But it worked. Many of them boarded without having any idea of where they were headed. But inside the Superdome, things were deteriorating rapidly. They couldnt find any vehicles to transport the patients safely. You have to fend people off constantly. Because of the ensuing. Blood and feces covered the walls of the facility. Initially, the Superdome was described as a "lawless, depraved, and chaotic" place, with reports of numerous murders. It's also believed that many of these deaths could have been preventable if emergency and hospital services hadn't been as disrupted as they were. [10][11] On August 28, the Louisiana National Guard delivered three truckloads of water and seven truckloads of MREs (meals ready to eat), enough to supply 15,000 people for three days. Thousands of displaced residents take cover from Hurricane Katrina at the Superdome in New . They were taken to the Lamar Dixon Expo Center in Baton Rouge. Following the historical damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina, the name Katrina was retired from the lists of names. But that was the only light they could see. Theres five feet of water on Poydras Street.. On the state and local level, Louisiana Gov. Mouton was there, walking quickly toward him. [4], On August 28, 2005, at 6 am, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin announced that the Superdome would be used as a public shelter. Hurricane Katrina had intruded on the last safe space. For the remainder of that night, it was just Doug Thornton and a few remaining members of his management and security teams. They drove four hours from Bossier City where Doug, an executive with SMG, managed a facility back to New Orleans, a lone car on the inbound side of the highway as thousands upon thousands of cars sat in traffic on the outbound lanes. The cost to repair the dome was initially stated by Superdome commission chairman Tim Coulon to be up to $400 million. Over the next two days the weather system gathered strength, earning the designation Tropical Storm Katrina, and it made landfall between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as a category 1 hurricanea storm that, on the Saffir-Simpson scale, exhibits winds in the range of 7495 miles (119154 km) per hour. Water poured onto the field. Supplies were dangerously low, with one mother saying officials told her to reuse diapers by scraping them out when they got dirty. Taking them in through the exterior door would have been quicker, but Thorntoncouldnt risk the flood of water if they opened the back door. There were no designated medical staff at work in the evacuation center, no established sick bay within the Superdome, and very few cots available that hadn't been brought in by evacuees. - About 25,000 storm evacuees were sheltered at the Louisiana Superdome, a sports arena. Thornton finally spoke. The Social Science Research Council writes that this disparity occurred because elderly people were neither evacuated nor protected effectively. It has been 10 years since Hurricane Katrina nearly destroyed the city ofNew Orleans. Temperatures had reached the upper 80s, and the punctured dome at once allowed humidity in and trapped it there. I thought it would be two days at most and wed be out, said Thornton. By 7 p.m. everyone was inside and had been checked. Despite the planned use of the Superdome as an evacuation center, government officials at the local, state and federal level were criticized for poor preparation and response, especially Mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin, President George W. Bush, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael D. knock out power for about 1 million and cause $630 million of damage, Cities of the Underworld: Hurricane Katrina, about 100,000 people were trapped in the city when the storm hit, fourth highest of any hurricane in U.S. history, according to a report published in 2008 by the American Medical Association. Although post-traumatic stress symptoms showed a decline in the years after the hurricane, "one in six still had symptoms indicative of probable post-traumatic stress disorder.". 25% were caused by injury and trauma and 11% were caused by heart conditions. Outside, there was anarchy. With the failure of the air conditioning, temperatures inside the Superdome reached the high 90s, with heavy humidity. This is 40 or 50 feet up in the air. Never did we think wed be here for nearly a week.. Thousands of survivors are at the Astrodome after the Superdome became unsafe following the levee breaks in New Orleans. There was stillno word on when, exactly, the buses would arrive. A FEMA employee told Thornton and Mouton they expected to find lots ofdead bodies, and had decided to bring them here, next to the place where those left in the city were fighting to live. Some levees buttressing the Industrial Canal, the 17th Street Canal, and other areas were overtopped by the storm surge, and others were breached after these structures failed outright from the buildup of water pressure behind them. That night, around 6 p.m., Thornton got a phone call. The White House writes that by February 2006, there were still over 2,000 people who were counted as missing, and many are still missing over 15 years after the storm. Cooper housing project play on mattresses on June 10, 2007. As a result, according to ESRI, most minority communities ended up living in neighborhoods that were cheaply built and in areas more susceptible to flooding. Exaggerating deaths in Hurricane Ian a disservice to public They mulled it over. He went to his 6 a.m. status meeting with the National Guard and SMG staff, and twenty minutes in the lights flickered off, then back on. Katrina's death toll is the fourth highest of any hurricane in U.S. history, after the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which killed between 8,000 and 12,000 people; Hurricane Maria, which. Thornton and Mouton went to work, spending a hour writing up a two-page, handwritten list of everything they needed. If it rose, theyd evacuate. And when the levees were breached, there were only two FEMA workers on the ground. The men sat in stunned silence. 2008 Dec;2(4):215-23. doi: 10.1097/DMP.0b013e31818aaf55. Hurricane Katrina caused up to $161 billion worth of damage, largely due to the fact that the breached levees led to flooding in 80% of New Orleans. So that means youre going to have to be here probably another 5 or 6 days., Mr. In fact, the first hurricane-related deaths occurred the day before Katrina struck when three residents died whilst being evacuated to Baton Rouge. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Several hundredof Thorntons part-time employees had shown up as well, unable to evacuate, and hed placed them in one of the club lounges along with the families of some New Orleans Police Department officers. At the peak of the Katrina recovery effort, 51,039 National Guard soldiers from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and three territories worked in Louisiana and Mississippi, making Katrina by far . According to PBS, two weeks after the storm, 25% of the children remained unaccounted for. The population of the festering, battered dome had gone from 15,000 to 30,000 in a short time as helicopters and vehicles capable of cutting through the water picked up stranded citizens and brought them to the only place left to go in the entire city. This was it. NBC News reports that although there were stories of freezers full of bodies, "no such pile of bodies was [ever] found.". This is not normal.. It was a good option, but one never used. Supplies were running low, and as the National Guard began to ration things like water and diapers the crowd grew incensed and accused them of hoarding goods for their own use. [35], On September 4, NOPD chief Eddie Compass reported, "We don't have any substantiated rapes. . Although up to 1.7 million people were evacuated in Louisiana alone, hundreds of thousands of people were stranded during the hurricane. Lets think about that very carefully, he said. The National Weather Service was revising its forecast again. Trapped in the Superdome: Refuge becomes a hellhole No electricity in New Orleans meant no air conditioning in the dome, filling it with a horrible, muggy heat. We're not a hotel. Ive been in there seven days, and I havent had a bath. It was going to be the big one. The flooding destroyed New Orleans, the Nation's thirty-fifth largest city. Then, one of the mechanicshad an idea: Bypass the tank altogether. After a traffic jam kept buses from arriving at the Superdome for nearly four hours, a near-riot broke out in the scramble to get on the buses that finally did show up. The men hooked up the line, fuel started flowing. It hit land as a Category 3 storm with winds reaching speeds as high as 120 miles per hour. What were Hurricane Katrinas wind speeds? Residents of Saucier, Mississippi, line up to get gas on August 31, 2005. Over the next several days the Domewould sink into chaos. Residents of the B.W. 25% were caused by injury and trauma and 11% were caused by heart conditions. Food rotted inside of hundreds of refrigerators and freezers spread throughout the building; the smell was inescapable. At its height as a category 5 hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico, Katrinas wind speeds exceeded 170 miles per hour. Despite the strength of Hurricane Katrina, there was little about the storm that made it intrinsically deadly. ", Socialist Alternative writes the budget of the Crops was slashed after 2003, largely to pay for the Iraq War and tax cuts for the wealthy: "A refusal to invest tens of millions of dollars into strengthening levees has led to a catastrophe that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars." But its the only shot we got.. 2023 A&E Television Networks, LLC. After it made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, Hurricane Katrina produced widespread flooding in southeastern Louisiana because the levee system that held back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne was completely overwhelmed by 10 inches of rain and Katrinas storm surge. Why Did Hurricane Katrina - JSTOR "Hurricane Katrina survivors in the Superdome." . A woman cries after returning to her house and business, destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, on August 30, 2005, in Biloxi, Mississippi. They had no good options. The Black population of New Orleans has also fallen, since out of the 175,000 Black residents who left New Orleans, over 75,000 never returned. We've received your submission. By some estimates, between 80 and 90 percent of New Orleans population was able to evacuate the city prior to Katrina. Only after Katrina passed were people going to be bussed to shelters. As buses finally started arriving to pluck refugees from the Louisiana Superdome yesterday, a horrifying picture emerged of the squalor, violence and mayhem that they faced during the days spent huddled in the stadium. Hurricane Katrina | Deaths, Damage, & Facts | Britannica Food rotted inside the hundreds of unpowered refrigerators and freezers spread throughout the building. Do you think this is going to work? he asked. Some 25,000 crowded into the convention center, while more than 25,000 filled the Superdome. After passing over Florida, Katrina again weakened, and was reclassified as a tropical storm. However, there was no water purification equipment on site, nor any chemical toilets, antibiotics, or anti-diarrheals stored for a crisis. In April 2000, according to the Data Center, the population of New Orleans was 484,674; by July 2006, not quite a year after Katrina, it had dropped by more than 250,000, to some 230,172. Doug Thornton knew he had to get his people out. Preparations by location South Florida. Thornton, pacing inside, turned to one of the mechanics. The domes water supply gave out Wednesday, and toilets began to overflow, filling the cavernous stadium with a nauseating smell. And just from the sound of the rain and the wind, I said, Look. But now, in the moonlight, she finally understood what had happened. At noon, they opened the doors and thousands of New Orleanians started shuffling in, carrying ice chests, kids toys, clothes, and whatever belongings they could carry. The generator kept burning. We need to get these people into the parking garages, where at least they can get out of the building and into some fresh air.. 4:23 PM EST, Mon January 16, 2023. And despite the fact that this was meant to be a temporary shelter, they ended up being stranded in the stadium for a week. Governor Blanco's comment regarding M-16s was likely in response to the reports of snipers shooting at police and rescue workers. There is feces all over the place.. A 2008 report from the Louisiana Health Department put the total at . The food inside the freezers had soon rotted, and "the smell was inescapable.". Meanwhile, foster families struggled with making sure that their children had their medication. A refill was supposed to be on the way that day, but opening the door for the fuel truck would flood the room. All of our employees had left town with the mandatory evacuation, he said. Another 20,000 people gathered at the Convention Center for assistance, an evacuation site the federal government was unaware of until three days after the storm. Then the male employees, and, finally, the men who worked security would be the last to leave. Security checks were conducted, and people with medical illnesses or disabilities were moved to one side of the dome with supplies and medical personnel. "[3], The Superdome was built to withstand most natural catastrophes. I Was There: Hurricane Katrina Superdome Survivor - HISTORY At least 1,833 died in the hurricane and subsequent floods. A bustling black market has also emerged, with cigarettes, at $10 a pack, and anti-diuretics, which help forestall going to the bathroom, hot items. The men found a weak spot in the wall, a metal panel around head height, and punched a hole through it. [8] Further damage included water damage to the electrical systems, and mold spread. [19][20] The refugees were given three meals and snacks daily, along with hygiene supplies, and were allowed to use the locker rooms to shower. After levees and flood walls protecting New Orleans failed, much of the city was underwater. After levees and flood walls protecting New Orleans failed, much of the city was underwater. Meanwhile, NOLA.com reports that New Orleans police officers were given authorization to shoot looters. They got it to the city and waited for their supplies. Feces covered the walls of bathrooms. Nearly 56% of the losses occurred in Louisiana and nearly 30% occurred in Mississippi. Up to 47% "were caused by acute and chronic diseases." A helicopter rescues a family from a rooftop on September 1, 2005. In some areas, floodwaters reached depths of 10 to 15 feet, and didnt recede for weeks. A group of Amish student volunteers tour the Lower Ninth Ward on February 24, 2006. [49][50] Grambling State University beat Southern University, 5035.[51]. Unfortunately, it was made significantly worse than it had to be. Denise Thornton was tasked with deciding the order of evacuation. Some of those who left later returned, and by 2020 the population reached just over 390,000, or about 80 percent of its pre-Katrina population. Miller told a reporter. The water kept rising outside the exteriordoor, and was slowly coming in. And despite the fact that this was meant to be a temporary shelter, they ended up being stranded in the stadium for a week. The population of New Orleans fell from 484,674 in April 2000 to 230,172 in July 2006, a decrease of over 50%. The Louisiana Superdome was used as a "shelter of last resort" for those in New Orleans unable to evacuate from the city when Hurricane Katrina struck on August 29, 2005. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. NIGHTMARE OF ROBBERY, FILTH, DEATH & RAPE IN SUPERDOME - New York Post When the hurricane made landfall in southeast Louisiana on Aug. 29, 2005, its intensity had diminished but was still a major Category 3 storm. Early the next morning Thorntonwoke from a fitful sleep, then went out into the hallway outside his office. There were two reports of rape, one involving a child. As a result, thousands of people became stranded at the Superdome, while thousands more ended up on the roofs of their homes as floodwaters reached heights of 20 feet. There wasnt much more he could do. Mouton found out that there were sandbags available on Franklin Avenue inLakefront. Up to a month after Hurricane Katrina, over 100 children were still unaccounted for, and it took until November to find everyone. He said he just wanted to get out, to go somewhere. Her escape out. Tulane University postponed its scheduled football game against the University of Southern Mississippi until November 26. Levees at various locations in the city had failed, and the pumping stations, overwhelmed with water and damaged by the storm, werent working.