Until
recently, the narrative has gone something like this: Katrina
was a once-in-a-lifetime Category 5 hurricane. When it
hit New Orleans, the federal government was nowhere to
be found. Despite pleas from the local and state authorities
for the federal government to take over the rescue and
evacuation efforts, those pleas fell on deaf ears. Mayhem
dominated the Superdome, where rape and assault were common
occurrences among the people who sought refuge there during
the days immediately after the hurricane hit. Outside the
Superdome, there was widespread looting, as the people
were abandoned by their government officials at all levels.
Katrina created a major interruption to oil and gas drilling
and refining. But now, the rebuilding has begun, and the
Gulf Coast area will come back "bigger and better than
ever."
It turns
out, however, that much of what we know to be true isn't
exactly true. Popular Mechanics magazine has published
a much overlooked story, The
Lessons of Katrina, in its March issue. It got some
attention at the time in the blogs and on certain online
publications. But very little, if any, attention has been
devoted to it in the mainstream media.
As the
editors of Popular Mechanics pointed out in the introduction, "No
one should have been surprised. Not the federal agencies
tasked with preparing for catastrophes. Not the local officials
responsible for aging levees and vulnerable populations.
Least of all the residents themselves, who had been warned
for decades that they lived on vulnerable terrain. But
when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29,
2005, it seemed as though the whole country was caught
unaware…In the months since the storm, many of the first
impressions conveyed by the media have turned out to be
mistaken. And many of the most important lessons of Katrina
have yet to be absorbed."
For example,
it was not a once-in-a-lifetime category-five hurricane,
but rather a "midlevel Category 3 hurricane at landfall." Winds
55 miles south of New Orleans reached 125 miles per hour,
but "winds in the city barely reached hurricane strength." According
to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, "the Atlantic
is in a cycle of heightened hurricane activity due to higher
sea-surface temperatures and other factors. The cycle could
last 40 years, during which time the United States could
be hit by dozens of Katrina-size storms." In other words,
these will become routine weather events, "not once-in-a-lifetime
anomalies." And they are part of a cycle, not evidence
of human-induced global warming.
What
about the federal response? "Bumbling by top disaster management
officials fueled a perception of general inaction, one
that was compounded by impassioned news anchors. In fact,
the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest—and
fastest—rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000
emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three
days of the storm's landfall." It goes on to point out
that dozens of National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters
were flying rescue operations within the first two hours
after Katrina hit, and that by the end of the week, "50,000
National Guard troops in the Gulf Coast region had saved
17,000 people; 4,000 Coast Guard personnel saved more than
33,000."
On the
matter of reported death and violence at the Superdome
associated with Katrina, the magazine says that a total
of six bodies were found, as opposed to the 200 speculated;
four from natural causes, one from suicide, one from a
drug overdose. Regarding the voluntary evacuation, 1.2
million people out of a metro population of 1.5 million
successfully evacuated in just 38 hours, far less than
the 72 hours estimated by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Most that remained had transportation available to them,
but chose not to leave, with the tragic exceptions of hospital
patients and nursing home residents. The Corps also determined
that the sheet-pile foundations supporting the floodwalls
had been properly built.
Following
this report, a House of Representatives committee released
its report on
the preparation for and response to Katrina. Popular Mechanics
matched it up with its report and said that the House report
highlighted the lack of a unified communications system
for emergency professionals, and the need for a comprehensive
national review of all threats, both natural and manmade.
Also it pointed to the need to create "comprehensive playbooks
by which everybody, from local levels to the federal government."
Katrina
exposed flaws in the government's ability to manage such
a catastrophe, but it also highlighted the media's failure
to get the story right and its general unwillingness to
correct their mistakes once the truth was revealed. CRO
