Unnatural Disaster: Katrina and Governance

Commentators both here in Louisiana and elsewhere have had a difficult time describing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Is it “the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States?” Or “the worst civil engineering failure in history?” Here is a disaster that left even the media groping for superlatives. The condition of the city immediately after Katrina was so bizarre that titles I seem to remember from fantastic fiction were merely descriptive: “The Lost City,” perhaps, or “The Drowned City.” At the moment, the neighborhoods flooded by the levee breaches resemble descriptions of cities after volcanic explosions. A gray or brown film appears to cover everything. The grass and trees are brown, creating the impression of a lifeless city animated only by memory. It is a sepia photograph you can walk through under a blue sky. Nearby, the mounds of debris are three stories high and rising.

The extensive flooding has caused something much more terrible than physical destruction. What has happened is a cultural and spiritual erasure. People have lost their photographs, wedding dresses, family heirlooms, furniture, books and clothes. The flood acted like an insane Grinch who stole every last vestige of Christmas: the “toys, tags, ribbons, boxes or bags.” Except this Grinch took the beds in which people slept, the food they ate and sometimes their life. Their neighborhoods are silent.

If something like Katrina was caused by a government, we might describe it as a case of “ethnic cleansing.” Ethnic cleansing works by making conditions so bad that the targeted group has to flee and never return. Because more than one ethnicity was affected by Katrina, a better term would be “cultural cleansing.” Of course, the term “cleansing” is ironic, because Katrina’s modus operandi was to soil everything. But African Americans in particular have been horrified at the prospect that their carefully tended neighborhoods have been blown apart permanently. Conspiracy theories about government blowing up the levees to save some other part of town have already taken root.

Ten weeks after Katrina approached the Gulf Coast, things are not looking very well for the city of New Orleans. I have reasonable hopes for Tulane and the other academic institutions in the city. But the city as a whole, especially compared to the city as it used to be, faces a grim future. There is a massive housing shortage and an acute labor shortage. The repopulation of the city is going more slowly than expected. It is estimated that only 75,000 people currently live in the city. That is roughly the population of Lawrence, KS (where I grew up), usually described as a “small college town.” Another 75,000 commute in to work or fix their homes. A working population of 150,000 implies that 330,000 people have left. The likelihood of their return is unknown, although a poll of Houston evacuees done by the Washington Post/Kaiser Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health found that 44 percent wanted to relocate. If anything close to this percentage is true of all evacuees, then many New Orleans neighborhoods will never again come to life.

Recent news accounts have emphasized infighting among the various levels of government and the commissions appointed to study the situation. The story that is not being told by the national media is that all concerned – politicians, business owners, ordinary citizens – have reached consensus on one critical point: New Orleans needs Category 5 storm protection. From the perspective of many, without “Cat 5” protection, discussion of the city’s future and future investment possibilities is pointless. Katrina has been evaluated as a Category 3 storm when it struck Louisiana. Everyone assumes a Category 4 strike is just a matter of time. Category 5 protection is thus an essential precondition for reviving the city. Many of the 330,000 who have not returned are waiting for a sign about future storm protection.

They may be waiting a long time. Neither the Bush Administration nor members of Congress have shown any interest in an increased level of storm protection. The official position of the government is that New Orleans deserves merely a restoration of Category 3 protection. This strikes many residents are nonsensical. Democratic leaders would win themselves the everlasting gratitude of the entire region if they would just endorse Category 5 protection. But nothing has been forthcoming.

This might be just another unfortunate policy mistake but for the emerging evidence that the drowning of New Orleans was guaranteed by blunder after blunder by the government. Only one levee was overtopped by the hurricane, and the protection it afforded had been weakened by a special interest project (the “MR-GO”) funded by the federal government. Three studies underway by the National Science Foundation, the American Society of Civil Engineers and the state of Louisiana are showing severe deficiencies in the way the levees were constructed. It appears New Orleans was never close to Category 3 protection and the protection it did have was undermined, literally and fatally, by government mismanagement and possible corruption.

Katrina is thus shaping up not as a natural disaster primarily, but as a policy disaster, an “unnatural disaster” and one of unparalleled scope. The erasure of an entire city (as it used to be) and region now seems possible, just seven weeks after President Bush promised an extensive reconstruction. So far, there is no sign that anyone in government understands the scale of the problem. I’ve concentrated on one precondition here, but there are others mostly having to do with housing and property rights. I was hoping by now I would be assessing different plans for rebuilding the city. Increasingly, however, it appears this may never happen. Without Category 5 protection and an innovative housing/development plan, the possibility of restoring some semblance of the old New Orleans may wink out as the year ends.