Weather and Disasters

Hurricane Katrina, which happened at the end of August in 2005, was recorded as the most destructive hurricane in US history. The heaviest damage was caused to New Orleans in Louisiana, where about 80% of the city area was under water. One thousand eight hundred and thirty-six people died from the disaster and economic damage amounted to $ 125 billion.

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This tragedy had far-reaching environmental consequences. Reservoirs of drinking water were contaminated because of ingress of oil products. Outbreaks of dysentery, typhoid, gastric diseases and poisonings by stale food were registered in some areas of New Orleans. More than 34 million liters of oil were spilled in the south of Louisiana, more than 100 oil platforms were damaged, 52 of them were totally destroyed. Dams were breached. Rivers and lakes overflowed and the city was almost completely under the water. Residents tried to save themselves on the roofs from alligators. Reptiles swam in the water and tore to pieces everyone, who fell within their reach. Chemicals, sewage, gas, debris of houses got mixed and a countless number of corpses floated in the water.

Hurricane Katrina caused such serious damage to the US economy, that its consequences led to a sharp increase in gasoline prices and a decrease in production volumes, which influenced world energy prices. The greatest damage was caused infrastructure of the southern states. Such sectors of the economy as trade, tourism, construction and agriculture were affected by the disaster. Energy and related industries suffered in Louisiana and Mississippi, but Louisiana suffered the most. New Orleans was hit by the wave of crime, where residents were looted and raped. Looters broke into the shops and grilles with windows were ripped from jewelry stores and robbers penetrated inside. That is why, the state of emergency was imposed in the city.

Heavy rains literally flooded several cities in Mississippi and Louisiana, Biloxi and New Orleans suffered too. Water levels rose in Lake Pontchartrain because of rains that caused severe flooding in New Orleans. Downpours struck Florida, Alabama and Georgia, as well as the states of Tennessee, the Great Lakes region, the Appalachian Mountains. It suffered even a part of the territory of Canada. Hurricane Katrina took the lives of 1,600 people. Almost 80% of the city was completely flooded. This was just the part that was below sea level. New Orleans was between two fires. The Gulf of Mexico placed on the one side of the city, from where the hurricane came. Mississippi and the largest lake Ponchartrain were located on the other side of the channel. Before Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi, collecting water from 40% of the land in the United States, was one of the most polluted rivers in the world. In 1990 the farmers, who worked in the Mississippi basin, used 21 billion pounds of fertilizer and 283 million pounds of pesticides. Reset of fertilizer caused a lack of oxygen in the water and created the most extensive dead zone near the coast Louisiana. That year it expanded to 8000 square miles and the hurricane exacerbated that difficult situation. Alain Decaux, from South Carolina State University, emphasized that the biggest problem was water deficit, which arose not only because of the river pollution, but also because of the hurricane.

According to the Guardian, the Louisiana coast was severely damaged by the hurricane because the artificial engineering constructions led to the erosion of natural barriers in the delta. Construction of thousands of kilometers of dikes and water barriers to protect settlements and navigation paths led to the disappearance of natural barriers that traditionally protect against storm waves and hurricanes (Gajanan & Brait, 2015). Comprehensive analysis of the aerospace and ground truth data during the passage of Hurricane Katrina over the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico revealed the presence of atmospheric ionospheric relations manifested in the following:

1) The intense storm walls caused an increase process and the allocation of the latent heat of evaporation.

2) Vertical electric field, generated by the hurricane, penetrated the ionosphere and created anomalies in the vertical distribution of electron density.

3) High-performance remote monitoring techniques for the study demonstrated such critical processes in the Earth's atmosphere as tropical cyclones.

If people talk about the statistics, then officially confirmed a number of victims amounted to 1407 people. According to recent data, there were 1,600 people. More than 720 victims were registered in New Orleans. In addition, 47 people went missing in December 2005. 801 people died in Louisiana, 219 people died in Mississippi, 11 people died in Florida, two persons lost in Alabama and Georgia. Experts said that a city that is below sea level, may be destroyed by the hurricane from 60 to 80% (Zimmermann, 2015).

Thus, Katrina left behind a large number of victims and damage. The hurricane was the largest in US history, according to the researchers in 2005. Katrina showed that natural disasters and health crises are a much greater threat to national security than terrorism. All activity in the region stopped, as a result, Katrina destroyed a local culture and economy of local cities. In addition, people create the conditions for life themselves, so they need to apply to the world with care to avoid the global changes in nature.

References

Gajanan, M. & Brait, E. (2015). Hurricane Katrina timeline how the disaster unfolded 10 years ago. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/aug/17/hurricane-katrina-timeline

Path to disaster. (2005). National Geographic Special Edition: Katrina, 36-37.

Zimmermann, K. (2015). Hurricane Katrina: Facts, Damage & Aftermath. Live Science. Retrieved 13 August 2016, from http://www.livescience.com/22522-hurricane-katrina-facts.html