Hurricane Katrina: Environmental Hazards in the Disaster Area

by Danny Reible

The flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina provides many lessons for the environmental and engineering communities and raises public policy questions about risk management. Although serious environmental and waste management issues were expected as a result of the flooding, extensive environmental sampling largely failed to substantiate them. The attention of those managing the emergency was diverted from critical issues to addressing this area of public apprehension. The potential environmental consequences were of concern because many chemical plants, petroleum facilities, and contaminated sites, including Superfund sites, in the area were covered by floodwaters. In addition, hundreds of commercial establishments, such as service stations, pest control businesses, and dry cleaners, use potentially hazardous chemicals that may have been released into the environment. The potential sources of toxics and environmental contaminants include metal-contaminated soils typical of old urban areas. Compounding these concerns is the presence of hazardous chemicals commonly stored in households and the fuel and motor oil in approximately 350,000 flooded automobiles. Uncontrolled biological wastes from human and animal sources also contributed to the pollutant burden. By and large, however, the environmental problems in the city are not significantly different now from environmental conditions before Hurricane Katrina. This discussion focuses on successes and failures in responding to the environmental concerns and on lessons learned for future disasters.

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Planning, Plans, and People: Professional Expertise, Local Knowledge, and Governmental Action in Post-Katrina New Orleans

by Marla Nelson, Renia Ehrenfeucht, and Shirley Laska


In rebuilding after the largest disaster in our nation’s history—Hurricane Katrina—New Orleans has faced two key challenges: (1) how to enable all residents, including those with the fewest resources, to return to the city without recreating pre-Hurricane Katrina vulnerabilities and the inequities they represent; and (2) how to prioritize limited redevelopment resources. A citywide recovery strategy was necessary to address these challenges.

The purpose of this article is to examine the planning processes and the difficulties the city has faced in developing its recovery blueprint. Two interrelated, yet distinct, tensions played out through these processes: (1) tension between the need for “speed and deliberation” (Olshansky, 2006) in formulating a recovery blueprint and (2) tension between the relative weight afforded professional and resident assessments and priorities in setting recovery agendas. These tensions, accompanied by unanticipated resident distrust of government and professionals and the failure of city officials to designate quickly a single agency with the authority to guide a comprehensive recovery planning process, slowed the development of a citywide rebuilding strategy.

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Reconstruction of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: A research perspective

Four propositions drawn from 60 years of natural hazard and reconstruction research provide a comparative and historical perspective on the reconstruction of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Decisions taken over its 288-year history that have made New Orleans so vulnerable to Katrina reflect a long-term pattern of societal response to hazard events—reducing consequences to relatively frequent events, and increasing vulnerability to very large and rare events. Thus Katrina’s consequences for New Orleans were truly catastrophic—accounting for most of the estimated 1,570 deaths of Louisiana residents and $40–50 billion in monetary losses.

A comparative sequence and timing of recovery provides a calendar of historical experience against which to gauge progress in reconstruction. Using this calendar, the emergency postdisaster period appears to be longer in duration than that of any other studied disaster. The restoration period, the time taken to restore urban services for the smaller population, is in keeping with or ahead of historical experience. The effort to reconstruct the physical environment and urban infrastructure is likely to take 8–11 years. Conflicting policy goals for reconstruction of rapid recovery, safety, betterment, and equity are already evident. Actions taken demonstrate the rush to rebuild the familiar in contrast to planning efforts that emphasize betterment. Because disasters tend to accelerate existing economic, social, and political trends, the large losses in housing, population, and employment after Katrina are likely to persist and, at best, only partly recover. However, the possibility of breaking free of this gloomy trajectory is feasible and has some historical precedent.

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