He flew on to Gonzales, where his wife was waiting for him. My instincts as a building manager are to evacuate, he said. The men sat in stunned silence. Out of the at least 1,800 deaths caused by Hurricane Katrina, nearly half were elderly people. An estimated 80 percent of New Orleans was underwater by August 30. The buildings air conditioning system would no longer run, nor would the refrigeration system keeping massive amounts of food from spoiling. And then thenext morning, more bad news: The buses had been rerouted and delayed, sent to a highway overpass where people were stranded. But over the Gulf of Mexico, some 165 miles west of Key West, the storm gathered strength above the warmer waters of the gulf. This is a national disgrace, he said. Hurricane Katrina had intruded on the last safe space. Isaac Chipps contributed reporting to this story. Most deaths were caused by acute and chronic diseases (47%), and drowning (33%). [1] The backup generator for the lights was barely able to be kept afloat, and after the water supply gave out, the toilets "became inoperable and began to overflow." When the hurricane made landfall in southeast Louisiana on Aug. 29, 2005, its intensity had diminished but was still a major Category 3 storm. On May 16, 2015, new homes stand in a development, built by the Make It Right Foundation, for residents whose homes were destroyed. Within an hour, nearly every building in lower Plaquemines Parish would be destroyed. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary. Water poured onto the field. Dozens of churches were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Only after Katrina passed were people going to be bussed to shelters. "[2], Despite these previous periods of emergency use, as Katrina approached the city, officials had not stockpiled enough generator fuel, food, and other supplies to handle the needs of the thousands of people seeking refuge there. The cost to repair the dome was initially stated by Superdome commission chairman Tim Coulon to be up to $400 million. As buses finally started arriving to pluck refugees from the Louisiana Superdome yesterday, a horrifying picture emerged of the squalor, violence and mayhem that they faced during the days spent huddled in the stadium. This death was one of only six deaths at the Superdome: one person overdosed and four others died of natural causes. That night SMG sent a private helicopter to evacuate the staff and their families. When buses finally arrived yesterday, a desperate group of refugees broke loose from a cordon of National Guardsmen, but were stopped by heavily armed police toting machine guns. The 2005 hurricane and subsequent levee failures led to death and destructionand dealt a lasting blow to leadership and the Gulf region. Even though the dome never lost power, air conditioning, and running water during any of those storms, Superdome manager Doug Thornton recommended after Hurricane Georges for the dome to not be used as a shelter for anybody but special-needs evacuees. 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.". Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest hurricane to strike the US Gulf Coast since 1928. He escaped the chaotic shelter a few days . During the recovery stage, the process wasn't much better. After levees and flood walls protecting New Orleans failed, much of the city was underwater. There wasnt much more he could do. It damaged more than a million housing units in the region. Whatever they needed was theirs. Why did Hurricane Katrina lead to widespread flooding? Katrina made landfall that morning as a Category 4 storm with sustained winds in excess of 135 mph. We're not a hotel. Hell if I know, the mechanic said. They were acquitted in 2007. "[3], The Superdome was built to withstand most natural catastrophes. 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. Southern Mississippi won over Arkansas State, 3119. Did you encounter any technical issues? Mouton found out that there were sandbags available on Franklin Avenue inLakefront. At one point, the storm became a Category 5, but weakened before striking land. Robert Fontaine walks past a burning house fire in New Orleans' Seventh Ward on September 6, 2005. About850 patients with serious medical conditions some in hospice care would arrive to ride out the storm there; most of them from parts of the city not protected by the levee system. Thornton and Mouton were walking away from the meeting when they heard a loud bang. The dome's emergency generator was able to power the internal lighting but little else; the building's air conditioning system would no longer operate, nor would the refrigeration system which was keeping food from spoiling. By 11 a.m. on August 30, Katrina had dwindled to heavy rainfall and winds of about 35 mph. Out of the at least 1,800 deaths caused by Hurricane Katrina, nearly half were elderly people. And since the hurricane evacuation plan stipulated that "the primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles," according to "Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared" (the Senate committee's report), this left the state's most impoverished and vulnerable families, the large majority of whom were people of color, without anywhere to go as Hurricane Katrina hit. Three people died in the Superdome; one apparently jumped off a 50-foot high walkway. Everybody is scared.. He starts off the essay with his own personal account of the damage that Hurricane Katrina left. For the remainder of that night, it was just Doug Thornton and a few remaining members of his management and security teams. 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. SMG opened up the club rooms in the arena, and the citys health department would send staff to take care of the patients. The heavy death toll of the hurricane and the subsequent flooding it caused drew international attention, along with widespread and lasting criticism of how local, state and federal authorities handled the storm and its aftermath. Several hundredof Thorntons part-time employees had shown up as well, unable to evacuate, and hed placed them in one of the club lounges along with the families of some New Orleans Police Department officers. He made two requests: Hed need a large contingent of National Guardsmen, and a few hours Sunday morning to prepare. Sign up for the For The Win newsletter to get our top stories in your inbox every morning. Finally. This is not normal.. Thanks for contacting us. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. No one had a better plan, so they agreed to go with Moutons recommendation. As some people tried to get supplies to survive, the media portrayed them as "looters," a term that the LA Times notes is more often applied to Black people than white people. They found a 50-foot fuel line and screwed it into the reserve tank of the generator, then ran it out to the truck, which was parked in several feet of water outside the exterior door. And although they were deemed unsuitable for habitation, according to Grist, little has been done to ensure that people no longer live in toxic trailers. . Houses stand in the Seventh Ward on May 12, 2015. Many people living in the South Florida area were unaware when Katrina strengthened from a tropical storm to a hurricane in one day and struck southern Florida on August 25, 2005, near the Miami-Dade - Broward county line. They got it to the city and waited for their supplies. 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. Then the male employees, and, finally, the men who worked security would be the last to leave. WATCH: Cities of the Underworld: Hurricane Katrina on HISTORY Vault. 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. Its tenants, the New Orleans Saints, were talking about an open-air stadium on the Mississippi river or moving to another city. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. 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. The generator kept burning. And it's possible that the deaths may have even numbered as high as 10,000. The population of New Orleans fell from 484,674 in April 2000 to 230,172 in July 2006, a decrease of over 50%. By some estimates, between 80 and 90 percent of New Orleans population was able to evacuate the city prior to Katrina. [36] A group of about 100 tourists were "smuggled" out from the Superdome to the New Orleans Arena next door, where 800 medical needs patients were being held. Updates? He said he just wanted to get out, to go somewhere. This is a nuthouse, said April Thomas, 42, there with her 11 children. Upon making landfall, it had 120-140 mph winds and stretched 400 miles across the coast. Though leaving in the light of day would be easier, it could also cause hysteria from those left behind in the Dome. The tiny jail cell down in the bowels of the Dome, which they kept for game-day security, was filling up. Then the women and the children. [28] Instead, the State of Louisiana and the operator of the dome, SMG, chose to repair and renovate the dome beginning in early 2006. [34] However, after a National Guardsman was attacked with a metal rod, the National Guard put up barbed wire barricades to separate and protect themselves from the other people in the dome, and blocked people from exiting. The streets were still flooded, perhaps even worse than before. Mouton was there, walking quickly toward him. There was a plan. In the United States, Louisiana has the "highest rate of beds per 1,000 persons ages 85 or more," but over half of the nursing homes in New Orleans decided against early evacuation. Over the next two days the weather system gathered strength, earning the designation Tropical Storm Katrina, and it made landfall between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as a category 1 hurricanea storm that, on the Saffir-Simpson scale, exhibits winds in the range of 7495 miles (119154 km) per hour. In response, guardsmanput up barbed wire at various areas around the building, protecting themselves from the general population. They worked furiously. Hurricane Katrina, the tropical cyclone that struck the Gulf Coast in August 2005, was the third-strongest hurricane to hit the United States in its history at the time. As general manager of the facility since 1997, he had been through this several times before. [13], On September 2, 475 buses were sent by FEMA to pick up evacuees from the dome and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where more than 20,000people had been crowded in similarly poor living conditions. Many local agencies found themselves unable to respond to the increasingly desperate situation, as their own headquarters and control centres were under 20 feet (6 metres) of water. It quickly intensified when it reached the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. In addition, many of the underlying systemic inequalities and problems that resulted in the severity of the disaster still have not been addressed. Socialist Alternative writes that police were given the task of "defending the private property of businesses like the GAP and casinos" rather than concentrating on rescuing people. 2. New homes stand in the Lower Ninth Ward on May 15, 2015. 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. Emergency lights worked intermittently as engineers struggled to keep backup generators running as the area around the dome flooded. That night, around 6 p.m., Thornton got a phone call. Rumours spread in the press of reports of rapes, violent assaults, murders, drug abuse, and gang activity inside the Superdome, most of which were entirely unsubstantiated and without witnesses. Nagin told the men to get him a list of supplies they needed, and he would get it from FEMA. Governor Blanco's comment regarding M-16s was likely in response to the reports of snipers shooting at police and rescue workers. Please select which sections you would like to print: Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. First delivery to the Superdome on August 31, 2005. [14] With no power or clean water supply, sanitary conditions within the Superdome had rapidly deteriorated. Across 13 nursing homes and six hospitals that were investigated in Louisiana, at least 140 patients died as a result of Hurricane Katrina. [9] Although 80 percent of the roof had been destroyed, ultimately, the damage to the roof proved not to be catastrophic, with the two repairable holes and the ripping off of most of the replaceable white rubber membrane on the outer layer. Supplies were dangerously low, with one mother saying officials told her to reuse diapers by scraping them out when they got dirty. The office asked him if he could open up the Superdome as a refuge of last resort for the city of New Orleans. Wind and water damage to the roof created unsafe conditions, leading authorities to conduct emergency evacuations of the Superdome. And despite the fact that many were long voicing their concerns about the effects of a hurricane in New Orleans, they were ignored until it was too late. WATCH:I Was There: Hurricane Katrina Superdome Survivor. [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]. Authors . Three people died one a distraught man who jumped to his death, saying he had nothing left to live for. 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. Because of this shortsightedness, Hurricane Katrina was "the nation's first $200 billion disaster.". Unfortunately, it was made significantly worse than it had to be. They mulled it over. [29] However, the eventual cost to renovate and repair the dome was roughly $185 million and it was reopened for the Saints' first home game in the city in September 2006. We can't house people for five or six days. The Thorntons woke early to the sound of the wind. [16], At midnight that same day, a private helicopter arrived to evacuate some members of the National Guard and their families. I wake up in the morning, and the first thing I say is: Where are my babies? NOLA.com reports that FEMA also "turned away offers of personnel and supplies from the Department of Interior and denied a request from the state Wildlife & Fisheries agency for 300 rubber boats.". A man had been caught sexually assaulting a young girl. He needed to start getting people out. You better move back. A bustling black market has also emerged, with cigarettes, at $10 a pack, and anti-diuretics, which help forestall going to the bathroom, hot items. Hurricane Katrina not only left more than 1,800 human deaths in its wake, it also rendered thousands homeless as more than 800,000 housing units were destroyed or damaged in the storm. Doug Thornton knew he had to get his people out. Hurricane Katrina survivors arrive at the Houston Astrodome Red Cross Shelter after being evacuated from New Orleans. Nothing.. A few blocks away, the strobes inside Charity Hospital flashed. Doug and Denise Thornton woke early to drive back to New Orleans. Ive been in there seven days, and I havent had a bath.