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What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina--the Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist
Viking
May 2006
320 pages
ISBN: 0670037818
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
It was a natural disaster—but magnified enormously by
government’s crushing incompetence in both preparation and
response. The storm leveled the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but
man-made problems destroyed New Orleans. The catastrophic
flooding there should never have happened. Properly designed
and constructed levees would have protected the city.
Instead, they collapsed. Never in American history has a
natural disaster been magnified so disastrously by the
systemic failure of our government to protect and serve the
people. The result is the national tragedy known forevermore
as simply Katrina. The question is, what do we do now? The story begins innocently, with yet another little
disturbance in the Caribbean, the next in a summer’s growing
storm count. But some scientists were already fearing the
worst as tropical depression 12 strengthened into a
hurricane, grew still more in the Gulf of Mexico, then took
deadly aim at the most vulnerable coastal region in the
United States: south Louisiana and the famed "city that care
forgot," New Orleans. Among those scientists was LSU disaster specialist and
hurricane researcher Ivor van Heerden. For the last decade,
he had used every available megaphone to warn of this
catastrophe waiting to happen. On August 29, 2005, his worst
fears became reality, and the natural disaster in Louisiana
and Mississippi quickly evolved into national disgrace. Soon
van Heerden became perhaps the most prominent independent
voice in the national media pressing the administration,
FEMA, the Corps of Engineers, everyone at all levels of
government to act now. The Storm is the ultimate inside story of the Katrina
tragedy. In Louisiana, van Heerden is known as a scientist
who tells it like it is. He knows why the levees failed to
protect New Orleans. As a former coastal restoration chief
for the state, he knows why the abused wetlands surrounding
the city could not protect the levees. He knew how many
people would be unwilling—or unable—to evacuate and how many
homes were likely to be destroyed. And he has seen with his
own eyes the politics responsible over the decades for the
failure to plan for this completely predictable situation.
He now unites this understanding with his firsthand,
behind-the-scenes reporting, including the state’s official
investigation into the levee failures, which he led. Van Heerden witnessed the desperation of first responders
who were unable to talk with one another—and the heroism of
those same responders, tirelessly working the waters of a
flooded New Orleans to save thousands of lives. This is
their story. It is the story of the families that escaped
the flooding in Louisiana and the devastating storm surge on
the Mississippi coastline—and it is told in memory of those
1,300 Americans who did not. If the past is indeed prologue, "America’s wetlands" is in
terminal trouble, but they don’t have to be. Van Heerden
lays out the necessary course of action for building the
levees and the protective wetlands that will guarantee "Cat
5" flood protection for New Orleans and the surrounding
communities. Success depends only on civic will and
political leadership. Van Heerden doesn’t like to see
science pushed to the sidelines, but that is what happened
in Louisiana for decades. He is the only one to connect the
dots between the bureaucrats, the politicians, the Corps of
Engineers, and the tragic chain of events that culminated in
the catastrophe that crippled, perhaps forever, a great
American city.
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