Please check your email for a confirmation. Hurricane Katrina was an extremely destructive 2005 storm that caused more than 1,800 deaths along the U.S. Gulf Coast. By the evening of August 25, when it made landfall north of the Broward-Miami-Dade county line, it had intensified into a category 1 hurricane. Feces covered the walls of bathrooms. That would be sorted out soon, Thornton thought, or maybe never at all. 70% of New Orleans occupied housing, 134,000 units, were damaged in the storm. A neighborhood east of downtown New Orleans remains flooded on August 30, 2005. It was Mayor Ray Nagins office. They were acquitted in 2007. According to ABC News, it was claimed that "the levee breaches could not have been foreseen" and that the government had little warning before the hurricane. By late afternoon, the breaching of the London Avenue Canal levees had left 80 percent of New Orleans underwater. [4] However, when looking into the origins of the claims about 200mph (320km/h) wind security in the Superdome, CNN reported that no engineering study had ever been completed on the amount of wind the structure could withstand. As Katrina moved inland over Mississippi, it weakened to a Category 1 hurricane and later to a tropical storm. And although hurricanes are usually only 300 miles wide at most, Hurricane Katrina's winds stretched out over 400 miles, with wind speeds well in excess of 100 mph. The mass exodus from the Gulf Coast and New Orleans during and after Katrina represented one of the largest and most sudden relocations of people in U.S. history. This is a national emergency. However, this didn't happen because the storm was too strong it happened due to the failures of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. My instincts as a building manager are to evacuate, he said. 2023 Cable News Network. Deaths in the Superdome. "Hurricane Katrina survivors in the Superdome." . And we look up and see a metal beam, a massive beam, that had been windblown into the aluminum siding. And I expect they will.". Meanwhile, NOLA.com reports that New Orleans police officers were given authorization to shoot looters. If we had evacuated who knows what wouldve happened Thornton said. He flew on to Gonzales, where his wife was waiting for him. Sustained winds of 70 miles (115 km) per hour lashed the Florida peninsula, and rainfall totals of 5 inches (13 cm) were reported in some areas. TV-PG. Engineers also didn't consider sinking land and soil quality, which led to a misjudgment of soil stability. Up to a month after Hurricane Katrina, over 100 children were still unaccounted for, and it took until November to find everyone. Some levees buttressing the Industrial Canal, the 17th Street Canal, and other areas were overtopped by the storm surge, and others were breached after these structures failed outright from the buildup of water pressure behind them. All of our employees had left town with the mandatory evacuation, he said. We're not a hotel. Some of those who left later returned, and by 2020 the population reached just over 390,000, or about 80 percent of its pre-Katrina population. Most of the tragedies associated with Hurricane Katrina could have been avoided, but due to a variety of reasons, the hurricane quickly became one of the worst disasters to ever occur in the United States. Despite the strength of Hurricane Katrina, there was little about the storm that made it intrinsically deadly. However, according to "Deaths Directly Caused by Hurricane Katrina" by Poppy Markwell and Raoult Ratard, only about one third of those deaths were due to drowning. On August 27 Katrina strengthened to a category 3 hurricane, with top winds exceeding 115 miles (185 km) per hour and a circulation that covered virtually the entire Gulf of Mexico. Thornton, whod been cooped up in the Superdome for going on five days, looked down on her city, at the soft waves lapping against the houses in the moonlight. It hit land as a Category 3 storm with winds reaching speeds as high as 120 miles per hour. By 2007, 99% of the 1.2 million personal property claims had been settled by insurers. This death was one of only six deaths at the Superdome: one person overdosed and four others died of natural causes. On the morning of August 29, 2005, Katrina made landfall around 60 miles southeast of New Orleans. He starts off the essay with his own personal account of the damage that Hurricane Katrina left. As Talk Poverty notes, it was directly due to "racially discriminatory housing practices," which meant that"the high-ground was taken by the time banks started loaning money to African Americans who wanted to buy a home.". By some estimates, between 80 and 90 percent of New Orleans population was able to evacuate the city prior to Katrina. At least 1,833 died in the hurricane and. The roof was estimated to be able to withstand winds with speeds of up to 200mph (320km/h) and flood waters weren't expected to reach the second level 35 feet (11m) from the ground. His home was destroyed. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Returning to Washington from Texas, Air Force One descended to about 5,000 feet to allow Bush to view some of the worst damage from Hurricane Katrina. [6] By this time, the population of the dome had nearly doubled within two days to approximately 30,000, as helicopters and vehicles capable of cutting through the deep flood waters picked up stranded citizens from hard-hit areas and brought them to the dome. Hanging from her roof, a woman waits to be rescued by New Orleans Fire Department workers on August 29, 2005. An aerial view of the catastrophic flooding in Downtown New Orleans on August 31, 2005. Then the male employees, and, finally, the men who worked security would be the last to leave. Well, Thornton replied, our generator has 10 inches to spare. But over the Gulf of Mexico, some 165 miles west of Key West, the storm gathered strength above the warmer waters of the gulf. The storm spent less than eight hours over land. The storm that would later become Hurricane Katrina surfaced on August 23, 2005, as a tropical depression over the Bahamas, approximately 350 miles (560 km) east of Miami. And although President Bush said on September 1, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," days before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the White House was informed that the levees were likely to overtop and breach. The fact that Black homeowners were more likely to face flooding than white homeowners wasn't an accident or bad luck. In New Orleans, the evacuation plan reportedly "fell apart even before the storm hit." [37] This was done as covertly as possible so as to not cause rioting or charges of favoritism. Sign up for the For The Win newsletter to get our top stories in your inbox every morning. The 2006 Sugar Bowl, which pitted the University of Georgia Bulldogs against the West Virginia University Mountaineers, was moved from the Superdome to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. It was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. However, not a single one of those reports was "verified or substantiated. In April 2000, according to the Data Center, the population of New Orleans was 484,674; by July 2006, not quite a year after Katrina, it had dropped by more than 250,000, to some 230,172. Nagin left office in 2010, and was later convicted on charges of bribery, fraud and money laundering committed while in office. Ive been through a lot of hurricanes. They had no good options. Though leaving in the light of day would be easier, it could also cause hysteria from those left behind in the Dome. To do that, they needed to keep it dry. A fire erupted in a trash chute inside the dome, but a National Guard commander said it did not affect the evacuation. A Warner Bros. However, there weren't enough trucks for the patients, so they had to stay in the dome. At 10 a.m., the Thorntons headed together to the Superdome. Mahogany describes her actions before deciding to evacuate her home, her trip to the New Orleans Saints' Superdome, her horrific time at the Superdome, and finally her decision to leave New Orleans. On the flight out west, Thornton looked down and saw his home in Lakewood South, as well as the seven feet of water surrounding it. The cost to repair the dome was initially stated by Superdome commission chairman Tim Coulon to be up to $400 million. There were no designated medical staff at work in the evacuation center, no established sick bay within the Superdome, and very few cots available that hadn't been brought in by evacuees. Mouton was there, walking quickly toward him. They drove four hours from Bossier City where Doug, an executive with SMG, managed a facility back to New Orleans, a lone car on the inbound side of the highway as thousands upon thousands of cars sat in traffic on the outbound lanes. And food was running short. They guarded the office where Thornton and his team huddled, but that was about it. For now, theyd monitor. They found the building in better shape than the Superdome fewer windows were blown out and the building, unlike the Superdome, had a roof. Nagin had no solution. Hurricane Katrina had intruded on the last safe space. [32] New Orleans Police Department chief Eddie Compass appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and reported seeing "little babies getting raped" and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin also said he saw hooligans raping and killing people. Police watch over prisoners from Orleans Parish Prison who were evacuated to a highway on September 1, 2005. The tropical depression that became Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005, and meteorologists were soon able to warn people in the Gulf Coast states that a major storm was. It took 17 men several hours to do the job. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Crack vials littered the bathrooms. https://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/08/refuge-of-last-resort-five-days-inside-the-superdome-for-hurricane-katrina, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. [41], After the events surrounding Katrina, the Superdome was not used during the 2005 NFL season. Hurricane Katrina was a tropical cyclone that struck the southeastern United States in late August 2005. We need to get these people into the parking garages, where at least they can get out of the building and into some fresh air.. Hurricane Katrina survivors arrive at the Houston Astrodome Red Cross Shelter after being evacuated from New Orleans. They took off running to the concourse, and saw a nightmare come true the roof in one section above the field had been torn off by the wind. But its the only shot we got.. Did you encounter any technical issues? "Flooded offices meant records were underwater," and although there were some computerized records, according to then-Assistant Secretary of Children Welfare for Louisiana's Department of Social Services Marketa Walters, "New Orleans was notorious for not doing good data entry." First delivery to the Superdome on August 31, 2005. Katrinas death toll is the fourth highest of any hurricane in U.S. history, after the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which killed between 8,000 and 12,000 people; Hurricane Maria, which killed more than 4,600 people in Puerto Rico in 2017; and the Okeechobee Hurricane, which hit Florida in 1928 and killed as many as 3,000. Everybody is scared.. Hurricane Katrina had intruded on the last safe place. By 7 p.m. everyone was inside and had been checked. Although New Orleans levees and flood walls had been designed to withstand a category 3 hurricane, half of the network gave way to the waters. A lightning bolt strikes above a destroyed church in the Lower Ninth Ward on August 5, 2006. Roughly 14,000 people were inside now. [46] Before that first game, the team announced it had sold out its entire home schedule to season ticket holders a first in the franchise's history.[47]. By 4:30 p.m., the winds were dying down and Thornton and Mouton went outside and surveyed the building. Early the next morning Thorntonwoke from a fitful sleep, then went out into the hallway outside his office. With top winds of around 80 mph, the storm was relatively weak, but enough to knock out power for about 1 million and cause $630 million of damage. By the following afternoon Katrina had become one of the most powerful Atlantic storms on record, with winds in excess of 170 miles (275 km) per hour. [7] According to many, the smell inside the stadium was revolting due to the breakdown of the plumbing system, which included all toilets and urinals in the building, forcing people to urinate and defecate in other areas such as garbage cans and sinks. [45] However, the Saints announced that they would be returning to New Orleans, with the first home game taking place on September 25, 2006 against the Atlanta Falcons on Monday Night Football. In 2006, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which was responsible for the design of the levee system in New Orleans, acknowledged that outdated and faulty engineering practices used to build the levees led to most of the flooding that occurred due to Katrina. estimated population had increased to 376,971. They treated us like animals. [12], By August 30, with no air conditioning, temperatures inside the dome had reached the 90s, and the punctured dome at once allowed humidity in and trapped it there. According to Talk Poverty, "a Black homeowner in New Orleans was more than three times as likely to have been flooded as a white homeowner. Victims of Hurricane Katrina fight through the crowd as they line up for buses to evacuate the Superdome and New Orleans, Sept. 1, 2005. For detailed information on the effect on Tulane, see, Effect of Hurricane Katrina on the Louisiana Superdome, Effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, "Effect of Hurricane Katrina on the Louisiana Superdome", Learn how and when to remove this template message, Effect of Hurricane Katrina on the New Orleans Saints, Effect of Hurricane Katrina on Tulane University, Effect of Hurricane Katrina on the New Orleans Hornets, "How New Orleans' Evacuation Plan Fell Apart", "Hurricane Katrina as Seen Through the Eyes of the Saints' Biggest Fans", "At least 10,000 find refuge at the Superdome", "Governor: Evac Superdome, Rescue Centers", "Trapped in the Superdome: Refuge becomes a hellhole", "Photo in the News: Hurricane Shreds Superdome Roof", "NFL 2005: Homeless Saints face long road in 2005", "Almost 10 years after Katrina, Michael Brown's still out to lunch: Jarvis DeBerry", "Refuge of last resort: Five days inside the Superdome for Hurricane Katrina", "From Superdome to Astrodome: Katrina's refugees will be moved to Houston in bus convoy", "Superdome evacuation disrupted after shots fired", "10 Years Since Katrina: When The Astrodome Was A Mass Shelter", "Astrodome to become new home for storm refugees", "Astrodome at capacity, but buses with evacuees keep coming", "Neighbouring states struggle to cope with influx of people", "Dome closed for a year, could be scrapped", "NFL, at Saints' urging, kicks in $20 million for dome repairs", "Superdome returns with glitz, glamor and Monday night football", "Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy", "Reports of anarchy at Superdome overstated", "Higher Death Toll Seen; Police Ordered to Stop Looters", "7 facts about Hurricane Katrina that show just how incompetent the government response was", "Four years on, Katrina remains cursed by rumour, cliche, lies and racism", "Saints' home games: 4 at LSU, 3 in Alamodome", "Errors cost Saints early, often in poor excuse for 'home' opener", "32nd annual Bayou Classic moved to Houston", "SOUTHERN JAGUARS FALL 50-35 TO GRAMBLING STATE IN BAYOU CLASSIC XXXII", Temporary home venues in 2005 due to Hurricane Katrina, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Effect_of_Hurricane_Katrina_on_the_Louisiana_Superdome&oldid=1113156691, Articles needing additional references from October 2014, All articles needing additional references, Wikipedia introduction cleanup from February 2022, Articles covered by WikiProject Wikify from February 2022, All articles covered by WikiProject Wikify, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2016, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 30 September 2022, at 02:13.