Hurricane georges Essay A very massive group of levees may be all that is in the way of lower lying New Orleans and destruction with a visit from Hurricane Georges. Without the levee system and concrete flood walls Georges could have catastrophic effects in New Orleans. But with this man-made hurricane protection system protecting the city people. New Orleans is spared the casualties and damage past storms have wrought.
The levee system is important because the city is like a saucer 6 feet below sea level and is surrounded by lakes, swamps, marshes and the Mississippi River. The fact is, we are living in a large, shallow bowl with a levee around it,” said Oliver Houck, a Tulane University law professor whose major is water resources. The New Orleans area and location have allowed hurricanes and floods to prey on its residents since as early as 1718. A year after New Orleans was laid out, a low levee had to be constructed.
As the city grew, the need for a better levee system has been a lasting issue. The levees were built taller and stronger, but hurricanes in 1915 and 1947 flooded the city killing about 200 and 47 people. The current hurricane protection system was approved by Congress in 1965 after Hurricane Betsy killed 81 people in southern Louisiana. Hundreds of millions of dollars has produced what may be the world’s most elaborate flood protection system, said Jim Addison, chief of public affairs for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers’ New Orleans District, which builds and monitors the levees.
The levees along the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain and other key areas are designed to protect the city from a fast-moving hurricane of Georges power. The levees work together with channels that shift flood waters to strong pumping stations. Then water is sent back into the lake. But Georges is moving slowly, meaning up to 25 inches of rain could fall on New Orleans and the wind could push the lake over the levees. Hurricane Georges caused an estimated $1 billion in insured property damage in four Gulf Coast states.
This made it the costliest hurricane in the United States this year. , The cost is nearly three times as much as that of Hurricane Bonnie, which cost insurers in the North and South Carolina and Virginia $360 million earlier this year. And Georges cost dominates the $25 million in damage from this year’s Hurricane Earl, which edged the Florida coast, Georgia and South Carolina . But Georges cost is not close to the $15.
5 billion in insured losses from Hurricane Andrew, which hit south Florida, Louisiana and Texas in 1992. It’s the nation’s costliest hurricane. The Projections do not include flood damage, which is not covered by homeowners’ insurance. The flooding is bad news for thousands of homeowners returning to their waterlogged property and for taxpayers.
Most homeowners in the counties hit by Georges had not purchased flood protection from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which means they will likely seek low-interest federal loans to help recover. Insured storm damage from Hurricane Georges also was estimated at $1 billion in the Caribbean. Most of those losses, in a region where just 30% of households are insured, came from damage to businesses. Nearly a month after Hurricane Georges hit the islands of the northern Caribbean, bodies of the dead are still turning up in Haiti, pushing the Caribbean death toll higher and higher. Poor communications in Haiti delayed reports on deaths, injuries and damages from the storm.
Its toll has risen to 213 and is likely to top 240, a civil defense official said Monday. Georges is now being blamed for killing at least 509 people across the Caribbean, including 283 in the Dominican Republic. A report on storm damage from Haiti’s northern district has yet to be completed, he said. Some 30 people were reported missing and feared dead from the storm, which struck Haiti on Sept. 23, Deslorges said. Most of the Haitian deaths were blamed on flooding and mud slides in rural, mountainous areas.
For generations, Haitian peasants have cut down trees to make charcoal, denuding mountains and leaving them unable to absorb rainfall. A flash flood nearly destroyed the .
