood to claim them. "We're still recovering," resident Donald Lirette said. "These houses are rotting because of water, abandoned now. They turn them into crackhouses."
Inside levees, the threat is different.
If enough water from Lake Pontchartrain topped the levee system along its south shore, the result would be apocalyptic. Vast areas would be submerged for days or weeks until engineers dynamited the levees to let the water escape. Some places on the east bank of Orleans and Jefferson parishes are as low as 10 feet below sea level. Adding a 20-foot storm surge from a Category 4 or 5 storm would mean 30 feet of standing water.
Whoever remained in the city would be at grave risk. According to the American Red Cross, a likely death toll would be between 25,000 and 100,000 people, dwarfing estimated death tolls for other natural disasters and all but the most nightmarish potential terrorist attacks. Tens of thousands more would be stranded on rooftops and high ground, awaiting rescue that could take days or longer. They would face thirst, hunger and exposure to toxic chemicals.
"We don't know where the pipelines are, and you have the landfills, oil and gas facilities, abandoned brine pits, hardware stores, gas stations, the chemicals in our houses," said Ivor van Heerden, assistant director of the LSU Hurricane Center. "We have no idea what people will be exposed to. You're looking at the proverbial witch's brew of chemicals."
Scientists address the risk
These complex dangers have inspired some to come up with audacious plans to avert disaster. LSU scientist Suhayda, for example, proposes bisecting New Orleans and Jefferson Parish from east to west with a flood wall rising 30 feet above sea level starting at the foot of Esplanade Avenue, running toward Lake Pontchartrain and then across the city along the Interstate 610 corridor into Metairie. That would create a "community haven" on the river side of the wall where those left behind could retreat, and would protect buildings from floodwaters entering from the lake.
Only in the past few years have government agencies and political and community leaders mobilized to address rising storm risks from the sinking coast and the potential catastrophe in the New Orleans area. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is preparing a plan for the unprecedented response that would be needed if the New Orleans bowl were flooded. The corps has begun a study to look at whether the levees surrounding the New Orleans area should be raised high enough to prevent that scenario. Local scientists, politicians and some business leaders have forged a consensus that the region's best shot for long-term survival is a major effort to rebuild lost marshes and barrier islands. But it would cost at least $14 billion.
The region remains on a precipice. The lucky record of near misses could continue -- or run out. Between 1909 to 1926, for example, three major hurricanes and two smaller storms hit south Louisiana. A series of smaller storms over a few seasons could devastate many towns. A single major storm could cripple New Orleans.
"A legitimate question to ask is: Given this kind of catastrophe, given the city is on its knees, many of its historic structures have been destroyed, considering the massive influx of federal dollars that will be required, do you rebuild it" said Walter Maestri, Jefferson Parish emergency services director. "I don't know the answer to that. Especially since we're below sea level and it can happen again the next week.
"That's a question for the elected political leaders I work for," he said, recalling the founding of New Orleans in 1718 by Jean Baptiste le Moyne, sieur de Bienville. "Planners need to think about that: Do we repeat Bienville's mistake?"
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THE BIG ONE (Part 2)
A major hurricane could decimate the region, but flooding from even a moderate storm could kill thousands. It's just a matter of time.
The line of splintered planks, trash and seaweed scattered along the slope of New Orleans' lakefront levees on Hayne Boulevard in late September 1998 marked more than just the wake of Hurricane Georges. It measured the slender margin separating the city from mass destruction.
The debris, largely the remains of about 70 camps smashed by the waves of a storm surge more than 7 feet above sea level, showed that Georges, a Category 2 storm that only grazed New Orleans, had pushed waves to within a foot of the top of the levees. A stronger storm on a slightly different course -- such as the path Georges was on just 16 hours before landfall -- could have realized emergency officials' worst-case scenario: hundreds of billions of gallons of lake water pouring over the levees into an area averaging 5 feet below sea level with no natural means of drainage.
That would turn the city and the east bank of Jefferson Parish into a lake as much as 30 feet deep, fouled with chemicals and waste from ruined septic systems, businesses and homes. Such a flood could trap hundreds of thousands of people in buildings and in vehicles. At the same time, high winds and tornadoes would tear at everything left standing. Between 25,000 and 100,000 people would die, said John Clizbe, national vice president for disaster services with the American Red Cross.
"A catastrophic hurricane represents 10 or 15 atomic bombs in terms of the energy it releases," said Joseph Suhayda, a Louisiana State University engineer who is studying ways to limit hurricane damage in the New Orleans area. "Think about it. New York lost two big buildings. Multiply that by 10 or 20 or 30 in the area impacted and the people lost, and we know what could happen."
Hundreds of thousands would be left homeless, and it would take months to dry out the area and begin to make it livable. But there wouldn't be much for residents to come home to. The local economy would be in ruins.
The scene has been played out for years in computer models and emergency-operations simulations. Officials at the local, state and national level are convinced the risk is genuine and are devising plans for alleviating the aftermath of a disaster that could leave the city uninhabitable for six months or more. The Army Corps of Engineers has begun a study to see whether the levees should be raised to counter the threat. But officials say that right now, nothing can stop "the big one."
Like coastal Bangladesh, where typhoons killed 100,000 and 300,000 villagers, respectively, in two horrific storms in 1970 and 1991, the New Orleans area lies in a low, flat coastal area. Unlike Bangladesh, New Orleans has hurricane levees that create a bowl with the bottom dipping lower than the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain. Though providing protection from weaker storms, the levees also would trap any water that gets inside -- by breach, overtopping or torrential downpour -- in a catastrophic storm.
"Filling the bowl" is the worst potential scenario for a natural disaster in the United States, emergency officials say. The Red Cross' projected death toll dwarfs estimates of 14,000 dead from a major earthquake along the New Madrid, Mo., fault, and 4,500 dead from a similar catastrophic earthquake hitting San Francisco, the next two deadliest disasters on the agency's list.
The projected death and destruction eclipse almost any other natural disaster that people paid to think about catastrophes can dream up. And the risks are significant, especially over the long term. In a given year, for example, the corps says the risk of the lakefront levees being topped is less than 1 in 300. But over the life of a 30-year mortgage, statistically that risk approaches 9 percent.
In the past year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials have begun working with state and local agencies to devise plans on what to do if a Category 5 hurricane strikes New Orleans.
Shortly after he took office, FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh ordered aides to examine the nation's potential major catastrophes, including the New Orleans scenario.
"Catastrophic disasters are best defined in that they totally outstrip local and state resources, which is why the federal government needs to play a role," Allbaugh said. "There are a half-dozen or so contingencies around the nation that cause me great concern, and one of them is right there in your back yard."
In concert with state and local officials, FEMA is studying evacuation procedures, postdisaster rescue strategies, temporary housing and technical issues such as how to pump out water trapped inside the levees, said Michael Lowder, chief of policy and planning in FEMA's Readiness, Response and Recovery directorate. A preliminary report should be completed in the next few months. [What became of it?]
Louisiana emergency management officials say they lobbied the agency for years to study how to respond to New Orleans' vulnerability, finally getting attention last year.
With computer modeling of hurricanes and storm surges, disaster experts have developed a detailed picture of how a storm could push Lake Pontchartrain over the levees and into the city.
"The worst case is a hurricane moving in from due south of the city," said Suhayda, who has developed a computer simulation of the flooding from such a storm. On that track, winds on the outer edges of a huge storm system would be pushing water in Breton Sound and west of the Chandeleur Islands into the St. Bernard marshes and then Lake Pontchartrain for two days before landfall.
"Water is literally pumped into Lake Pontchartrain," Suhayda said. "It will try to flow through any gaps, and that means the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal (which is connected to Breton Sound by the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet) and the Chef Menteur and the Rigolets passes.
"So now the lake is 5 to 8 feet higher than normal, and we're talking about a lake that's only 15 or 20 feet deep, so you're adding a third to a half as much water to the lake," Suhayda said. As the eye of the hurricane moves north, next to New Orleans but just to the east, the winds over the lake switch around to come from the north. [Remember: this was written in 2002.]
"As the eye impacts the Mississippi coastline, the winds are now blowing south across the lake, maybe at 50, 80, 100 mph, and all that water starts to move south," he said. "It's moving like a big army advancing toward the lake's hurricane-protection system. And then the winds themselves are generating waves, 5 to 10 feet high, on top of all that water. They'll be breaking and crashing along the sea wall."
Soon waves will start breaking over the levee.
"All of a sudden you'll start seeing flowing water. It'll look like a weir, water just pouring over the top," Suhayda said. The water will flood the lakefront, filling up low-lying areas first, and continue its march south toward the river. There would be no stopping or slowing it; pumping systems would be overwhelmed and submerged in a matter of hours.
"Another scenario is that some part of the levee would fail," Suhayda said. "It's not something that's expected. But erosion occurs, and as levees broke, the break will get wider and wider. The water will flow through the city and stop only when it reaches the next higher thing. The most continuous barrier is the south levee, along the river. That's 25 feet high, so you'll see the water pile up on the river levee."
As the floodwaters invade and submerge neighborhoods, the wind will be blowing at speeds of at least 155 mph, accompanied by shorter gusts of as much as 200 mph, meteorologists say, enough to overturn cars, uproot trees and toss people around like dollhouse toys.
The wind will blow out windows and explode many homes, even those built to the existing 110-mph building-code standards. People seeking refuge from the floodwaters in high-rise buildings won't be very safe, recent research indicates, because wind speed in a hurricane gets greater with height. If the winds are 155 mph at ground level, scientists say, they may be 50 mph stronger 100 feet above street level.
Buildings also will have to withstand pummeling by debris picked up by water surging from the lakefront toward downtown, with larger pieces acting like battering rams.
Ninety percent of the structures in the city are likely to be destroyed by the combination of water and wind accompanying a Category 5 storm, said Robert Eichorn, former director of the New Orleans Office of Emergency Preparedness. The LSU Hurricane Center surveyed numerous large public buildings in Jefferson Parish in hopes of identifying those that might withstand such catastrophic winds. They found none.
Amid this maelstrom, the estimated 200,000 or more people left behind in an evacuation will be struggling to survive. Some will be housed at the Superdome, the designated shelter in New Orleans for people too sick or infirm to leave the city. Others will end up in last-minute emergency refuges that will offer minimal safety. But many will simply be on their own, in homes or looking for high ground.
Thousands will drown while trapped in homes or cars by rising water. Others will be washed away or crushed by debris. Survivors will end up trapped on roofs, in buildings or on high ground surrounded by water, with no means of escape and little food or fresh water, perhaps for several days.
"If you look at the World Trade Center collapsing, it'll be like that, but add water," Eichorn said. "There will be debris flying around, and you're going to be in the water with snakes, rodents, nutria and fish from the lake. It's not going to be nice."
Mobilized by FEMA, search and rescue teams from across the nation will converge on the city. Volunteer teams of doctors, nurses and emergency medical technicians that were pre-positioned in Monroe or Shreveport before the storm will move to the area, said Henry Delgado, regional emergency coordinator for the U.S. Public Health Service.
But just getting into the city will be a problem for rescuers. Approaches by road may be washed out.
"Whether or not the Airline Highway bridge across the Bonnet Carre Spillway survives, we don't know," said Jay Combe, a coastal hydraulic engineer with the corps. "The I-10 bridge (west of Kenner) is designed to withstand a surge from a Category 3 storm, but it may be that water gets under the spans, and we don't know if it will survive." Other bridges over waterways and canals throughout the city may also be washed away or made unsafe, he said. In a place where cars may be useless, small boats and helicopters will be used to move survivors to central pickup areas, where they can be moved out of the city. Teams of disaster mortuary volunteers, meanwhile, will start collecting bodies. Other teams will bring in temporary equipment and goods, including sanitation facilities, water, ice and generators. Food, water and medical supplies will be airdropped to some areas and delivered to others.
Stranded survivors will have a dangerous wait even after the storm passes. Emergency officials worry that energized electrical wires could pose a threat of electrocution and that the floodwater could become contaminated with sewage and with toxic chemicals from industrial plants and backyard sheds. Gasoline, diesel fuel and oil leaking from underground storage tanks at service stations may also become a problem, corps officials say.
A variety of creatures -- rats, mice and nutria, poisonous snakes and alligators, fire ants, mosquitoes and abandoned cats and dogs -- will be searching for the same dry accommodations that people are using.
Contaminated food or water used for bathing, drinking and cooking could cause illnesses including salmonella, botulism, typhoid and hepatitis. Outbreaks of mosquito-borne dengue fever and encephalitis are likely, said Dr. James Diaz, director of the department of public health and preventive medicine at LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans.
"History will repeat itself," Diaz said. "My office overlooks one of the St. Louis cemeteries, where there are many graves of victims of yellow fever. Standing water in the subtropics is the breeding ground for mosquitoes."
Herculean pumping task
It probably will be at least four days after the hurricane before the corps attempts to begin removing water from the city, Combe said. After a 1947 hurricane flooded the east bank, it took several days for the lake to return to its normal average 14-foot depth, slowing efforts to drain floodwaters from Metairie and Kenner.
Pumping won't be an option. Swamped existing pumping systems in Orleans and Jefferson will be useless. Pumps can be brought in, but their capacity is limited.
"If one goes to construction equipment rental firms, you can rent pumps with a capacity of 6,000 to 8,000 gallons a minute, but that's just not enough capacity," Combe said. "After Betsy the corps employed six dredges with a combined capacity of 243,000 gallons per minute. It would take 44 hours to drain a half-inch of water from the New Orleans metro area that way."
The most likely alternative is simply blowing holes in the levees or widening existing breaches. Breaches in the levee totaling a half mile would allow the water to drain in one day, Combe said. With a more modest effort, totaling 100 feet of openings, draining would take four weeks. If they do dynamite the levees, officials must also weigh the risk of another hurricane hitting in the short term against the urgency of getting the water out.
Water levels will drop only to the level of the lake, leaving areas lower than that with standing water that must be pumped out. Workers will then focus on restoring existing generators throughout the city that operate the pumping system.
Harold Gorman, executive director of the Sewerage & Water Board, said his agency thinks it can get most of its pumps working in a month, based on its experience in Hurricane Betsy in 1965. But it may take longer than that just to get replacement parts for the various pumps and electric motors used in local drainage systems. "You've got a lot of apples and oranges out there," Combe said. "Sometimes it takes six months just to get parts. Sometimes there are no off-the-shelf parts available."
It will take six months to pump out Jefferson Parish, Combe said. But at that point, areas of New Orleans will probably still be underwater and may take many more months to empty.
Getting the water out is just the first step to making the city livable, officials say. "Imagine the city of New Orleans closed for four to six months," said Jefferson Parish Emergency Preparedness Director Walter Maestri. "We'll have to re-evaluate all our sanitary systems, completely evaluate the water and purification systems, evaluate half to two thirds of all buildings to see if they were structurally damaged by water pressure and wind. Restoring electricity will be another complicated problem. Will houses catch fire when they throw the power switch. All that's going to have to be handled."
With few homes left undamaged, Red Cross and FEMA officials will have to find property for long-term temporary housing for a possible 1 million refugees. After Hurricane Andrew, some of the 250,000 residents of south Miami-Dade County forced to find temporary housing remained in federally financed mobile homes for 2½ years.
"You'd have manufactured housing brought in and set up in Baton Rouge and Folsom and so forth," Maestri said. "It's going to have to be north of Mandeville and Covington, because they're probably going to have hurricane damage as well. They'll probably use military bases like Camp Shelby in Mississippi, too. They'll be urban refugee centers, where people will stay while officials do an analysis to say, 'Yes, you can come back' or 'No, you can't come back here.' "
New Orleans would face the future with most of its housing stock and historic structures destroyed. Hotels, office buildings and infrastructure would be heavily damaged. Tens of thousands of people would be dead and many survivors homeless and shellshocked. Rebuilding would be a formidable challenge even with a generous federal aid package.
"You wouldn't have an infrastructure, that's for sure," said Hucky Purpera, natural and technical hazards chief for the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness. "What would you be going back to Residents might be going back in, but would businesses rebuild? They'll make decisions based on what's best for the company. And if you do decide to rebuild, do you rebuild there? A lot of that we don't know.”
Still home sweet home
But it's unlikely the city would be completely abandoned, economists and disaster experts say. Most cities do eventually recover from major disasters -- though no precedent exists for the wholesale destruction of "filling the bowl."
No single storm would wipe out the entire New Orleans area. If the east bank floods, the west bank and St. Tammany Parish would take heavy damage from wind but be spared heavy storm-surge flooding. The city's location on the Mississippi River near the Gulf of Mexico would still be strategic for trade. Industrial plants upriver would remain largely intact.
"It's always recoverable. People own that property. They are not going to walk away. If someone does walk away, there will be a bank that will foreclose and ultimately resell that space," said Mary Comerio, a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of a book on postdisaster reconstruction. "It will all be at fire-sale prices, and it will end up a different place, owned by different people."
After a Category 4 hurricane destroyed Galveston, Texas, in 1900, the entire island was raised 7 feet before rebuilding began. To avoid a repeat catastrophe, officials would likely consider how to hurricane-proof the city, or even think about moving it.
"We've not tried to tackle that yet," said Lowder, the FEMA official. "What's the best way to -- I won't say rebuild -- but where do we go from here How can we make sure that our recovery doesn't put things back the exact same way they were"
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COST OF SURVIVAL (Part 5)
New Orleans and south Louisiana will always be vulnerable to a catastrophic hurricane, yet there are ways to make the area safer. But implementing the proposals may be prohibitively expensive.
If hurricanes haven't seriously scarred coastal Louisiana or swept it out to sea in the next 50 to 100 years, the very process of protecting the region may still end up altering it almost beyond recognition.
Based on current plans and proposals, here are some changes that coming generations may see:
• A giant wall, more than 30 feet high in places, cuts through New Orleans and across Jefferson Parish to create a "safe haven" should a storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain top the levees. The levees themselves are 10 feet or more higher than today, and some are crowned with a sea wall, blocking views of the lake. A large collapsible wall sits atop some levees, ready to be raised during hurricanes.
• At the Rigolets and Chef Menteur passes to the lake, huge floodgates stand ready to be closed if waters rise. All across the Mississippi River delta, hurricane levees crisscross marshes, surrounding dozens of towns. At key junctures on the river, large gated sluices direct fresh river water across stretches of marshland, rebuilding it with silt. Dredges have hauled sand from miles offshore to sculpt and maintain new barrier islands where only slivers exist today.
• From New Orleans to Morgan City, thousands of homes have roofs fortified to resist high winds and are equipped with steel storm shutters. Outside the levees, most homes have been raised on pilings 15 feet high or more. Main roads and highways are at similar heights.
• Some communities have built elevated shelters capable of withstanding 175-mph winds, similar to those being constructed in Bangladesh today.
• But big storms still threaten even this highly engineered landscape. In some places the Gulf of Mexico has maintained its steady progress inland and the region is starting to resemble Venice, Italy, the city of canals. Water routinely laps at the foot of levees, eroding them. In other areas, levees and walls deflect surging floodwaters into new places and to surprising heights. Engineers watch as the sea rises and the land sinks and wonder whether their ambitious fixes will ultimately amount to nothing.
It's impossible to make a large city or a broad area like the Mississippi River delta completely disasterproof. Nature is too fierce, human structures and activities too exposed. But most emergency managers agree that south Louisiana could be much safer than it is. That will take creative engineering design and new thinking about how to disasterproof communities. It also will take plenty of money.
These innovations are collectively more ambitious than any similar engineering project anywhere in the world and will change not only the shape of the Mississippi River delta but the way people live here. Some will end up behind walls. Some on stilts. If programs don't work, many people may ultimately move away.
"We have to think big. It's the only thing that will get us anywhere," said Len Bahr, the governor's executive assistant for coastal activities.
If erosion, subsidence and sea-level rise continue on their present course, scientists say cities and towns will become man-made islands surrounded by rising Gulf waters and vulnerable to all manner of storms. That scenario strikes fear into the hearts of engineers and public officials. If water laps against levees and floodwalls, flooding becomes an almost daily threat. Transportation and other normal activities can be easily disrupted by rising water. Just maintaining the levees becomes a complex task.
"We don't want to be in a situation where there are just levees and the Gulf," said Al Naomi, an Army Corps of Engineers project manager who is leading a preliminary study on whether to significantly increase levee protection across the area. "We want something between us and the Gulf."
Several large-scale efforts to avert this "waterworld" scenario and fortify the landscape are already under way, and more are proposed, some in the realm of the fanciful and others merely ambitious.
The $14 billion, 30-year Coast 2050 plan being pushed by a governor's committee and Louisiana members of Congress seeks to rebuild the coast, primarily by diverting water and silt from the Mississippi River across marshes and rebuilding barrier islands. Its promoters say it would begin to reverse some of the losses of the past 100 years and restore natural hurricane protections.
But at best, that would provide only partial protection from hurricanes. Even if the entire coast could be restored to the way it was a century ago, large storms could still devastate the area with flooding, rain, wind and tornadoes far inland. Scientists and engineers say additional fixes are needed.
"We are not going to stop marsh loss. Subsidence is too dominant," said James Coleman, a professor of coastal studies at Louisiana State University. Coastal restoration "is a temporary fix in terms of geological time. You will see results of massive coastal restorations in our lifetime, but in the long run they are also going to go."
Naomi is looking at whether to upgrade levee protection from Morgan City to the Mississippi border to withstand Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, which can have storm surges 30 feet high. Corps officials say most current federal hurricane levees protect up to the level of a fast-moving Category 3 storm.
Though building levees and floodwalls to any height is theoretically possible -- "if we can build a 50-story building, we can build any kind of wall," Naomi said -- any realistic proposal will involve complex trade-offs. Levees can be built only so high before they either take up too much space or begin to collapse, for example. The alternative is to build more walls, but they are much more expensive and also heavier, meaning they would sink faster in relation to sea level.
High walls also are not especially attractive. "You talk about the levees in Jefferson Parish, they're 17 to 18 feet high," Naomi said. "If you put a wall on top of that, it could be something unsightly. Do people really want that" A more aesthetically appealing alternative -- building a collapsible wall on some sections of the lakefront -- would be still more expensive, he said.
Giant wall against water
A storm surge that tops the levees could flood the east bank to depths of more than 20 feet and take weeks to drain. Louisiana State University engineering professor Joseph Suhayda proposes building a wall that would cut across Orleans and Jefferson to create a refuge of last resort for residents. With its top reaching 30 feet above sea level, the wall would run from the foot of Esplanade Avenue to the Interstate 610 corridor, then west across parts of Jefferson Parish.
That would stop a flood coming in from the lake and create a "community haven" between the wall and the river levees where people left behind in a hurricane could retreat. It also would protect the Central Business District, the French Quarter and other areas from flood damage.
Corps engineers are looking at other approaches, too. "If we can find a way to keep storm surge away from those levees by attacking a surge farther out (in the Gulf) and making the levees a rear line of defense, we might not have to build them so high," Naomi said. "If you can slow the surge down, then you've accomplished something."
For Orleans and Jefferson parishes, other east bank communities and parts of St. Tammany, the task would be to block storm-surge water from entering Lake Pontchartrain. One way to do that is to install gates along the Rigolets and Chef Menteur passes, something engineers have rejected in the past as too expensive and impractical. But the idea is worth examining, Naomi said.
Given the high stakes -- tens of thousands of people dead in a flood that tops the levees -- Naomi said he would look for ways to account for the risk in the corps' cost-benefit analyses, which typically do not incorporate loss-of-life estimates.
If the past is any guide, not all of these experimental ideas will fly, and some of those that are tried may not work. Large-scale plans have many unforeseen small-scale effects that communities will have to wrestle with and seek more money to fix.
…Louisiana's plans to sculpt the Mississippi River delta to better withstand hurricanes may set new standards for coastal engineering. But on a smaller scale -- the community and neighborhood level -- the state lags behind others in updating important policies, such as improved building standards, better evacuation routes and controlling development in floodprone areas.
Gambling big on FEMA aid
The megadisasters of the past decade have caused emergency managers across the country to reassess their programs, which traditionally stress postdisaster response. In the wake of recent megadisasters -- Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the 1994 Northridge, Calif., earthquake and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- many officials are now focused more on preventive measures to reduce damage and save lives.
"There is a huge shift among local and community leaders, and I think among average citizens," Federal Emergency Management Agency director Joe Allbaugh said. "The American public is paying more attention to the possibility of disasters happening, especially since 9/11. But we've got to do more."
Even in high-risk areas, home and business owners, local officials and those who run key facilities such as hospitals often do little to fortify their property against floods, winds or wildfires -- perhaps with the expectation that federal programs will put everything back together should disaster strike. But government aid is at best a patchwork, and FEMA and other agencies have been making the rules more restrictive and monitoring their money more closely.
"It's wrong; it's just not true. The greatest fallacy perpetrated by media and politicians is that FEMA will make you whole," said Mary Comerio, a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of a book on disaster recovery. Though the government provides substantial financial aid and other assistance, many homes are never rebuilt and many businesses never recover from a catastrophic event, she said.
North Carolina is one state that has pioneered "disaster-resistant" policies. After Hurricane Floyd devastated thousands of square miles of the state with flooding in 1999, Gov. Jim Hunt and state officials decided to make disaster issues a top priority. They added $836 million in state money to $1.3 billion in federal money for a comprehensive program that includes disasterproofing for communities and homes, up-to-date flood plain mapping and other programs.
"You can reduce the risk from almost any natural hazard," said Gavin Smith, director of North Carolina's new hazard-mitigation program. "You can move structures away from the hazard or you can protect them in place. For example, there's armoring a structure against high winds. For us, it's not just about hurricanes and flooding. We have an earthquake threat in western North Carolina, so we are spending funds to retrofit schools."
North Carolina's Tar River overflowed during Floyd, putting entire neighborhoods under water. Officials there have used the state programs to launch an aggressive buyout program to move people out of the 100-year flood plain where the worst flooding occurred. Once they are bought out and cleared, some areas will be turned into a waterfront park.
Because most of south Louisiana is a flood plain, emergency managers say massive buyouts are impractical but that targeted buyouts in areas that flood frequently might work. FEMA already offers these on a limited basis.
Castles made of sand
Some observers say the recent explosion of vacation homes and fishing camps in coastal areas including Grand Isle, Cocodrie and parts of St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes is foolhardy. Though new structures are elevated, they still can be destroyed by winds, waves and moving debris in a hurricane.
"It's crazy to build in some of these areas," said University of New Orleans coastal geologist Shea Penland. "Many of those structures just won't survive."
Some North Carolina community leaders found buyouts unthinkable. Belhaven, N.C., which sits in low-lying swamp three feet above sea level, had six storm-surge floods in three years, culminating with Floyd. The local elementary and junior high schools had to be torn down and rebuilt on higher ground.
"You can either have Belhaven in the 100-year flood plain or not have Belhaven at all," Town Manager Tim Johnson said. "So the alternative was to elevate."
The town pooled $16 million in FEMA and state grants to raise more than 300 of the town's 962 homes either 8 or 9 feet above the ground, the biggest single elevation project in the nation. On any given day, several homes in town are being raised or moved. On one street, workers gently position four steel girders under a home as they prepare to lift it. In a local community center, contractors walk new participants through the process.
Like most places, Louisiana has no proactive program to raise vulnerable homes. To qualify for favorable federal flood insurance rates, new homes must be built above the 100-year flood level, which appoaches 10 feet in some places. Some new homes are 15 feet off the ground. If a flood damages a home and the owner wants to rebuild, money is available to raise the structure. But owners of existing homes usually must bear the cost of raising the structure above the flood level.
In Bangladesh, where catastrophic hurricanes accompanied by 20-foot storm surges in 1970 and 1991 took 300,000 and 138,000 lives, respectively, a consortium of world charities began building triangular-shape concrete shelters on stilts in more than 1,000 locations. The shelters have been hugely successful in saving thousands of lives during recent hurricanes, officials say.
Louisiana emergency preparedness officials hope to persuade the Legislature to adopt a similar plan: requiring all new public buildings in the coastal zone to be built to withstand catastrophic storms so they can be used as shelters.
On an even smaller scale, individuals can invest more in disaster-proofing their homes. A few thousand dollars will buy clips to keep a roof from flying off a home and steel shutters that will prevent hurricane-force winds from blasting through the house.
Some disaster specialists say the same philosophy holds not just for homes but for all buildings in risky areas, and that developers and local officials should start thinking about disaster every time they draw a blueprint.
"Say New Orleans needs a new hospital," said Dennis Mileti, a sociologist who directs the University of Colorado's Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center. "Say the worst possible flooding is five stories high. So you put the garage on the lower floors and put everything above the fifth floor. Why build an essential facility like a hospital on the ground when you know it might flood It might be wise to do it for schools, hospitals, and other essential facilities. Maybe it's not prudent to tear them down today and rebuild them. But in America we tear stuff down and rebuild it all the time."
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IN HARM'S WAY (Part 1)
…Hurricanes are a common heritage for Louisiana residents, who until the past few decades had little choice in facing a hurricane but to ride it out and pray.
Today, billions of dollars worth of levees, sea walls, pumping systems and satellite hurricane tracking provide a comforting safety margin that has saved thousands of lives.
But modern technology and engineering mask an alarming fact: In the generations since those storms menaced Champagne's ancestors, south Louisiana has been growing more vulnerable to hurricanes, not less.
Sinking land and chronic coastal erosion — in part the unintended byproducts of flood-protection efforts — have opened dangerous new avenues for even relatively weak hurricanes and tropical storms to assault areas well inland.
"There's no doubt about it," said Windell Curole, general manager of the South Lafourche Levee District, who maintains a hurricane levee that encircles Bayou Lafourche from Larose to the southern tip of Golden Meadow. "The biggest factor in hurricane risk is land loss. The Gulf of Mexico is, in effect, probably 20 miles closer to us than it was in 1965 when Hurricane Betsy hit."
These trends are the source of a complex and growing threat to everyone living in south Louisiana and to the regional economy and culture:
• The combination of sinking land and rising seas has put the Mississippi River delta as much as 3 feet lower relative to sea level than it was a century ago, and the process continues. That means hurricane floods driven inland from the Gulf have risen by corresponding amounts. Storms that once would not have had much impact can now be devastating events, and flooding penetrates to places where it rarely occurred before. The problem also is slowly eroding levee protection, cutting off evacuation routes sooner and putting dozens of communities and valuable infrastructure at risk of being wiped off the map.
• Coastal erosion has shaved barrier islands to slivers and turned marshland to open water, opening the way for hurricane winds and flooding to move inland. Hurricanes draw their strength from the sea, so they quickly weaken and begin to dissipate when they make landfall. Hurricanes moving over fragmenting marshes toward the New Orleans area can retain more strength, and their winds and large waves pack more speed and destructive power.
• Though protected by levees designed to withstand the most common storms, New Orleans is surrounded by water and is well below sea level at many points. A flood from a powerful hurricane can get trapped for weeks inside the levee system. Emergency officials concede that many of the structures in the area, including newer high-rise buildings, would not survive the winds of a major storm.
• The large size of the area at risk also makes it difficult to evacuate the million or more people who live in the area, putting tens of thousands of people at risk of dying even with improved forecasting and warnings. The American Red Cross will not put emergency shelters in the area because it does not want to put volunteers or evacuees in danger.
• The Army Corps of Engineers says the chance of New Orleans-area levees being topped is remote, but admits the estimate is based on 40-year-old calculations. An independent analysis based on updated data and computer modeling done for The Times-Picayune suggests the risk to some areas, including St. Bernard and St. Charles parishes and eastern New Orleans, may be greater than the corps estimates. Corps officials say the agency is studying the problem with an updated model.
It all adds up to a daunting set of long-term economic, engineering and political challenges just to maintain the status quo. Higher levees, a massive coastal-restoration program and even a huge wall across New Orleans are all being proposed. Without extraordinary measures, key ports, oil and gas production, one of the nation's most important fisheries, the unique bayou culture, the historic French Quarter and more are at risk of being swept away in a catastrophic hurricane or worn down by smaller ones.
…The Mississippi River delta's flat, buckling geography makes it uniquely vulnerable to hurricanes, which destroy with wind, rain, tornadoes and a tidal wave known as storm surge. High winds account for most hurricane damage elsewhere. Louisiana is vulnerable to both winds and floods. When a giant storm surge hits the shallows near the shoreline, the only direction the water can move is up. Like water sloshing against the wall of a bathtub, a storm surge running into a steep, solid coast rises suddenly, then dissipates. Along a gradual slope like the Mississippi River delta's, the surge doesn't rise as high but can penetrate dozens of miles inland.
There currently is no defense against a surge from a major storm, a Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale used by meteorologists. Such storms can generate surges of 20 to 30 feet above sea level — enough to top any levee in south Louisiana. Sustained winds from major storms — 131 mph to 155 mph for a Category 4, even more for a Category 5 — can shred homes and do damage to almost any structure.
Fortunately, such storms are relatively rare events. Hurricane Camille, which struck the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969, and an unnamed 1935 storm that hit the Florida Keys were the only Category 5 storms to strike the U.S. coast in the past century. Fifteen Category 4 hurricanes made landfall on U.S. soil during that time.
For lesser, more common storms, natural and man-made defenses exist, such as levees to keep out storm waters, and barrier islands and marshes also block and dampen storm surges.
Levees choke delta growth
The problem for south Louisiana is that the natural protections are rapidly deteriorating, and that in turn is weakening man-made defenses, mainly because the entire delta region is sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. The Louisiana coast resembles a bowl placed in a sink full of water. Push it down, or just tip it slightly, and water rushes in.
Inland areas now see deeper flooding more often from storms. Tropical Storm Frances pushed a 4.5-foot storm surge into St. Charles Parish in 1998, putting U.S. 90 under water for a week, for example. The coast's sinking profile has emergency managers fretting that low points will be cut off during an evacuation -- including Interstate 10, which drops 12 feet below sea level at the railroad underpass near the Jefferson Parish line.
"The big thing that has put coastal processes in fast forward here in Louisiana relative to other systems is the rapid sinking of the land, subsidence," Louisiana State University coastal geologist Greg Stone said. "That makes it a fascinating place. What takes centuries to millennia in another place, here is happening in a decade."
Sinking is largely a natural process: The earth deposited by the river crushes the soft soil below it, and abandoned delta areas slowly disappear under water. But humans have accelerated it. Ironically, flood-protection levees are one of the chief man-made causes of subsidence. When the corps started systematically leveeing the river in the 19th century, it cut off the region's main source of silt, the raw material of delta-building. The weight of large buildings and infrastructure and the leaching of water, oil and gas from beneath the surface across the region have also contributed to the problem.
The Mississippi River delta is subsiding faster than any other place in the nation. And while the land is sinking, sea level has been rising. In the past 100 years, land subsidence and sea-level rise have added several feet to all storm surges. That extra height puts affected areas under deeper water; it also means flooding from weaker storms and from the outer edges of powerful storms spreads over wider areas.
The marshes that ring New Orleans have sunk the quickest. "We live on a platform given us by the Mississippi River," Curole said. "But Yscloskey, New Orleans, all the way to western Terrebonne Parish, we're all in the same boat, and it's sinking."
The combination of sinking land and rising sea level has put the Mississippi River delta on average 2 feet lower relative to sea level than it was 60 years ago, according to studies by University of New Orleans geologists. According to data that UNO researchers gathered for The Times-Picayune, the marshes around Bayou Teche are more than 2 feet, 9 inches lower than they were in 1942. At Schooner Bayou to the west, the figure is more than 1 foot, 4 inches. The New Orleans lakefront has been comparatively lucky, sinking 5 inches in that time.
By 2100 the area will be an additional 3.2 feet below sea level, according to a paper analyzing future trends in sea-level rise and subsidence by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Geodetic Survey and other agencies.
Most of the region's original settlements were built on a network of ridges that were relatively safe from flooding. Now they're going under.
"Areas near Shell Beach (in St. Bernard Parish) that didn't flood during (Category 5 Hurricane) Camille did flood during (Category 2 Hurricane) Georges," said University of New Orleans geologist Shea Penland. "The ridges had subsided, trees had died because of saltwater intrusion, and the wetlands are converting from a brackish marsh system to a fragmented salt marsh."
…Models predict dire floods, erosion
Computer modeling shows how the threat of flooding has spread and deepened across a wide area. Using digitized maps of the delta landscape from the 1800s up to a projected map for 2020, Louisiana State University engineers Joseph Suhayda and Vibhas Aravamuthan showed how flooding from a hypothetical storm got deeper and spread steadily westward and northward as erosion and subsidence took their toll.
Houma, dry in a 1930 simulation of a Category 3 hurricane, would be surrounded by water in the same storm in 2020. At the same time, flood levels are lower along the coast because there is no longer anything to block the water and cause it to build up; it all flows inland.
As the Mississippi delta sinks, the coastline grows ragged. Saltwater flows farther inland and kills sensitive plants that hold the marshes together. Human activities -- such as canal-building, drilling and dredging -- have sped up the fragmentation of marshes and worn down barrier islands.
Erosion has created a distinct set of problems. Unlike subsidence, erosion doesn't make flooding much deeper or worsen direct hits by major storms. But it has amplified the weaker storms and glancing blows by stronger ones because there is less marsh to slow the floodwaters and wind. Storms in turn tear up marshes and islands and accelerate the cycle of decay.
Marshes are a rough surface that produces drag on moving masses of water and wind, causing a storm-surge wave to lose energy and height and the wind to die down as they move inland. As the marsh disappears, so does the benefit.
Scientists working for the state Department of Natural Resources measured some of these effects during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Andrew's surge height dropped from 9.3 feet at Cocodrie to 3.3 feet at the Houma Navigation Canal 23 miles to the north. For every mile of the marsh-and-water landscape it traversed, it lost 3.1 inches of height, sparing some homes farther north from more flooding.
Barrier islands are low-lying, eroding outcroppings of delta, but their role in storm surges looms large. Every extra mile of barrier beach and each vertical inch keeps some water from flowing inland during a storm. Even small changes in the islands' shape change the speed and height of storm surges, tides and wave action behind them.
LSU scientist Suhayda has done computer modeling that shows that if barrier islands had not been there during Hurricane Andrew, then Cocodrie would have seen an extra foot of water. If island heights were raised and inlet channels between them narrowed, the surge hitting Cocodrie would have been cut by as much as 4 to 5 feet.
…'We're still recovering'
The emerging new landscape of open water and levees ringing cities and towns is in some ways more dangerous than the old.
The risks vary dramatically depending on where you live. Communities outside federally built hurricane levees -- which protect New Orleans, East Jefferson and parts of St. Bernard, the West Bank and Lafourche Parish -- have little protection from storm surges, depending mostly on smaller levees likely to be topped.
Hurricanes have frayed these communities over the years. Many residents -- mainly younger people -- have moved north. In Dulac, every other block contains businesses that never reopened after Hurricane Andrew pushed a 10-foot flood through town in 1992: a shrimper's supply store, a branch office of the energy exploration company Unocal, Dwayne's barber shop.
On Orange Street, damaged homes and trailers sit shuttered, waiting for the next flood to claim them. "We're still recovering," resident Donald Lirette said. "These houses are rotting because of water, abandoned now. They turn them into crackhouses."
Inside levees, the threat is different.
If enough water from Lake Pontchartrain topped the levee system along its south shore, the result would be apocalyptic. Vast areas would be submerged for days or weeks until engineers dynamited the levees to let the water escape. Some places on the east bank of Orleans and Jefferson parishes are as low as 10 feet below sea level. Adding a 20-foot storm surge from a Category 4 or 5 storm would mean 30 feet of standing water.
Whoever remained in the city would be at grave risk. According to the American Red Cross, a likely death toll would be between 25,000 and 100,000 people, dwarfing estimated death tolls for other natural disasters and all but the most nightmarish potential terrorist attacks. Tens of thousands more would be stranded on rooftops and high ground, awaiting rescue that could take days or longer. They would face thirst, hunger and exposure to toxic chemicals.
"We don't know where the pipelines are, and you have the landfills, oil and gas facilities, abandoned brine pits, hardware stores, gas stations, the chemicals in our houses," said Ivor van Heerden, assistant director of the LSU Hurricane Center. "We have no idea what people will be exposed to. You're looking at the proverbial witch's brew of chemicals."
Scientists address the risk
These complex dangers have inspired some to come up with audacious plans to avert disaster. LSU scientist Suhayda, for example, proposes bisecting New Orleans and Jefferson Parish from east to west with a flood wall rising 30 feet above sea level starting at the foot of Esplanade Avenue, running toward Lake Pontchartrain and then across the city along the Interstate 610 corridor into Metairie. That would create a "community haven" on the river side of the wall where those left behind could retreat, and would protect buildings from floodwaters entering from the lake.
Only in the past few years have government agencies and political and community leaders mobilized to address rising storm risks from the sinking coast and the potential catastrophe in the New Orleans area. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is preparing a plan for the unprecedented response that would be needed if the New Orleans bowl were flooded. The corps has begun a study to look at whether the levees surrounding the New Orleans area should be raised high enough to prevent that scenario. Local scientists, politicians and some business leaders have forged a consensus that the region's best shot for long-term survival is a major effort to rebuild lost marshes and barrier islands. But it would cost at least $14 billion.
The region remains on a precipice. The lucky record of near misses could continue -- or run out. Between 1909 to 1926, for example, three major hurricanes and two smaller storms hit south Louisiana. A series of smaller storms over a few seasons could devastate many towns. A single major storm could cripple New Orleans.
"A legitimate question to ask is: Given this kind of catastrophe, given the city is on its knees, many of its historic structures have been destroyed, considering the massive influx of federal dollars that will be required, do you rebuild it" said Walter Maestri, Jefferson Parish emergency services director. "I don't know the answer to that. Especially since we're below sea level and it can happen again the next week.
"That's a question for the elected political leaders I work for," he said, recalling the founding of New Orleans in 1718 by Jean Baptiste le Moyne, sieur de Bienville. "Planners need to think about that: Do we repeat Bienville's mistake?"
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THE BIG ONE (Part 2)
A major hurricane could decimate the region, but flooding from even a moderate storm could kill thousands. It's just a matter of time.
The line of splintered planks, trash and seaweed scattered along the slope of New Orleans' lakefront levees on Hayne Boulevard in late September 1998 marked more than just the wake of Hurricane Georges. It measured the slender margin separating the city from mass destruction.
The debris, largely the remains of about 70 camps smashed by the waves of a storm surge more than 7 feet above sea level, showed that Georges, a Category 2 storm that only grazed New Orleans, had pushed waves to within a foot of the top of the levees. A stronger storm on a slightly different course -- such as the path Georges was on just 16 hours before landfall -- could have realized emergency officials' worst-case scenario: hundreds of billions of gallons of lake water pouring over the levees into an area averaging 5 feet below sea level with no natural means of drainage.
That would turn the city and the east bank of Jefferson Parish into a lake as much as 30 feet deep, fouled with chemicals and waste from ruined septic systems, businesses and homes. Such a flood could trap hundreds of thousands of people in buildings and in vehicles. At the same time, high winds and tornadoes would tear at everything left standing. Between 25,000 and 100,000 people would die, said John Clizbe, national vice president for disaster services with the American Red Cross.
"A catastrophic hurricane represents 10 or 15 atomic bombs in terms of the energy it releases," said Joseph Suhayda, a Louisiana State University engineer who is studying ways to limit hurricane damage in the New Orleans area. "Think about it. New York lost two big buildings. Multiply that by 10 or 20 or 30 in the area impacted and the people lost, and we know what could happen."
Hundreds of thousands would be left homeless, and it would take months to dry out the area and begin to make it livable. But there wouldn't be much for residents to come home to. The local economy would be in ruins.
The scene has been played out for years in computer models and emergency-operations simulations. Officials at the local, state and national level are convinced the risk is genuine and are devising plans for alleviating the aftermath of a disaster that could leave the city uninhabitable for six months or more. The Army Corps of Engineers has begun a study to see whether the levees should be raised to counter the threat. But officials say that right now, nothing can stop "the big one."
Like coastal Bangladesh, where typhoons killed 100,000 and 300,000 villagers, respectively, in two horrific storms in 1970 and 1991, the New Orleans area lies in a low, flat coastal area. Unlike Bangladesh, New Orleans has hurricane levees that create a bowl with the bottom dipping lower than the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain. Though providing protection from weaker storms, the levees also would trap any water that gets inside -- by breach, overtopping or torrential downpour -- in a catastrophic storm.
"Filling the bowl" is the worst potential scenario for a natural disaster in the United States, emergency officials say. The Red Cross' projected death toll dwarfs estimates of 14,000 dead from a major earthquake along the New Madrid, Mo., fault, and 4,500 dead from a similar catastrophic earthquake hitting San Francisco, the next two deadliest disasters on the agency's list.
The projected death and destruction eclipse almost any other natural disaster that people paid to think about catastrophes can dream up. And the risks are significant, especially over the long term. In a given year, for example, the corps says the risk of the lakefront levees being topped is less than 1 in 300. But over the life of a 30-year mortgage, statistically that risk approaches 9 percent.
In the past year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials have begun working with state and local agencies to devise plans on what to do if a Category 5 hurricane strikes New Orleans.
Shortly after he took office, FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh ordered aides to examine the nation's potential major catastrophes, including the New Orleans scenario.
"Catastrophic disasters are best defined in that they totally outstrip local and state resources, which is why the federal government needs to play a role," Allbaugh said. "There are a half-dozen or so contingencies around the nation that cause me great concern, and one of them is right there in your back yard."
In concert with state and local officials, FEMA is studying evacuation procedures, postdisaster rescue strategies, temporary housing and technical issues such as how to pump out water trapped inside the levees, said Michael Lowder, chief of policy and planning in FEMA's Readiness, Response and Recovery directorate. A preliminary report should be completed in the next few months. [What became of it?]
Louisiana emergency management officials say they lobbied the agency for years to study how to respond to New Orleans' vulnerability, finally getting attention last year.
With computer modeling of hurricanes and storm surges, disaster experts have developed a detailed picture of how a storm could push Lake Pontchartrain over the levees and into the city.
"The worst case is a hurricane moving in from due south of the city," said Suhayda, who has developed a computer simulation of the flooding from such a storm. On that track, winds on the outer edges of a huge storm system would be pushing water in Breton Sound and west of the Chandeleur Islands into the St. Bernard marshes and then Lake Pontchartrain for two days before landfall.
"Water is literally pumped into Lake Pontchartrain," Suhayda said. "It will try to flow through any gaps, and that means the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal (which is connected to Breton Sound by the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet) and the Chef Menteur and the Rigolets passes.
"So now the lake is 5 to 8 feet higher than normal, and we're talking about a lake that's only 15 or 20 feet deep, so you're adding a third to a half as much water to the lake," Suhayda said. As the eye of the hurricane moves north, next to New Orleans but just to the east, the winds over the lake switch around to come from the north. [Remember: this was written in 2002.]
"As the eye impacts the Mississippi coastline, the winds are now blowing south across the lake, maybe at 50, 80, 100 mph, and all that water starts to move south," he said. "It's moving like a big army advancing toward the lake's hurricane-protection system. And then the winds themselves are generating waves, 5 to 10 feet high, on top of all that water. They'll be breaking and crashing along the sea wall."
Soon waves will start breaking over the levee.
"All of a sudden you'll start seeing flowing water. It'll look like a weir, water just pouring over the top," Suhayda said. The water will flood the lakefront, filling up low-lying areas first, and continue its march south toward the river. There would be no stopping or slowing it; pumping systems would be overwhelmed and submerged in a matter of hours.
"Another scenario is that some part of the levee would fail," Suhayda said. "It's not something that's expected. But erosion occurs, and as levees broke, the break will get wider and wider. The water will flow through the city and stop only when it reaches the next higher thing. The most continuous barrier is the south levee, along the river. That's 25 feet high, so you'll see the water pile up on the river levee."
As the floodwaters invade and submerge neighborhoods, the wind will be blowing at speeds of at least 155 mph, accompanied by shorter gusts of as much as 200 mph, meteorologists say, enough to overturn cars, uproot trees and toss people around like dollhouse toys.
The wind will blow out windows and explode many homes, even those built to the existing 110-mph building-code standards. People seeking refuge from the floodwaters in high-rise buildings won't be very safe, recent research indicates, because wind speed in a hurricane gets greater with height. If the winds are 155 mph at ground level, scientists say, they may be 50 mph stronger 100 feet above street level.
Buildings also will have to withstand pummeling by debris picked up by water surging from the lakefront toward downtown, with larger pieces acting like battering rams.
Ninety percent of the structures in the city are likely to be destroyed by the combination of water and wind accompanying a Category 5 storm, said Robert Eichorn, former director of the New Orleans Office of Emergency Preparedness. The LSU Hurricane Center surveyed numerous large public buildings in Jefferson Parish in hopes of identifying those that might withstand such catastrophic winds. They found none.
Amid this maelstrom, the estimated 200,000 or more people left behind in an evacuation will be struggling to survive. Some will be housed at the Superdome, the designated shelter in New Orleans for people too sick or infirm to leave the city. Others will end up in last-minute emergency refuges that will offer minimal safety. But many will simply be on their own, in homes or looking for high ground.
Thousands will drown while trapped in homes or cars by rising water. Others will be washed away or crushed by debris. Survivors will end up trapped on roofs, in buildings or on high ground surrounded by water, with no means of escape and little food or fresh water, perhaps for several days.
"If you look at the World Trade Center collapsing, it'll be like that, but add water," Eichorn said. "There will be debris flying around, and you're going to be in the water with snakes, rodents, nutria and fish from the lake. It's not going to be nice."
Mobilized by FEMA, search and rescue teams from across the nation will converge on the city. Volunteer teams of doctors, nurses and emergency medical technicians that were pre-positioned in Monroe or Shreveport before the storm will move to the area, said Henry Delgado, regional emergency coordinator for the U.S. Public Health Service.
But just getting into the city will be a problem for rescuers. Approaches by road may be washed out.
"Whether or not the Airline Highway bridge across the Bonnet Carre Spillway survives, we don't know," said Jay Combe, a coastal hydraulic engineer with the corps. "The I-10 bridge (west of Kenner) is designed to withstand a surge from a Category 3 storm, but it may be that water gets under the spans, and we don't know if it will survive." Other bridges over waterways and canals throughout the city may also be washed away or made unsafe, he said. In a place where cars may be useless, small boats and helicopters will be used to move survivors to central pickup areas, where they can be moved out of the city. Teams of disaster mortuary volunteers, meanwhile, will start collecting bodies. Other teams will bring in temporary equipment and goods, including sanitation facilities, water, ice and generators. Food, water and medical supplies will be airdropped to some areas and delivered to others.
Stranded survivors will have a dangerous wait even after the storm passes. Emergency officials worry that energized electrical wires could pose a threat of electrocution and that the floodwater could become contaminated with sewage and with toxic chemicals from industrial plants and backyard sheds. Gasoline, diesel fuel and oil leaking from underground storage tanks at service stations may also become a problem, corps officials say.
A variety of creatures -- rats, mice and nutria, poisonous snakes and alligators, fire ants, mosquitoes and abandoned cats and dogs -- will be searching for the same dry accommodations that people are using.
Contaminated food or water used for bathing, drinking and cooking could cause illnesses including salmonella, botulism, typhoid and hepatitis. Outbreaks of mosquito-borne dengue fever and encephalitis are likely, said Dr. James Diaz, director of the department of public health and preventive medicine at LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans.
"History will repeat itself," Diaz said. "My office overlooks one of the St. Louis cemeteries, where there are many graves of victims of yellow fever. Standing water in the subtropics is the breeding ground for mosquitoes."
Herculean pumping task
It probably will be at least four days after the hurricane before the corps attempts to begin removing water from the city, Combe said. After a 1947 hurricane flooded the east bank, it took several days for the lake to return to its normal average 14-foot depth, slowing efforts to drain floodwaters from Metairie and Kenner.
Pumping won't be an option. Swamped existing pumping systems in Orleans and Jefferson will be useless. Pumps can be brought in, but their capacity is limited.
"If one goes to construction equipment rental firms, you can rent pumps with a capacity of 6,000 to 8,000 gallons a minute, but that's just not enough capacity," Combe said. "After Betsy the corps employed six dredges with a combined capacity of 243,000 gallons per minute. It would take 44 hours to drain a half-inch of water from the New Orleans metro area that way."
The most likely alternative is simply blowing holes in the levees or widening existing breaches. Breaches in the levee totaling a half mile would allow the water to drain in one day, Combe said. With a more modest effort, totaling 100 feet of openings, draining would take four weeks. If they do dynamite the levees, officials must also weigh the risk of another hurricane hitting in the short term against the urgency of getting the water out.
Water levels will drop only to the level of the lake, leaving areas lower than that with standing water that must be pumped out. Workers will then focus on restoring existing generators throughout the city that operate the pumping system.
Harold Gorman, executive director of the Sewerage & Water Board, said his agency thinks it can get most of its pumps working in a month, based on its experience in Hurricane Betsy in 1965. But it may take longer than that just to get replacement parts for the various pumps and electric motors used in local drainage systems. "You've got a lot of apples and oranges out there," Combe said. "Sometimes it takes six months just to get parts. Sometimes there are no off-the-shelf parts available."
It will take six months to pump out Jefferson Parish, Combe said. But at that point, areas of New Orleans will probably still be underwater and may take many more months to empty.
Getting the water out is just the first step to making the city livable, officials say. "Imagine the city of New Orleans closed for four to six months," said Jefferson Parish Emergency Preparedness Director Walter Maestri. "We'll have to re-evaluate all our sanitary systems, completely evaluate the water and purification systems, evaluate half to two thirds of all buildings to see if they were structurally damaged by water pressure and wind. Restoring electricity will be another complicated problem. Will houses catch fire when they throw the power switch. All that's going to have to be handled."
With few homes left undamaged, Red Cross and FEMA officials will have to find property for long-term temporary housing for a possible 1 million refugees. After Hurricane Andrew, some of the 250,000 residents of south Miami-Dade County forced to find temporary housing remained in federally financed mobile homes for 2½ years.
"You'd have manufactured housing brought in and set up in Baton Rouge and Folsom and so forth," Maestri said. "It's going to have to be north of Mandeville and Covington, because they're probably going to have hurricane damage as well. They'll probably use military bases like Camp Shelby in Mississippi, too. They'll be urban refugee centers, where people will stay while officials do an analysis to say, 'Yes, you can come back' or 'No, you can't come back here.' "
New Orleans would face the future with most of its housing stock and historic structures destroyed. Hotels, office buildings and infrastructure would be heavily damaged. Tens of thousands of people would be dead and many survivors homeless and shellshocked. Rebuilding would be a formidable challenge even with a generous federal aid package.
"You wouldn't have an infrastructure, that's for sure," said Hucky Purpera, natural and technical hazards chief for the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness. "What would you be going back to Residents might be going back in, but would businesses rebuild? They'll make decisions based on what's best for the company. And if you do decide to rebuild, do you rebuild there? A lot of that we don't know.”
Still home sweet home
But it's unlikely the city would be completely abandoned, economists and disaster experts say. Most cities do eventually recover from major disasters -- though no precedent exists for the wholesale destruction of "filling the bowl."
No single storm would wipe out the entire New Orleans area. If the east bank floods, the west bank and St. Tammany Parish would take heavy damage from wind but be spared heavy storm-surge flooding. The city's location on the Mississippi River near the Gulf of Mexico would still be strategic for trade. Industrial plants upriver would remain largely intact.
"It's always recoverable. People own that property. They are not going to walk away. If someone does walk away, there will be a bank that will foreclose and ultimately resell that space," said Mary Comerio, a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of a book on postdisaster reconstruction. "It will all be at fire-sale prices, and it will end up a different place, owned by different people."
After a Category 4 hurricane destroyed Galveston, Texas, in 1900, the entire island was raised 7 feet before rebuilding began. To avoid a repeat catastrophe, officials would likely consider how to hurricane-proof the city, or even think about moving it.
"We've not tried to tackle that yet," said Lowder, the FEMA official. "What's the best way to -- I won't say rebuild -- but where do we go from here How can we make sure that our recovery doesn't put things back the exact same way they were"
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COST OF SURVIVAL (Part 5)
New Orleans and south Louisiana will always be vulnerable to a catastrophic hurricane, yet there are ways to make the area safer. But implementing the proposals may be prohibitively expensive.
If hurricanes haven't seriously scarred coastal Louisiana or swept it out to sea in the next 50 to 100 years, the very process of protecting the region may still end up altering it almost beyond recognition.
Based on current plans and proposals, here are some changes that coming generations may see:
• A giant wall, more than 30 feet high in places, cuts through New Orleans and across Jefferson Parish to create a "safe haven" should a storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain top the levees. The levees themselves are 10 feet or more higher than today, and some are crowned with a sea wall, blocking views of the lake. A large collapsible wall sits atop some levees, ready to be raised during hurricanes.
• At the Rigolets and Chef Menteur passes to the lake, huge floodgates stand ready to be closed if waters rise. All across the Mississippi River delta, hurricane levees crisscross marshes, surrounding dozens of towns. At key junctures on the river, large gated sluices direct fresh river water across stretches of marshland, rebuilding it with silt. Dredges have hauled sand from miles offshore to sculpt and maintain new barrier islands where only slivers exist today.
• From New Orleans to Morgan City, thousands of homes have roofs fortified to resist high winds and are equipped with steel storm shutters. Outside the levees, most homes have been raised on pilings 15 feet high or more. Main roads and highways are at similar heights.
• Some communities have built elevated shelters capable of withstanding 175-mph winds, similar to those being constructed in Bangladesh today.
• But big storms still threaten even this highly engineered landscape. In some places the Gulf of Mexico has maintained its steady progress inland and the region is starting to resemble Venice, Italy, the city of canals. Water routinely laps at the foot of levees, eroding them. In other areas, levees and walls deflect surging floodwaters into new places and to surprising heights. Engineers watch as the sea rises and the land sinks and wonder whether their ambitious fixes will ultimately amount to nothing.
It's impossible to make a large city or a broad area like the Mississippi River delta completely disasterproof. Nature is too fierce, human structures and activities too exposed. But most emergency managers agree that south Louisiana could be much safer than it is. That will take creative engineering design and new thinking about how to disasterproof communities. It also will take plenty of money.
These innovations are collectively more ambitious than any similar engineering project anywhere in the world and will change not only the shape of the Mississippi River delta but the way people live here. Some will end up behind walls. Some on stilts. If programs don't work, many people may ultimately move away.
"We have to think big. It's the only thing that will get us anywhere," said Len Bahr, the governor's executive assistant for coastal activities.
If erosion, subsidence and sea-level rise continue on their present course, scientists say cities and towns will become man-made islands surrounded by rising Gulf waters and vulnerable to all manner of storms. That scenario strikes fear into the hearts of engineers and public officials. If water laps against levees and floodwalls, flooding becomes an almost daily threat. Transportation and other normal activities can be easily disrupted by rising water. Just maintaining the levees becomes a complex task.
"We don't want to be in a situation where there are just levees and the Gulf," said Al Naomi, an Army Corps of Engineers project manager who is leading a preliminary study on whether to significantly increase levee protection across the area. "We want something between us and the Gulf."
Several large-scale efforts to avert this "waterworld" scenario and fortify the landscape are already under way, and more are proposed, some in the realm of the fanciful and others merely ambitious.
The $14 billion, 30-year Coast 2050 plan being pushed by a governor's committee and Louisiana members of Congress seeks to rebuild the coast, primarily by diverting water and silt from the Mississippi River across marshes and rebuilding barrier islands. Its promoters say it would begin to reverse some of the losses of the past 100 years and restore natural hurricane protections.
But at best, that would provide only partial protection from hurricanes. Even if the entire coast could be restored to the way it was a century ago, large storms could still devastate the area with flooding, rain, wind and tornadoes far inland. Scientists and engineers say additional fixes are needed.
"We are not going to stop marsh loss. Subsidence is too dominant," said James Coleman, a professor of coastal studies at Louisiana State University. Coastal restoration "is a temporary fix in terms of geological time. You will see results of massive coastal restorations in our lifetime, but in the long run they are also going to go."
Naomi is looking at whether to upgrade levee protection from Morgan City to the Mississippi border to withstand Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, which can have storm surges 30 feet high. Corps officials say most current federal hurricane levees protect up to the level of a fast-moving Category 3 storm.
Though building levees and floodwalls to any height is theoretically possible -- "if we can build a 50-story building, we can build any kind of wall," Naomi said -- any realistic proposal will involve complex trade-offs. Levees can be built only so high before they either take up too much space or begin to collapse, for example. The alternative is to build more walls, but they are much more expensive and also heavier, meaning they would sink faster in relation to sea level.
High walls also are not especially attractive. "You talk about the levees in Jefferson Parish, they're 17 to 18 feet high," Naomi said. "If you put a wall on top of that, it could be something unsightly. Do people really want that" A more aesthetically appealing alternative -- building a collapsible wall on some sections of the lakefront -- would be still more expensive, he said.
Giant wall against water
A storm surge that tops the levees could flood the east bank to depths of more than 20 feet and take weeks to drain. Louisiana State University engineering professor Joseph Suhayda proposes building a wall that would cut across Orleans and Jefferson to create a refuge of last resort for residents. With its top reaching 30 feet above sea level, the wall would run from the foot of Esplanade Avenue to the Interstate 610 corridor, then west across parts of Jefferson Parish.
That would stop a flood coming in from the lake and create a "community haven" between the wall and the river levees where people left behind in a hurricane could retreat. It also would protect the Central Business District, the French Quarter and other areas from flood damage.
Corps engineers are looking at other approaches, too. "If we can find a way to keep storm surge away from those levees by attacking a surge farther out (in the Gulf) and making the levees a rear line of defense, we might not have to build them so high," Naomi said. "If you can slow the surge down, then you've accomplished something."
For Orleans and Jefferson parishes, other east bank communities and parts of St. Tammany, the task would be to block storm-surge water from entering Lake Pontchartrain. One way to do that is to install gates along the Rigolets and Chef Menteur passes, something engineers have rejected in the past as too expensive and impractical. But the idea is worth examining, Naomi said.
Given the high stakes -- tens of thousands of people dead in a flood that tops the levees -- Naomi said he would look for ways to account for the risk in the corps' cost-benefit analyses, which typically do not incorporate loss-of-life estimates.
If the past is any guide, not all of these experimental ideas will fly, and some of those that are tried may not work. Large-scale plans have many unforeseen small-scale effects that communities will have to wrestle with and seek more money to fix.
…Louisiana's plans to sculpt the Mississippi River delta to better withstand hurricanes may set new standards for coastal engineering. But on a smaller scale -- the community and neighborhood level -- the state lags behind others in updating important policies, such as improved building standards, better evacuation routes and controlling development in floodprone areas.
Gambling big on FEMA aid
The megadisasters of the past decade have caused emergency managers across the country to reassess their programs, which traditionally stress postdisaster response. In the wake of recent megadisasters -- Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the 1994 Northridge, Calif., earthquake and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- many officials are now focused more on preventive measures to reduce damage and save lives.
"There is a huge shift among local and community leaders, and I think among average citizens," Federal Emergency Management Agency director Joe Allbaugh said. "The American public is paying more attention to the possibility of disasters happening, especially since 9/11. But we've got to do more."
Even in high-risk areas, home and business owners, local officials and those who run key facilities such as hospitals often do little to fortify their property against floods, winds or wildfires -- perhaps with the expectation that federal programs will put everything back together should disaster strike. But government aid is at best a patchwork, and FEMA and other agencies have been making the rules more restrictive and monitoring their money more closely.
"It's wrong; it's just not true. The greatest fallacy perpetrated by media and politicians is that FEMA will make you whole," said Mary Comerio, a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of a book on disaster recovery. Though the government provides substantial financial aid and other assistance, many homes are never rebuilt and many businesses never recover from a catastrophic event, she said.
North Carolina is one state that has pioneered "disaster-resistant" policies. After Hurricane Floyd devastated thousands of square miles of the state with flooding in 1999, Gov. Jim Hunt and state officials decided to make disaster issues a top priority. They added $836 million in state money to $1.3 billion in federal money for a comprehensive program that includes disasterproofing for communities and homes, up-to-date flood plain mapping and other programs.
"You can reduce the risk from almost any natural hazard," said Gavin Smith, director of North Carolina's new hazard-mitigation program. "You can move structures away from the hazard or you can protect them in place. For example, there's armoring a structure against high winds. For us, it's not just about hurricanes and flooding. We have an earthquake threat in western North Carolina, so we are spending funds to retrofit schools."
North Carolina's Tar River overflowed during Floyd, putting entire neighborhoods under water. Officials there have used the state programs to launch an aggressive buyout program to move people out of the 100-year flood plain where the worst flooding occurred. Once they are bought out and cleared, some areas will be turned into a waterfront park.
Because most of south Louisiana is a flood plain, emergency managers say massive buyouts are impractical but that targeted buyouts in areas that flood frequently might work. FEMA already offers these on a limited basis.
Castles made of sand
Some observers say the recent explosion of vacation homes and fishing camps in coastal areas including Grand Isle, Cocodrie and parts of St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes is foolhardy. Though new structures are elevated, they still can be destroyed by winds, waves and moving debris in a hurricane.
"It's crazy to build in some of these areas," said University of New Orleans coastal geologist Shea Penland. "Many of those structures just won't survive."
Some North Carolina community leaders found buyouts unthinkable. Belhaven, N.C., which sits in low-lying swamp three feet above sea level, had six storm-surge floods in three years, culminating with Floyd. The local elementary and junior high schools had to be torn down and rebuilt on higher ground.
"You can either have Belhaven in the 100-year flood plain or not have Belhaven at all," Town Manager Tim Johnson said. "So the alternative was to elevate."
The town pooled $16 million in FEMA and state grants to raise more than 300 of the town's 962 homes either 8 or 9 feet above the ground, the biggest single elevation project in the nation. On any given day, several homes in town are being raised or moved. On one street, workers gently position four steel girders under a home as they prepare to lift it. In a local community center, contractors walk new participants through the process.
Like most places, Louisiana has no proactive program to raise vulnerable homes. To qualify for favorable federal flood insurance rates, new homes must be built above the 100-year flood level, which appoaches 10 feet in some places. Some new homes are 15 feet off the ground. If a flood damages a home and the owner wants to rebuild, money is available to raise the structure. But owners of existing homes usually must bear the cost of raising the structure above the flood level.
In Bangladesh, where catastrophic hurricanes accompanied by 20-foot storm surges in 1970 and 1991 took 300,000 and 138,000 lives, respectively, a consortium of world charities began building triangular-shape concrete shelters on stilts in more than 1,000 locations. The shelters have been hugely successful in saving thousands of lives during recent hurricanes, officials say.
Louisiana emergency preparedness officials hope to persuade the Legislature to adopt a similar plan: requiring all new public buildings in the coastal zone to be built to withstand catastrophic storms so they can be used as shelters.
On an even smaller scale, individuals can invest more in disaster-proofing their homes. A few thousand dollars will buy clips to keep a roof from flying off a home and steel shutters that will prevent hurricane-force winds from blasting through the house.
Some disaster specialists say the same philosophy holds not just for homes but for all buildings in risky areas, and that developers and local officials should start thinking about disaster every time they draw a blueprint.
"Say New Orleans needs a new hospital," said Dennis Mileti, a sociologist who directs the University of Colorado's Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center. "Say the worst possible flooding is five stories high. So you put the garage on the lower floors and put everything above the fifth floor. Why build an essential facility like a hospital on the ground when you know it might flood It might be wise to do it for schools, hospitals, and other essential facilities. Maybe it's not prudent to tear them down today and rebuild them. But in America we tear stuff down and rebuild it all the time."
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