The morning of August 23, 2005 when a tropical cyclone was spotted outside of southeastern Bahamas. The storm continued to track and continued to intensify up west. Then, 2 days after it was officially named Hurricane Katrina, its strength increased day by day. It officially made land by August 29, being a category 3, with a recorded wind speed of 140 miles per hour.
As August rolls by, so does the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. As the month closes, a lot of memories for people who have experienced this moment come back. As devastating as it was for people who truly experienced it, it was also a shocker against people throughout the United States.
As people who had experienced this moment, it was awful, but as people who were located in different states, it was stunning. For teachers in this school, remembering what they were doing to contribute to this devastation, and their emotions during this disaster.
As for when the storm was located on August 23, 2005, it then ended 9 days later. Once it flooded, New Orleans took 43 days to dry. When a city is flooded, their method of pumping water out is by civil engineers who design drainage systems that can quickly drain out cities, and then that water goes back into the ocean.
Once the storm had ended, President George W. Bush gave a speech from the White House and emphasized that recovery was possible. As people have been trying to rebuild New Orleans, over 93,000 people, as well as community service people, have given over 93 million dollars and managed 262,000 volunteers.
This was truly a shocker for all, as the Astronomy teacher at Oakmont High School, Daniel Dufour, spoke, “I think the government could have responded faster. We knew it was coming; levees were supposed to be funded and repaired, and there could have been an overall faster response to the hurricane.” The failure of the levees caused 80% of New Orleans to be flooded.
Where people sought refuge during the flood was the Superdome, and or the main stadium within New Orleans. As it is estimated that during Hurricane Katrina that the Superdome held between 25,000 and 30,000 as a refuge, it was the last resort as in shelter.
The way hurricanes form is through the warm currents throughout the Cape Verdean islands. Relatively warm surface water evaporates quickly and then condenses in the atmosphere to form clouds. Whilst moist air rises to saturation and a weather system called a tropical depression forms. While tropical depression warmer waters and then increase this “tropical depression” into a hurricane, either 1 or 5 categories.
Hurricanes are categorized according to the Saffir-Simpson wind scale; this has been used since 1975. It categorizes between mph on the hurricane wind speed, as for a hurricane between 74-95mph it would be a category 1, and for a category 5 is winds over 157mph.
With the economic depression of the New Orleans people, the displacement of the people who were affected was extremely high. The estimate derived from the CPS Data analysis is that 1.5 million people aged 16 years and older left their residences in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
With this being a tragic disaster for all, we need to learn what happened, to learn from the past, and not to repeat what happened many years ago.
