Houses and other buildings close to the shoreline are at a huge risk of being lost due to erosion of the land around them. The waters just pound the coast line pushing it further and further back until the house or building could eventually collapse into the water. This situation could actually be prevented using erosion and sediment control techniques such as gabion walls. A gabion wall is basically a retaining wall made out of heavy duty galvanized wire boxes that are filled with stone or stand and then are stacked in tiers that follow the slope that they are placed on (Maccaferri, 2010). There are many other control techniques that could possibly be used to put an end to, or even slow down the happening and the effects of erosion on the shoreline. Examples of these other techniques that could possibly spare the shoreline, buffer zone, and New Orleans itself are cellular confinement systems, buffer strips, and sand fences. Just outside the shoreline of the city is a buffer zone that lies beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico and is becoming smaller resulting in New Orleans becoming actually closer to the Gulf of Mexico due to the eroding area. The buffer zone protects the city from the numerous hurricanes and tropical storms the city is hit with every hurricane season, but due to constant pressure from tides and all these storms the buffer zone is continuously being eroded and has shrunk which causes the city to be in more danger every season (Finn, K., 2010). Hurricanes lose their power quickly as soon as they hit land, but with the shrinking buffer zones around the entire city soon there will be nothing to slow down hurricanes except for when it hits New Orleans at full force instead having been slowed down by the wetlands and major silt deposits. It is said that the disappearing wetlands is “the fastest-disappearing land mass on the planet” (Merchant, B., 2010).
An increase in tourism and in residential life in New Orleans has caused new homes, new buildings, and new tourist attractions to be built in order to stay on top of many other cities. These increases are great for the city in economical factors such as the ability to make budget increases, become more populated, and just attract many more people. On the other hand, in geological factors all those new construction projects put more tension on all the land in New Orleans and especially on the coast line where it is continuously weakened because of the lack of erosion prevention techniques which will eventually make it easier for it all to erode and be washed away somewhere else. All these factors came together at once when one of the top five hurricanes in the history of the United States hit New Orleans, Louisiana in August of 2005. This hurricane is the costliest hurricane ever to hit the United States with estimated costs being over $120 billion especially for all the cities on the coast. People say that New Orleans has always been one of the most susceptible cities in the country to being hit by a natural disaster due to its location and all the erosion that has already occurred to the coastline disregarding previous natural disasters, which have affected the city more than the actual erosion itself (Infoplease, 2007).
The category 3 hurricane devastated the city of New Orleans with demolishing 125 mph winds with the levee system being a very minor implication in Katrina’s way. The levees broke due to what were believed to be engineering factors such as the soil being too thin which allowed water to soak in and then uprooting the steel pilings (Pesce, K., 2010). The pumps were also positioned in a bad place with them being towards the city instead of more towards Lake Pontchartrain. With the levees being destroyed the city was flooded by the Gulf of Mexico and people fled to their rooftops waiting to be rescued. The economy of New Orleans was destroyed by this catastrophe with tourism plummeting downward and people not being able to move back to their own homes after evacuating the city due to the destruction. Hundreds of thousands of people became unemployed which resulted in people breaking into shops that had not been destroyed and stealing what they needed to survive. Company after company went out of business making the economy drop even more than it already had; a reversal of the massive increase of the economy before the storm had occurred. Fishermen who were lucky enough not have their boat be destroyed were still in trouble because the fish habitats had been ruined by the storm causing even more unemployment in the city.
Even though the hurricane was one of the worst disasters ever to hit the United States, its occurrence actually had some positive impacts. The soil of New Orleans has been studied for a while because it has always had an abnormally high concentration of lead in the soil. The amount of lead in the soil was actually considered hazardous to the people living in the area and people had higher levels of lead in their bloodstreams due to this factor. Lead poisoning can cause the brain and central nervous system to develop improperly in children and is very toxic to red blood cells and the kidneys. The hurricane actually helped out this factor and dropped it by almost fifty percent by laying down a new layer of soil. The parts that were hit the hardest by the hurricane actually had the highest decreases of lead levels in the soil (Miles, A., 2010).
The evacuation of what is said to be over 70 percent of southeastern Louisiana was the most successful evacuation of a major urban area ever to happen in the United States. After Hurricane Katrina, the population had depleted by over half of what it was before the storm. Thousands of working people who had evacuated all over the country could not return back to their beloved home of New Orleans because there wasn’t anywhere for them to go once they returned. There were not any places to sleep, eat, or make money so even if they did return they would be sleeping on the streets and begging for food. Doctors moved out of town and didn’t return and even hospitals were closed due to lack of employees. Even up to a year after the hurricane hit New Orleans electricity was still only up in about half of the entire city (Infoplease, 2007). Oil refining stopped all over the area which increased gas prices dramatically; there were lines miles long to get to the pump and fill up your car and portable tanks. New Orleans was a ghost town until government officials finally stepped in and promised one of the biggest rebuilding projects ever. Many organizations stepped in to try and help New Orleans out after the disaster. An example of this is FEMA. They came in and attempted to lead the project giving thousands of trailers to homeless evacuees for them to use until they get back on their own two feet. New Orleans is steadily heading back up to where it once was before the hurricane hit and destroyed everything it had going.
Pump stations in any city play very important roles in protecting cities from flooding after a major flood or rainfall occurs. The pump stations in New Orleans were not storm proofed enough to withstand hurricane winds and rainfall. If the stations had been properly storm proofed the flooding would most likely still have occurred but would not have occurred for nearly as long as it did. There was no clean water to cool the pumps, no back up energy sources, and not even any operators to control the station’s equipment. After the disaster the pump stations were required to be fixed and properly storm proofed to prevent the fail of the station to happen again. Storm proofing the stations included adding back up sources of energy and locating electrical equipment to where it can avoid being submerged in water. Fuel sources and generators are examples of back up energy sources used in the stations. Some rooms in the stations are even being strengthened to withstand gale force winds, extreme water pressure, and even electrical loss. Before all these upgrades occurred the employees of the station were endangered and even had to evacuate the city because the pump stations were not built to withstand a natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina’s power. If all this would have been implemented when the pumping stations were first built then there the aftermath of the hurricane would not have been so destructive for as long as it was because the equipment would still have been working due to backup energy sources and the employees could still have been running the equipment because there was no danger brought upon them by the hurricane (US Army Corps of Engineers, 2010).
New Orleans has had to go through a lot of hardships in order to reach where they are at now, and problems are going to continue to rise up and the city will overcome them again. The coastline is finally getting the attention it needs in order to stay together and save it along with all the wetlands and marshes around the city. Erosion will always be a major factor to deal with because of the location of New Orleans, but the people and officials of the city need to keep trying different erosion and sediment control techniques until they find one that will permanently work and save the coast from further damage than it has already taken. The control techniques should also be tried on the buffer zone because if that eventually disappears there will be no more natural protection from hurricanes and New Orleans will get destroyed every time a disaster comes its way. The cost of the damages done by Hurricane Katrina was the largest amount ever to be recorded in our nation’s history, but it showed the officials the engineering mistakes that were made when building the natural disaster prevention techniques. New Orleans learned that they must upgrade all of their levees, pump stations, and their evacuation routes as soon as they could in order to protect themselves from more natural disasters. Building a perfect erosion and sediment control plan that works in every aspect is difficult to find, but the city needs as much protection as they can have available to prevent another Katrina aftermath from happening every time another natural disaster comes through the city. Through all New Orleans’s hardships it brought the city closer together and made the people realize how important the geology of their city is and how they need to make a strong attempt and preserve what they have left.
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