New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. I: Introduction, Overview, and the East Flank
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VIEW THE REPLYPublication: 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 during this catastrophic hurricane, and then a more detailed look at the early stages of the event as the storm first drove onshore and then began to pass to the east of the main populated areas. The emphasis in this paper is on geotechnical lessons and it also includes broader lessons with regard to the design, implementation, operation, and maintenance of major flood protection systems. This paper focuses principally on the early stages of this disaster, including the initial inundation of Plaquemines Parish along the lower reaches of the Mississippi River as Katrina made landfall, and the subsequent additional early levee breaches and erosion along the eastern flanks of the regional flood protection systems fronting Lake Borgne that resulted in the flooding of the two large protected basins of New Orleans East and St. Bernard Parish. Significant lessons learned include (1) the need for realistic assessment of risk exposure as an element of flood protection policy; (2) the importance of considering erodibility of embankment and foundation soils in levee design and construction; (3) the importance of considering all potential failure modes; and (4) 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. 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. The writers also wish to express their gratitude to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) for their considerable assistance with numerous elements of this work. The USACE and the Interagency Performance Evaluation Team (IPET) have graciously shared much of their field and laboratory data. We are also grateful to the members of the State of Louisiana’s independent investigation team, Team Louisiana, for their tremendous efforts and for their generous mutual sharing of data and insights throughout this investigation. And we are also grateful to the members of the field investigation team of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), who jointly formed a combined team with ours in the urgent initial postevent field studies when it was of vital importance to gather all possible data and observations while emergency repair operations were already literally burying critical evidence. This was a strong field forensics team, and their collaboration both in the field and in the subsequent preparation of an initial Preliminary Report jointly prepared by the ASCE and ILIT teams (which was issued in early November of 2005) was of great value. Finally we are deeply grateful to the many others who will remain anonymous, but who have assisted by providing information, data, technical insight, background history, and other information that might otherwise not have been available. A great many people gave generously of themselves, their time, and their expertise to assist these studies. It was important, and we are profoundly grateful.
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 134 • Issue 5 • May 2008
Pages: 701 - 717
Copyright
© 2008 ASCE.
History
Received: Apr 23, 2007
Accepted: Jan 24, 2008
Published online: May 1, 2008
Published in print: May 2008
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