New Orleans and Katrina

Visited New Orleans a couple of weeks ago. Stayed in French Quarter. Spent a couple of day trips exploring the area of New Orleans hardest hit by Katrina floods - known as Lower 9th. It's taken a while to get my head around the geography, so I've put a few maps here to explain...

New Orleans is the main city of the state of Louisiana. Flood and storm damage threats to New Orleans come from two directions. To the immediate north of New Orleans is Lake Ponchartrain - the storm surge from Katrina came from here. To the immediate south is the Mississippi River which is prone to flood. (While it's a big river, on average its annual flow is just 8% of the Amazon River). What is evident driving into New Orleans and through the surrounding region of Louisiana is how flat the topography is. In effect it's a river delta formed by sediments and alluvial material washed down there by the Mississippi. The New Orleans urban environment is amazingly flat.

This map shows the main urban centre of New Orleans, and the various canal systems that have been built over time to direct water between the lake and the river, and for navigation. The canals are all bounded by levy wall/bank systems to keep the water and any flood out of the city. The lake edge and the river edge are also lined with banks and walls. Because the urban environment is so flat, stormwater drainage - when it rains hard - is also an issue. There's a lot of interesting history about how New Orleans even came to be built there, and became the chosen site of capital of Lousiana, mainly because of the efforts of a French Governor (Bienville) and a French engineer (Pauger). Bienville's men began clearing vegetation (remember this was mostly swamp and river delta) in March/April 1718 - 300 years ago (the tricentennial was celebrated this year). Apparently, the decisions about the location of the capital was based on a headcount. At the time New Orleans was a centre of the black slave trade. The slave population, combined with those who built and lived in the so-called "French Quarter", tipped the balance in favour of New Orleans. Anyway - I do digress. A key role of the slave population was the construction of flood barriers to stop the Mississippi course snaking in different courses when it flooded.

This map (which is worth clicking) is one of many available in the aftermath of Katrina. One of the worst affected areas was the Lower Ninth Ward. This area was affected because the levy lining the adjacent canal failed. I talked to several residents about this - one of the stories that's live is that a barge had not been properly moored, and in the hurricane it moved across the canal, banged into the concrete levy wall, and broke it. There's  picture of it sitting on top of houses after the flood waters pushed it over/through the levy wall and into the Lower Ninth Ward residential suburb. Interestingly, the land where that suburb is was not developed in the early centuries by the French or Spanish as it was swamp land. The land was subsequently drained and water pumped out. This caused the land level to drop as its organic soil base dried out and shrank. The upshot being that parts of the Lower Ninth Ward were/are 6 to 10 feet below sea level. When the levy broke that suburb became a "bowl" holding the floodwater, a bowl that had nowhere to drain to. It had to be pumped out. It was full of floodwater for weeks and months after Katrina. There's a lot of post-Katrina planning criticism of decisions to develop drained swamplands for residential housing....

This picture shows the barge in the foreground, and the broken section of the levy. The water in the foreground is the "Industrial Canal" shown in the maps. The housing (that remains) is in the suburban area of Lower Ninth Ward.

This map shows the French Quarter (bottom left) and Lower Ninth Ward. I took some video and photos at the viewpoints 1, 2 and 3. (Where "3" is pretty close to where the barge ended up after Katrina.)



These two clips were recorded around "3". They show suburban blocks without houses (apart from a few brick built ones that were allowed to remain), empty streets, and generally rundown environment. (Note this is 12 years after Katrina). I learned about the ill-facted "make it right" campaign triggered by Brad Pitt and seeded by his money. Some residents were provided with zaney architectural houses which were designed to float next time it flooded. Problem was they were built of composite board, which, in the local damp conditions, have walls that have rotted through.

These images show the memorial plaque erected near "3" on the map. It records that US Army Corp built levy structures failed, and that new regulations resulted for the future. Around this area a number of houses were being developed and constructed. These are shown below. You can see the attempts made to lift the structures above future envisaged flood levels.

This video was shot at "2" in the map. It pans from the bridge/stormwater structure (blue), across the Industrial Canal, to the levy wall (now repaired of course), and shows some of houses behind (which are all on land 5 feet or so below normal sea level).

And, the video clip below shows what happened in the street where my BnB was (in the middle of the FrenchQuarter) after a reasonably good thunderstorm....