Katrina News Online

In the wake of the recent hurricanes, the Corporation for National and Community Service is coordinating volunteers across the country to assist with repair and relief efforts in areas affected by this devastating storm. Your donation will support volunteers in providing food and shelter, managing donations, helping victims get necessary assistance, and long-term rebuilding efforts. For at least the next 90 days, all donations to the Corporation’s Disaster Relief Fund will be directed toward the Hurricane Katrina Volunteer Support Fund to support relief and rebuilding efforts in the impacted areas.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) repaired and restored 220 miles of floodwalls and levees since September 2005. With a few exceptions, the New Orleans hurricane protection system is in equal or better condition than it was when Katrina hit. For example, levees and flood walls have been armored to protect against erosion from possible overtopping in several areas, and pumping stations are being storm proofed. Floodgates have been added at the outfall canals to protect against storm surge and a tree cutting program on existing levees for protection is ongoing. .
This work consisted of 59 separate construction projects, carried out by 26 Corps contractors 90% of them local. The Corps continues to construct stronger protection for New Orleans by engineering, constructing and improving storm and flood protection infrastructure to a 100 year protection level. This work includes higher levees, stronger floodwalls and greater interior drainage capacity, including:
Replacing failed I Wall design floodwalls with stronger Twall or L wall design floodwalls.
Reinforcing the most vulnerable undamaged I Walls and the surge protection closures.
In order to investigate the levee breakage and prevent them from reoccurring, the Corps commissioned an Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force (IPET) composed of 150 subject matter experts from government, academia and industry to analyze the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the hurricane protection system and to develop a list of lessons learned which are leading to state of the art improvements in the engineering of a comprehensive hurricane protection system.
IPET findings and recommendations have been continually provided to the Corps’ task force since November 2005 and have been used to make levee repairs stronger and better. IPET findings helped the Corps in the assessment of weaknesses in the protection system and IPET results will also be used in design guidance to build future protection projects.

On August 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina struck the U.S. Gulf Coast, 130 Louisiana residents in the greater New Orleans area were known to be undergoing treatment for tuberculosis (TB) disease. Standard treatment and cure of TB requires a multidrug regimen administered under directly observed therapy (DOT) for at least 6 months . This report updates previous information and summarizes TB cases reported as of December 31, 2005, among persons undergoing TB treatment in the New Orleans area when Hurricane Katrina made landfall and among persons who were evacuated and subsequently received a diagnosis of TB in other parts of the country. By October 13, 2005, through intensive local, state, and national efforts involving both government and private sector partners, all 130 TB patients from the New Orleans area had been located and, if still indicated, had resumed TB treatment. As a result of heightened public health surveillance among Hurricane Katrina evacuees, six other New Orleans evacuees began treatment (i.e., two persons with known TB and four with previously undiagnosed TB) after arriving in other states. The success of these post-disaster TB control measures affirms the utility of alternative data sources during health-related emergencies and the importance of maintaining a strong TB control component in the public health sector.

The effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans were shattering and long-lasting. As the middle of Katrina conceded east of New Orleans on August 29, 2005, winds downtown were in the Category 2 variety with recurrent powerful gusts, and tidal flow was corresponding to regarding a strong Category 3 hurricane. Although the most stern portion of Katrina missed the city, striking nearby St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, the hurricane rush caused more than 50 breaches in drainage channel levees and also in navigational channel levees and precipitated the worst engineering disaster in the history of the United States.

By August 31, 2005, eighty percent of New Orleans was flooded, with several parts below 15 feet (4.5 m) of water. Mainly of the city’s levees intended and built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers were broken in one place or another, with the 17th Street Canal levee, the Industrial Canal levee, and the London Avenue Canal floodwall. These breaches were dependable for most of the flooding, according to a June 2007 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Ninety percent of the inhabitants of southeast Louisiana were evacuated in the most successful evacuation of a major urban area in the nation’s history. In spite of this, many remained .The Louisiana Superdome was used as a selected “refuge of last resort” for those who remained in the city. The city flooded owing mainly to the failure of the federally built levee system.