New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. II: The Central Region and the Lower Ninth Ward
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VIEW THE ORIGINAL ARTICLEPublication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 134, Issue 5
Abstract
The failure of the New Orleans regional flood protection systems, and the resultant catastrophic flooding of much of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, represents the most costly failure of an engineered system in U.S. history. This paper presents an overview of the principal events that unfolded in the central portion of the New Orleans metropolitan region during this hurricane, and addresses the levee failures and breaches that occurred along the east–west trending section of the shared Gulf Intracoastal Waterway/Mississippi River Gulf Outlet channel, and along the Inner Harbor Navigation Channel, that affected the New Orleans East, the St. Bernard Parish, and the Lower Ninth Ward protected basins. The emphasis in this paper is on geotechnical lessons, and also broader lessons with regard to the design, implementation, operation, and maintenance of major flood protection systems. Significant lessons learned here in the central region include: (1) the need for regional-scale flood protection systems to perform as systems, with the various components meshing well together in a mutually complementary manner; (2) the importance of considering all potential failure modes in the engineering design and evaluation of these complex systems; and (3) the problems inherent in the construction of major regional systems over extended periods of multiple decades. These are important lessons, as they are applicable to other regional flood protection systems in other areas of the United States, and throughout much of the world.
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Acknowledgments
The studies reported herein would not have been possible without the generous help of many individuals and organizations. A more detailed and extensive acknowledgment is presented in the first of the companion papers and for the sake of brevity is not repeated here. This project was supported, in large part, by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant Nos. NSFCMS-0413327 and NSFCMS-0611632. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF. Additional support was provided by the Center for Information Technology Research in the Service of Society (CITRIS) at the University of California at Berkeley. In addition, several senior members of the investigation team contributed from their own discretionary resources. All of this support is gratefully acknowledged.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 134 • Issue 5 • May 2008
Pages: 718 - 739
Copyright
© 2008 ASCE.
History
Received: Apr 23, 2007
Accepted: Jan 25, 2008
Published online: May 1, 2008
Published in print: May 2008
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