Is Gulf Coast Ready for Another Hurricane?

Willie Drye
for National Geographic News

August 24, 2006

A year after Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the U.S. Gulf Coast,
Louisiana and Mississippi residents wait uneasily to see what the peak
of the 2006 hurricane season might send their way.

If a hurricane does head for the region this year, Katrina's survivors will face "some unique challenges," according to Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.

One of the biggest challenges would be the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people who have been living in trailers since their homes were destroyed last August and September.

About 81,700 temporary trailers currently provide shelter for as many as 200,000 people, according to the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness in Louisiana.

"One important point to make is that they can't stay in those trailers during a hurricane or even a strong tropical storm," Mayfield said.

"Mississippi and southeast Louisiana will be the first to evacuate if another hurricane comes that way. This is something that hasn't been done before."

(Was Katrina predicted by National Geographic magazine? Read the 2004 article.)

Busted Barriers

The eye of Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005 (watch a video time line of Hurricane Katrina). The tempest reached shore as a Category Three storm with winds up to 125 miles (200 kilometers) an hour.

The hurricane broke levees in New Orleans, Louisiana, putting much of the city underwater, and its storm surge—an abnormal rise in sea level associated with hurricanes—pulverized homes in Mississippi.

As many as 1,800 people were killed in the storm and its aftermath.

Katrina also heavily damaged or destroyed natural and human-made barriers that are meant to protect the Gulf Coast from winds and waves.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has spent the last year repairing levees in and around New Orleans that would normally protect the city from flooding.

"The corps assures us that the levees are back to pre-Katrina strength," said Mark Smith, spokesperson for the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness in Louisiana.

Smith says the levees should withstand a hurricane with top winds of 110 miles (177 kilometers) an hour.

"The real concern is if anything larger takes place," Smith said.

Katrina also damaged Louisiana's shrinking barrier islands that have provided some natural protection from storm surges.

"The barrier islands are almost gone," Smith said (read "Many Islands 'Gone,' Wetlands Gutted After Katrina, Experts Say" [September 2005]).

"The Gulf of Mexico has a free shot at very tender coastal marshes. Those marshes have acted as a barrier between the Gulf and the state's major population centers. Every day that barrier is reduced dramatically" by coastal erosion, Smith said.

Post-Traumatic Stress

In addition to physical readiness, experts are concerned that Gulf Coast residents might not be emotionally and mentally prepared for another storm.

Researchers at Tulane University's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine have been closely monitoring the psychological effects of Katrina in New Orleans.

"The main issues we're dealing with are post-traumatic stress disorder and mental-health issues," said Pierre Buekins, dean of the school.

Victims of post-traumatic stress disorder are people who have survived life-threatening experiences. They can have lingering problems such as depression, nightmares, and detachment from life around them.

(See related photos: "New Orleans Refugees Struggle, Looters Plunder.")

"We don't have the data yet to really demonstrate that there's been an increase in psychological symptoms, but we know that it could happen," Buekins said.

The Tulane researchers are also trying to determine whether the effects of Hurricane Katrina are worsening postpartum depression in women who have had children since the storm.

Paul Trotter, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service station in Slidell, Louisiana, says that some people in his office are still trying to get their homes repaired.

A few have also had to deal with the grief of losing family members, he says.

"This was a life-altering event," Trotter said. "It will be one that will affect the country for years to come."

Lessons Learned

Still other experts are concerned that some Gulf Coast residents didn't take to heart the harsh lessons of Hurricane Katrina.

Jay Baker is a professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee who studies how people respond to hurricanes.

After the stormy summer of 2005 Baker surveyed some residents on Florida's Gulf Coast. He learned that they didn't think that they were especially vulnerable to the storms.

"I'm concerned about that," Baker said. "There are too many people in dangerous areas—areas that are subject to storm-surge inundation—too many people who think they'll be safe staying home during a hurricane."

There's also uncertainty about whether the city of New Orleans will ever fully recover its status as a major metropolis and international travel destination.

(See photos of New Orleans immediately after Katrina and a year later.)

The city still has 11,000 fewer hotel rooms than it did before the storm. And arrivals and departures at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport are down 41 percent from a year ago.

"I think New Orleans is a beautiful town which will make a very slow recovery," said Bert Eichold, a Tulane graduate who is now the public health officer for Mobile County, Alabama.

"Will it ever be the New Orleans that we once knew? That is unknown."

Some Louisiana residents think it is important that the city make a full recovery.

"New Orleans is something along the lines of the soul of our state," said Smith, Louisiana's emergency preparedness spokesperson.

"It's our economic driver, our largest population center. It's the capital of our tourist industry. It means so much at so many different levels to the state of Louisiana.

"I can't imagine that New Orleans won't eventually be rebuilt."

Willie Drye is author of Storm of the Century: the Labor Day hurricane of 1935, published by National Geographic.

Free Email News Updates
Best Online Newsletter, 2006 Codie Awards
Sign up for our Inside National Geographic newsletter. Every two weeks we'll send you our top stories and pictures (see sample).