Chapter Chapter 4
Section Disaster in the Gulf Coast
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Disaster in the Gulf Coast
Hurricane Katrina’s powerful winds, storm surge, and subsequent flooding destroyed communities and infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. The storm inflicted a terrible toll of human suffering, killing at least 1,330 and injuring thousands.7 The Nation empathized with the harrowing stories of survival, loss, and family separation. President George W. Bush described this hurricane as “one of the worst natural disasters in our Nation's history.”8
The nightmare scenario that some had predicted prior to Hurricane Katrina’s landfall became a reality as those on the ground saw the devastation for the first time. According to NOAA, “entire coastal communities were obliterated, some left with little more than the foundations upon which homes, businesses, government facilities, and other historical buildings once stood. 9Destroyed homes, beached vessels, collapsed bridges, uprooted trees, and other debris littered the ground and blocked waterways. After surveying the region from the air on August 30, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour likened the scene to that of a nuclear detonation, stating, “I can only imagine that this is what Hiroshima looked like sixty years ago.10
Mississippi suffered extensive damage in all counties south of Interstate 20 and east of Interstate 55.11 The city of Biloxi was “decimated,” according to municipal government spokesman Vincent Creel. “It looks like a bomb hit it.”12 Major east-west highways in southern Mississippi became impassable due to storm debris: US-90 closed across the entire state and I-10 east-bound closed to the public, with only one west-bound lane open for emergency responders.13 Hurricane Katrina left the downtown streets of Gulfport, Mississippi, under ten feet of water14 and structures flooded for miles inland.15 A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report described the communications infrastructure in Biloxi and Gulfport as “non-existent.16 In the words of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta: “The Port of Gulfport, Mississippi was left with virtually nothing and must rebuild almost from scratch.17 The storm devastated Waveland, Mississippi, wiping out all the local resources, including those that municipal officials had staged ten miles north of town.18 Ninety-five percent of Waveland’s residential and commercial structures were severely damaged.19Testifying before Congress a week after landfall, Governor Barbour lamented: “The 80 miles across the Mississippi Gulf Coast is largely destroyed. A town like Waveland Mississippi has no inhabitable structures—none.20 Alabama suffered significant damage as well. For example, large amounts of debris necessitated the closure of Mobile’s port.21
Hurricane Katrina inflicted devastating damage upon the region’s energy and communications infrastructures. The Department of Energy (DOE) reported “unprecedented damage” to the U.S. energy sector22 and noted that 2.5 million customers in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi reported power outages.23 Hurricane Katrina devastated communications infrastructure across the Gulf Coast, incapacitating telephone service, police and fire dispatch centers, and emergency radio systems. Almost three million customer phone lines were knocked out, telephone switching centers were seriously damaged, and 1,477 cell towers were incapacitated.24 Most of the radio stations and many television stations in the New Orleans area were knocked off the air.25 Paul McHale, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense, summarized the damage by stating, “The magnitude of the storm was such that the local communications system wasn’t simply degraded; it was, at least for a period of time, destroyed.26
The Gulf Coast region’s health care infrastructure sustained extraordinary damage.27 Such damage was particularly evident in New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina destroyed several large hospitals, rendered many others inoperable, and forced the closure of nearly all other health care facilities. The region’s most vulnerable residents and those individuals with special needs suffered terribly from Hurricane Katrina’s impact and inadequate or nonexistent evacuation operations.28 In addition, the storm stranded hundreds of hospital patients inside dark and flooded facilities that lacked basic supplies.29 Some patients succumbed to the horrible conditions before they could be evacuated.30 At St. Rita’s Nursing Home in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, thirty-four nursing home residents drowned in the floods resulting from Hurricane Katrina.31
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