Description of Event:
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Source: densitykatrina.wordpress.com/
Hurricane Katrina devastated the population of New Orleans, Louisiana. It brought powerful winds and water resulting in the failure of over 50 levees. The levee and flood wall failures produced flooding in eighty percent of New Orleans and all of St. Bernard Parish. In New Orleans over 100,000 homes and companies were damaged or destroyed by billions of gallons of water spilling over the collapsed levies. Responsibility of the design and construction of the levee system fell on the United States Army Corps of Engineers, while its maintenance and upkeep was the local levee board’s obligation. As stated earlier, the levee and flood wall project protecting New Orleans was between 60-90% complete when Katrina struck in 2005.
Causes of the Event:
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Source: armybase.us
After the multiple collapses of the levees, three major and two minor investigations were led by civil engineers and other experts to ascertain the reasons of the catastrophic failure of the federal flood protection system. At the time, many believed that the fault for the disaster of the levee failure was in the hands of the United States Army Corps of Engineers; however, there were also those who believed that the cause was either Hurricane Katrina itself or the fact that the project was incomplete. The investigations found insufficient design and construction by the United States Army Corps of Engineers was at fault. This inadequacy resulted in the breach of twenty forced openings on the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet. Had there been better structure and design, it was determined that the levees would have stayed intact although they had yet to be completed. To some professional engineers, this is the worst engineering disaster in US History. Most people do not understand why the levees failed, especially after four decades of planning. At the conclusion of the investigations, the US Army Corps of Engineers stated the levee system was never planned or structured to protect against a category four or five hurricane, only a category three.