Geographical Effects of Hurricane Katrina Thesis

Geographical Effects of Hurricane Katrina - Thesis Example A catastrophe of this level provides an opportunity to examine how long-range recovery is evident within an impacted area to determine the motivators of recovery as they change spatially and temporally, and in this case, geographically. The objective of this essay is to examine and discuss several geographical risks and opportunities of the devastated New Orleans. After the disastrous hurricane Katrina, it barely needs too much thinking to suggest that New Orleans is destined to have a ‘new’ geographical makeup. Even though it is quite premature to envision with any level of confidence the content, form, and dimension of this makeup, several geographical issues are mainly worth taking into account. Even though the devastation of New Orleans seemed large-scale in news coverage, the geography of destruction in the city was indeed fairly inconsistent. Besides eastern and central New Orleans, Jefferson Parish’s low-lying parts were flooded (Colten 2005). ... A lot of their houses were partly inundated. In several instances the water reached houses’ roofs, compelling distressed individuals who had moved to their home’s upper floor to hack openings in roofs to get out (Ward 2008). All over the storm-devastated region, the Coast Guard ‘rescued 12,533 people by air and 11,584 by boat, as one-third of the Coast Guard’s air fleet was deployed to the Gulf Coast’ (Johnson 2006, 139). The University of New Orleans, the New Orleans Convention Center, and the Louisiana Superdome became emergency shelters (Johnson 2006). From these and other sites, the population was finally relocated to refuges in Louisiana and other areas. Possibly 10,000 of the 455,000 dwellers of New Orleans stayed in the metropolitan area after mass departure (p. 139), together with several people who stubbornly declined to abandon their homes. By September New Orleans was a completed vacated, the same as St. Bernard Parish and portions of neig hboring Slidell and Metairie (Rydin 2006). Much of the city’s infrastructure, especially telecommunications, shut down not including text messaging, which became a salvation for a large number of people. Numerous businesses closed, discharging thousands of employees. Regular transportation was closed down. Police consent was needed for access into most of the metropolitan area (Eckstein 2006). More disastrously, a significant portion of New Orleans’s population died. By September several inhabitants of flooded neighborhoods were permitted to go back to their homes (Curtis, Mills, Kennedy, Fotheringham & McCarthy 2007). The levee breaches had been remedied and the ‘dewatering’ of the area was in progress (p. 210). The view that