1 Hurricane Season

Music: Hurricane Season

Hurricane Katrina: an Unnatural Disaster

There is an increasing number and severity in natural disasters. We can look beyond climate change, and we can see all the ideas, the nature, society and how these environmental factors affect econonomic development. We will generally keep announcements on sunday nights.

One of the questions was about the quizzes. So the quizzes are something new this time teaching the class. the point is to get people to do the reading. Part of the attendance for the course is about doing the reading. we have no quiz in session this week, and it will cover the material from week 2, etc. Typically a few multiple choice questions, nothing written in stone ofc.

We all took the syllabus quiz. in those weekly announcements, there is a community bulletin board, etc. we can use that for our XC assignments, but it is also a community resource, which we can use.

Lecture outlines will be posted before class.

there are some people in here thinking of taking the DeCAL.

The Lecture: Hurricane Katrina

the storms in new orleans and the gulf coast. to make sense of the storms impact in terms of regional history and social geography. after that we will turn to consideration of the significance of race and class, during the lecture, etc.

So, not long ago, a major hurricane made landfall in south US, it reached the levvies that were designed to protect new orleans. Hurricaine Betsy in 1965. It was an extremly costly disaster, dubbed billion dollar Betsy. This helped bring the army corp of engineers to strengthen the levvies. The project was predicted to take 13 years, but by 2005, after many budget cuts, etc, it was about 75% complete when hurricane katrina hit.

in early 2001, FEMA, designated hurricanes hitting new orleans, were designated some of the biggest threats among terroist attacks on NYC and Earthquakes in the Bay Area.

The path of katrina is really similar to hurricane betsy. By the time it made landfall, katrina was a cat 3 storm, and by the time it reached new orleans, it was a cat 2 storm. When it hit new orleans it was about the same as before.

The storm surges that came with it breached the levvies so that made it fill up again.

media was very prevalent this time, with 24-7 coverage, which had many americans seeing many images, which challeneged many assumptions on how the government portrays humankinds control over nature and disasters.

there were images of people wading through waist height water. Mostly black, poor elderly, people without any help, forcing a lot of citizens to grapple with the consequences. this was a lot of a shock to the nations consequences.

we will look at race and class and politics in coming lectures.

It was the water that was coming from the sea, the storm surge came from the sea, the pressure from the hurricane,

A riverboat casino fell through and sank in the storm surges!

wetland saltwater inundation

in louisiana, there is a nice coastline, which is from some cartographers imagination, where a lot of land has been lost, thanks to sea level rise, almost 200 sq mi of wetland lost. extensive damage to infrastructure to texas and louisianaa.

there are oil rigs out here too, These are not deep water oil rigs, these are on the continental shelf. a lof of these are linked to refineries and storage facilities by pipelines, so there is a lot of environment damage from spills.

the effects in what is known as "louisinanas industrial corridor" but more commonly known as cancer alley. The petrochemical industry is very densely situatad. they are located along the mississippi river. This is located in the historical original location of sugar plantations. As a result, there is a lot of black communities living around this place, where its literally called cancer alley. There are 7 major petroleum refineries, over 750 other chemical facilities. While there were significant spills, those leaks flowed down the rivers, through these communities.

25 footer storm surges happened over the course of the hurricanne. this is in the industrial canal, in a place called the 9th ward.

we can see the breach, and how much of an unustrialised place we are living in. Maps are really useful, and you can really learn a lot whcih is fascinating. They can serve a s a good reference,. I have a good sense of wher i am historically. I would suggest you can use maps to learn how the world works a little bit.

The levvies, there a numerous distinct parts. first, an earthen bern, sunken into which are steel oeers, on top s a concrete wall. the pilars are typically taken care of, adn tehy can ance well.

The soft soil was so soft it would often would get waterlogged. The pressure of that soft black soil was par of the re

areas that did not flood were along the banks of the mississippi river.