Dr. Robert Sheets is considered a national expert on hurricanes. He was a former director of the National Hurricane Center. In 2000, he gave the keynote speech to a conference disecting the problems and issues that arose from Hurricane Floyd (1999). Below is part of the speech he gave. As you read it, think if anyone who is now or was in charge with Hurricane Katrina was listening.
During the course of my work with the hurricane preparedness programs at the National Hurricane Center, I’ve documented a lot of hurricane-caused destruction. I took “before” pictures and matched them with the “after” pictures, and sometimes the destruction is unbelievable. Hurricane Camille made landfall in Mississippi with sustained winds of about 175 miles per hour – the last category five hurricane to strike the continental United States. The twenty-five foot storm surge breached an eight foot seawall and leveled a three-story apartment complex. That is the power of wave action. One home on the Mississippi coast, built in the mid-1800’s, was extremely well built, but it was destroyed by Camille.
The power of a storm often exceeds the strength of man-made storm barriers. For instance, rip-rap (large, organized piles of rock) are often placed as a barrier between the beach and an adjacent road or a housing area. The Phillips Petroleum Company made a well-advertised filter cloth on which rip-rap was piled. This cloth was used along oceanfront property in South Carolina. It failed to work as advertised during Hurricane Camille; the rip-rap wound up in the living room of a home that was in the second row back from the ocean. Those living in disaster-prone areas often have a false sense of security., which is based on perceptions of construction quality and a belief that protective structures will work.
Hurricanes are rare events. But they do come, and they destroy a great deal of what lies in their paths, often at great surprise to many people. There was a gentleman I met after Hurricane Hugo who lived up on a bluff, and he said, “[the] water’s never been in my yard, I don’t evacuate, I’ve been here since 1928.” During Hugo, he almost died. He, his son, and his grandson survived by hnaging onto a tree, but everything was gone. This is an example of people’s perception of their risk. Their perception is based on what has been personally experienced, or maybe what their fathers experienced, or their grandfathers. Once the reference point is exceeded, disaster preparation ends.
At 4 pm CDT on Sunday, August 28th, the National Hurricane Center issued this warning.
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 165 MPH…WITH HIGHER GUSTS. KATRINA IS A POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE. SOME FLUCTUATIONS IN STRENGTH ARE LIKELY UNTIL LANDFALL. KATRINA IS EXPECTED TO MAKE LANDFALL AT CATEGORY FOUR OR FIVE INTENSITY. WINDS AFFECTING THE UPPER FLOORS OF HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS WILL BE SIGNIFICANTLY STRONGER THAN THOSE NEAR GROUND LEVEL.
165 mph winds? This is only 10 mph less than Camille. Are the warning alarms going off any where? CAT 5 – hello? Anyone?
COASTAL STORM SURGE FLOODING OF 18 TO 22 FEET ABOVE NORMAL TIDE LEVELS…LOCALLY AS HIGH AS 28 FEET…ALONG WITH LARGE AND DANGEROUS BATTERING WAVES…CAN BE EXPECTED NEAR AND TO THE EAST OF WHERE THE CENTER MAKES LANDFALL. SOME LEVEES IN THE GREATER NEW ORLEANS AREA COULD BE OVERTOPPED. SIGNIFICANT STORM SURGE FLOODING WILL OCCUR ELSEWHERE ALONG THE CENTRAL AND NORTHEASTERN GULF OF MEXICO COAST.
18 to 22 feet storm surge? Levees in the greater New Orleans area could be overtopped? Hello, anyone. Paging Mr. Brown. Paging Mr. Brown. Hello?
I am posting parts of the Hurricane Floyd Conference on my blog Six Degrees of Aaron. It is taking me a while, because I am have to write all of the sections out that this is prior to the wonderful days of posting everything online. So bare with me as I work through the 50+ papers and speeches given. I will cross post as many as I can.