Out of the at least 1,800 deaths caused by Hurricane Katrina, nearly half were elderly people. The New Orleans Saints played four of their scheduled home games at LSU's Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, three at the Alamodome in San Antonio, and one at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. She had heard a lot, from the National Guard, from her husband, from rumors among the employees. We took him inside.. The Social Science Research Council writes that this disparity occurred because elderly people were neither evacuated nor protected effectively. A woman slumped over in a wheelchair in a back corner, a The Superdome was, as far as Thornton was concerned, completely destroyed. President Bush was otherwise occupied during this time. Out of 60 nursing homes in New Orleans, 21 had evacuated their residents in advance of Katrina. Robert Fontaine walks past a burning house fire in New Orleans' Seventh Ward on September 6, 2005. Some levees buttressing the Industrial Canal, the 17th Street Canal, and other areas were overtopped by the storm surge, and others were breached after these structures failed outright from the buildup of water pressure behind them. Many people living in the South Florida area were unaware when Katrina strengthened from a tropical storm to a hurricane in one day and struck southern Florida on August 25, 2005, near the Miami-Dade - Broward county line. You better move back. The Thorntons woke early to the sound of the wind. All they could do was try to protect the generator. According to FiveThirtyEight, the Black middle class in particular was all but wiped out, and Black household incomes have fallen. Sign up for the For The Win newsletter to get our top stories in your inbox every morning. Huge crowds of seething and tense people jammed the main concourse outside the dome hoping to get on the buses to the Astrodome in Houston, 350 miles away. His home was destroyed. We had to chase him down, said Sgt. But now, in the moonlight, she finally understood what had happened. 23 Most of these pieces show the Superdome's population rising by at least 10,000, swelling to as many 25,000. The NOPD was gone. The Washington Post reports that not only did the Corps cut costs and pinch pennies in order to save money in the short term, but the engineering of the levees was "a disjointed fashion based on outdated data" (via Vox). It would be impossible to drive there with the roads in their current state, so Mouton called inBlackhawk helicopters to get them. Blanco declined to seek reelection in 2007, and died in 2019. And as Rob Nixon notes in "Slow Violence, Neoliberalism, and Environmental Picaresque," "Discrimination predates disaster: in failures to maintain protective structures, failures at pre-emergency hazard mitigation, failures to maintain infrastructure, failures to organize evacuation plans for those who lack private transport, all of which make the poor and racial minorities disproportionately vulnerable to catastrophe." This story has been shared 120,685 times. [37] This was done as covertly as possible so as to not cause rioting or charges of favoritism. Nothing.. Water spills over a levee along the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on August 30, 2005, in New Orleans. The Superdome with the newly repaired roof, August 15, 2006. However, not a single one of those reports was "verified or substantiated. Hurricane Katrina was a devastating Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that resulted in 1,392 fatalities and caused damage estimated between $97.4 billion to $145.5 billion in late August 2005, particularly in the city of New Orleans and its surrounding areas. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, the public school system of New Orleans was one of the lowest-performing districts in the state of Louisiana. 70% of New Orleans occupied housing, 134,000 units, were damaged in the storm. FEMA had sent the trucks to act as a makeshift morgue. According to CBS News, it took until March 2006 to find all of them: "All but 12 were found alive. On May 12, 2015, rubble remains at what used to be the B.W. The storm initially formed as a tropical depression southeast of the Bahamas on August 23. We need to get these people into the parking garages, where at least they can get out of the building and into some fresh air.. Reports of other rapes were widespread. A FEMA employee told Thornton and Mouton they expected to find lots ofdead bodies, and had decided to bring them here, next to the place where those left in the city were fighting to live. In Louisiana, where more than 1,500 people are believed to have died due to Katrinas impact, drowning (40 percent), injury and trauma (25 percent), and heart conditions (11 percent) were the major causes of death, according to a report published in 2008 by the American Medical Association. The Industrial Canal was later breached as well, flooding the neighborhood known as the Lower Ninth Ward. Never did we think wed be here for nearly a week.. [42] Their first "home" game was played on September 19, 2005 against the New York Giants at Giants Stadium, which resulted in a 2710 loss. Although post-traumatic stress symptoms showed a decline in the years after the hurricane, "one in six still had symptoms indicative of probable post-traumatic stress disorder.". You need to go take a look. ", Ultimately, it's unknown exactly what the death toll of Hurricane Katrina was. Thornton and Mouton found this odd, but figured the drains in the city had been backed up. The bad news is its going to take us several days to pump the water out of the city even if they can stop the water flow from coming in, Thornton recalls Nagin saying. The hurricane and its aftermath claimed more than 1,800 lives, and it ranked as the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. With Hurricane George, it was 36 to 48 hours. This death was one of only six deaths at the Superdome: one person overdosed and four others died of natural causes. Updated Children slept in pools of urine. Thornton remembers Compass telling him: Thats why I wanted to come over here and tell you so that you can get your families out.Thornton says Compass then told him he was taking his men out of the Superdome, before hugging him and saying he enjoyed working with him all these years. They drove four hours from Bossier City where Doug, an executive with SMG, managed a facility back to New Orleans, a lone car on the inbound side of the highway as thousands upon thousands of cars sat in traffic on the outbound lanes. Then, one of the mechanicshad an idea: Bypass the tank altogether. It ran into the reserve tank. Denise Thornton was tasked with deciding the order of evacuation. Hurricane Katrina survivors arrive at the Houston Astrodome Red Cross Shelter after being evacuated from New Orleans. Although most of these shootings led to criminal prosecutions, "several of the officers involved have avoided prison or [were] still awaiting a final resolution of their cases" up to a decade after the storm. However, "many of its admonitory lessons were either ignored or inadequately applied." According to National Geographic, "some argue that indirect hurricane deaths, like being unable to access medical care, should be counted in official numbers.". Over the next two days the weather system gathered strength, earning the designation Tropical Storm Katrina, and it made landfall between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as a category 1 hurricanea storm that, on the Saffir-Simpson scale, exhibits winds in the range of 7495 miles (119154 km) per hour. There is feces on the walls, said Bryan Hebert, 43. Hurricane Katrina was a tropical cyclone that struck the southeastern United States in late August 2005. Though downgraded to a category 3, the storms relatively slow forward movement (around 12 mph) covered the region with far more rain than a fast-moving storm would have. Michael Appleton/NY Daily News Archive/Getty Images. On August 29, at about 6:20 AM EDT, the electricity supply to the dome failed. You have to fight for your life. Mahogany describes her actions before deciding to evacuate her home, her trip to the New Orleans Saints' Superdome, her horrific time at the Superdome, and finally her decision to leave New Orleans. But Thornton wasnt thinking about that right then. More than one million people in the Gulf region were displaced by the storm. The Louisiana Superdome, once a mighty testament to architecture and ingenuity, became the biggest storm shelter in New Orleans the day before Katrina's arrival Monday. A woman gets carried out of floodwaters after being trapped in her home in Orleans Parish, Louisiana, on August 30, 2005. On June 4, 2006, Pamela Mahogany was interviewed for her personal experience involving the events following Hurricane Katrina. The guardsmans gun went off during the confrontation. I thought it would be two days at most and wed be out, said Thornton. CNN Sans & 2016 Cable News Network. Blood and feces covered the walls of the facility. It wasnt until midnight that things started to settle down. The air smelled toxic. In fact, the first hurricane-related deaths occurred the day before Katrina struck when three residents died whilst being evacuated to Baton Rouge. "[38] On that same day, 10 deaths were reported at the Superdome by CBS News. [49][50] Grambling State University beat Southern University, 5035.[51]. [52] The Mountaineers won, 3835. According to PBS, two weeks after the storm, 25% of the children remained unaccounted for. Food rotted inside the hundreds of unpowered refrigerators and freezers spread throughout the building. The bullet went through his own leg. But inside the Superdome, things were deteriorating rapidly. At 5 a.m. on August 29, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which administered the levees, received a report that water had broken through the concrete flood wall between the 17th Street Canal and the city. [22][23][24] The last large group from the Superdome was evacuated on September 3. They had no good options. An aerial view of the catastrophic flooding in Downtown New Orleans on August 31, 2005. by Laura Butterbaugh Thanks to the Internet, the images of the victims of Hurricane Katrina were as vivid as they were shocking: A hysterical woman pleading to TV cameras that women and girls were being raped in the Superdome. By 11 a.m. on August 30, Katrina had dwindled to heavy rainfall and winds of about 35 mph. knock out power for about 1 million and cause $630 million of damage, Cities of the Underworld: Hurricane Katrina, about 100,000 people were trapped in the city when the storm hit, fourth highest of any hurricane in U.S. history, according to a report published in 2008 by the American Medical Association. The low-income development has been replaced by two-story, townhouse-style buildings. It was going to be the big one. [2] Approximately 10,000 residents, along with about 150 National Guardsmen, sheltered in the Superdome anticipating Katrina's landfall. By 2021, the estimated population had increased to 376,971, according to the Census. They would back the fuel resupply truck up to the door, smash a hole in the wall, and run a line directly from the truck to the generator. After Hurricane Katrina, which damaged more than 100 school buildings, the state seized control of almost all urban schools and turned them over to independent charter groups. Before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana, there were roughly 2,000 foster children registered in the state. - The total damage from Katrina is estimated to be $125 billion (or $190 billion in 2022 dollars), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The chief of police had been given bad information. At noon, he boarded a helicopter. It quickly intensified when it reached the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. At 10 a.m., the Thorntons headed together to the Superdome. Food rotted inside of hundreds of refrigerators and freezers spread throughout the building; the smell was inescapable. appreciated. Every sink was broken. Engineers also didn't consider sinking land and soil quality, which led to a misjudgment of soil stability. If water engulfed the generator, the building would be cast into complete darkness. NOAA report- Direct deaths: 520 - Indirect deaths: 565 - Indeterminate cause: 307- Total number of fatalities: 1392. In the book, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast author Douglas Brinkley takes you on a journey through the political corruption and under calculation of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina's effects. A man pushes his bicycle through flood waters near the Superdome in New Orleans on Aug. 31, 2005. Whatever they needed was theirs. "Hurricane Katrina survivors in the Superdome." . [1], Hurricane Katrina was the third time the dome had been used as a public shelter. They either remained in their homes or sought shelter at locations such as the New Orleans Convention Center or the Louisiana Superdome. Thornton and Mouton climbed into a Humvee and drove toward the New Orleans Convention Center, dodging debris and navigating through a little standing water down Poydras Street. Do you think this is going to work? he asked. Its tenants, the New Orleans Saints, were talking about an open-air stadium on the Mississippi river or moving to another city. Rather, the hurricane was named in accordance with the World Meteorological Organizations lists of hurricane names, which rotate every six years. The area east of the Industrial Canal was the first part of the city to flood; by the afternoon of August 29, some 20 percent of the city was underwater. "Because medical care for foster children is paid for by in-state Medicaid, accessing prescription drugs was complicated" (per PBS), and many families evacuated out of state. While Mouton and Thornton worked to find space for them to operate, two massive, 18-wheeler refrigerated trucks pulled into the loading dock, not far from the door where new arrivals entered the building. [48] Overall, the team used six different stadiums for their six home games, including Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Cajun Field in Lafayette, Joe Aillet Stadium in Ruston, Malone Stadium in Monroe, and LaddPeebles Stadium in Mobile, Alabama. And despite the fact that this was meant to be a temporary shelter, they ended up being stranded in the stadium for a week. Upon making landfall, it had 120-140 mph winds and stretched 400 miles across the coast. Please select which sections you would like to print: Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. National Geographic writes that the storm hit the coast of Louisiana on August 29 and ended up affecting up to 90,000 square miles of land and over 15 million people. In addition to two unarmed civilians killed at Danziger Bridge, at least ten other people were shot by police in the first week after Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. [12], By August 30, with no air conditioning, temperatures inside the dome had reached the 90s, and the punctured dome at once allowed humidity in and trapped it there. A hurricane warning is issued for north central Gulf . Hours before three major levees were breached, President Bush announced that New Orleans had "dodged a bullet," despite the fact that Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco had already requested federal assistance two days before the hurricane hit, according to The Society Pages. The hurricane and its aftermath claimed more than 1,800 lives, and it ranked as the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. A FEMA medical team at the Superdome on August 31, 2005. By some estimates, between 80 and 90 percent of New Orleans population was able to evacuate the city prior to Katrina. Early the next morning Thorntonwoke from a fitful sleep, then went out into the hallway outside his office. The storm spent less than eight hours over land. In the hours before the storm hit and thenafter it left when the levees failedand everything changed the people who remained in New Orleans streamed toward a place where usually they would go to watch football, the massive structure at the citys heart, the Superdome. He made two requests: Hed need a large contingent of National Guardsmen, and a few hours Sunday morning to prepare. Rumours spread in the press of reports of rapes, violent assaults, murders, drug abuse, and gang activity inside the Superdome, most of which were entirely unsubstantiated and without witnesses. He escaped the chaotic shelter a few days . All Rights Reserved. The men sat in stunned silence. [7] Medical machines also failed, which prompted a decision to move patients to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Despite the planned use of the Superdome as an evacuation center, government officials at the local, state and federal level were criticized for poor preparation and response, especially Mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin, President George W. Bush, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael D. The water kept rising outside the exteriordoor, and was slowly coming in. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city the previous day, and an estimated 1.2 million people left ahead of the storm. And it's possible that the deaths may have even numbered as high as 10,000. As Talk Poverty notes, it was directly due to "racially discriminatory housing practices," which meant that"the high-ground was taken by the time banks started loaning money to African Americans who wanted to buy a home.". Security checks were conducted, and people with medical illnesses or disabilities were moved to one side of the dome with supplies and medical personnel. [15] Evacuees began to break into the luxury suites, concession stands, vending machines, and offices to look for food and other supplies. One of the biggest issues was communication, since landlines weren't working, cell towers were down, and offices were flooded, writes State of Emergency. The arrival of 13,000 U.S. National Guard troops and 7,000 U.S. military troops deployed by President George W. Bush helped with evacuations and resupplying food and water to those stranded at the Superdome and convention center, all of whom were finally evacuated on September 3. "[2], Despite these previous periods of emergency use, as Katrina approached the city, officials had not stockpiled enough generator fuel, food, and other supplies to handle the needs of the thousands of people seeking refuge there. Tulane University postponed its scheduled football game against the University of Southern Mississippi until November 26. All Rights Reserved. Mouton was there, walking quickly toward him. In addition, a Bleacher Report article quotes Thornton saying "We're not a hospital.

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