Human geography: concepts, scope, and contemporary issues

Human Geography - Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans

The topic of this paper is an analysis of Hurricane Katrina and its impact on human geography in New Orleans, Mississippi and Alabama as compared to the human geography considerations in Florida, another area which experiences devastating hurricanes on an even more frequent basis (Pacione 1999).

The events of Hurricane Katrina exposed a new generation to the dangers of living at or below sea level in a hurricane-prone area. Unlike other hurricane-prone "disaster areas," like coastal Bangladesh, there are fewer pressures for population to gravitate towards the Gulf Coast. New Orleans's position at the mouth of the Mississippi river delta has made it an important seaport for the past 300 years, representing a way to access the exports and imports of the giant Mississippi and associated drainage areas, from the Ohio river delta in the East to the Missouri river delta, extending to Montana.

New Orleans thus has a special reason to attract import-export firms. Recent decades have brought offshore oil and gas production, which has made New Orleans and Houston hubs for supply, domicile and financing for oil companies and oil field service companies.

Like 1/3rd of the Netherlands, New Orleans and its surrounding area is at or below sea level. The city had developed levees in the 1700's and 1800's, which were defended as early as 1814 by Andrew Jackson, who repelled the British in their attempt to breach the levees and flood the city. The politics of Louisiana and New Orleans predate the Louisiana Purchase in the early 1800's, and were always characterized by office-seeking, bribery and incompetence. Thus Louisiana was the home to a governor who was jailed in the 1980's for bribery and extortion, and its leading senator, "Catfish" Boggs, was known for decades to steer pork in Louisiana's direction.

The important function of levee maintenance was entrusted to appointed 'levee commissions.' The City of New Orleans has 17 such commissions, each responsible for a part of the levee. These commissions contract separately for maintenance and increasing the height of the levees; these lucrative contracts are a part of the rich patronage network which typifies Louisiana and New Orleans politics and public spending.

The Army Corps of Engineers has broad federal authority to supervise, audit and, in many cases, correct or improve flood control in the Mississippi Basin. It had conducted a number of audits over the years which established that the New Orleans levees were not adequate to a high-wind hurricane, and went so far as to predict (with great accuracy) the amount of flooding which could take place in the City of New Orleans if such a hurricane were to strike land (Nicholson 2005).

New Orleans is not alone in exposure to dangerous hurricanes and associated flooding. The worst hurricane in terms of loss of life was that in Galveston, Texas in 1905, which killed over 6,000 people. Galveston at the time was the second-largest city in Texas; subsequent population movements emptied the city in favor of Houston, which was inland, and therefore much less susceptible to flooding. Houston's town planners pushed for and built the Houston Ship Channel, which, like New Orleans, created a major harbor for ocean-going freight.

Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi, Alabama and central Florida at the same time that it hit New Orleans. While each of the oceanfront states faced significant damage, none encountered the same loss of life as was experienced in New Orleans. Since there were no levees to breach in those areas, part of the reason for the difference lies in those states' lower exposure to long-term flooding. But part of the reason for lower loss of lives, and faster subsequent rebuilding, lay in those states' better local and state organization.