Katrina victim who died in wheelchair honored - NBC News Inside the Superdome, things were descending further into hell. By then it was too late for Thornton to call in the staff hed need to keep it running. If it rose, theyd evacuate. On April 25, 2006, workers in the Lower Ninth Ward rebuild the levee that was breached by Hurricane Katrina along the Industrial Canal. The Superdome was, as far as Thornton was concerned, completely destroyed. [12], By August 30, with no air conditioning, temperatures inside the dome had reached the 90s, and the punctured dome at once allowed humidity in and trapped it there. The line to get in was already a quarter-mile long. To do that, they needed to keep it dry. Satellite view of the Superdome showing the damaged roof with the New Orleans Arena to the right on August 30, 2005. He said he just wanted to get out, to go somewhere. It wasnt until midnight that things started to settle down. 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. Local residents gathering outside of the Superdome on September 2, 2005. Every sink was broken. All sources confirm deaths, although the numbers of the dead vary. Katrinas 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 killed more than 4,600 people in Puerto Rico in 2017; and the Okeechobee Hurricane, which hit Florida in 1928 and killed as many as 3,000. The New Orleans Superdome: a great American comeback story But finding the children was only part of the battle. The job was far from over; it took two days to get everyone out and onto buses. We are like animals, Taffany Smith, 25, told the Los Angeles Times, while she gripped her 3-week-old son in her arms. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin were criticized for not ordering mandatory evacuations sooner. Nagin told the men to get him a list of supplies they needed, and he would get it from FEMA. A group of Amish student volunteers tour the Lower Ninth Ward on February 24, 2006. Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Reports of other rapes were widespread. 25% were caused by injury and trauma and 11% were caused by heart conditions. With no relief in sight and in the absence of any organized effort to restore order, some neighbourhoods experienced substantial amounts of looting, and helicopters were used to rescue many people from rooftops in the flooded Ninth Ward. Mayor, youve got to get these people out of here, he said. By the time the storm strengthened to a category 3 hurricane, winds exceeded 115 miles per hour. "[3], The Superdome was built to withstand most natural catastrophes. It has been 10 years since Hurricane Katrina nearly destroyed the city ofNew Orleans. Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest hurricane to strike the US Gulf Coast since 1928. A man in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward rides a canoe in high water on August 31, 2005. After Hurricane Katrina struck, numerous federal officials, including President George W. Bush, claimed that there was little that could have been done to prevent the disaster. On the morning of August 29, 2005, Katrina made landfall around 60 miles southeast of New Orleans. "[2], Despite these previous periods of emergency use, as Katrina approached the city, officials had not stockpiled enough generator fuel, food, and other supplies to handle the needs of the thousands of people seeking refuge there. 2005 Hurricane Katrina: Facts, FAQs, and how to help And with everyone scattered, it became incredibly difficult to reunite children with their birth parents. Weve been here since 6 a.m., and this is getting worse and worse, State Police Officer K.W. In response, guardsmanput up barbed wire at various areas around the building, protecting themselves from the general population. They were taken to the Lamar Dixon Expo Center in Baton Rouge. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Sept. 1, 2006, 3:09 PM PDT / Source: The Associated Press. All of our employees had left town with the mandatory evacuation, he said. Three people died in the Superdome; one apparently jumped off a 50-foot high walkway. Nearly half the fatalities in Louisiana were people over the age of 74. Out of 60 nursing homes in New Orleans, 21 had evacuated their residents in advance of Katrina. This story has been shared 120,685 times. By 4:30 p.m., the winds were dying down and Thornton and Mouton went outside and surveyed the building. My instincts as a building manager are to evacuate, he said. Thornton and his skeleton crew he only had 18 management staff and security officers there, along with the National Guard had to figure out how to best prepare the building to serve as a shelter. In Louisiana, where more than 1,500 people are believed to have died due to Katrinas impact, drowning (40 percent), injury and trauma (25 percent), and heart conditions (11 percent) were the major causes of death, according to a report published in 2008 by the American Medical Association. On May 12, 2015, rubble remains at what used to be the B.W. [13], On August 31, it was announced that the Superdome evacuees would be moved to the Astrodome in Houston. katrina Why Did Hurricane Katrina Kt Women So Hard? President Bush was otherwise occupied during this time. The flooding destroyed New Orleans, the Nation's thirty-fifth largest city. The office asked him if he could open up the Superdome as a refuge of last resort for the city of New Orleans. [39] However, that number also counted four bodies that were near the dome. FEMA had sent the trucks to act as a makeshift morgue. A woman gets carried out of floodwaters after being trapped in her home in Orleans Parish, Louisiana, on August 30, 2005. By 2021, the estimated population had increased to 376,971, according to the Census. In addition, a Bleacher Report article quotes Thornton saying "We're not a hospital. It was already known that the generators would not provide lights or air conditioning for the whole dome if the power failed, and also pumps providing water to second-level restrooms wouldn't function. Rumours spread in the press of reports of rapes, violent assaults, murders, drug abuse, and gang activity inside the Superdome, most of which were entirely unsubstantiated and without witnesses. 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. At one point, the storm became a Category 5, but weakened before striking land. At St. Rita's Nursing Home, residents were reportedly abandoned by the staff, and 35 people drowned as a result. People had broken up into factions by race, separating into small groups throughout the building that the National Guard struggled to control. Many local agencies found themselves unable to respond to the increasingly desperate situation, as their own headquarters and control centres were under 20 feet (6 metres) of water. The streets were still flooded, perhaps even worse than before. A storm worth worrying about had entered the gulf. Hurricane Katrina made its second and third landfalls in the Gulf Coast region on Monday, August 29, 2005, as a Category 3 hurricane. [4] However, when looking into the origins of the claims about 200mph (320km/h) wind security in the Superdome, CNN reported that no engineering study had ever been completed on the amount of wind the structure could withstand. When they got back to the Dome, they arrived to chaos. The groups went in shifts, sneaking down over to the garage, up the stairs and to the helipad. Though downgraded to a category 3, the storms relatively slow forward movement (around 12 mph) covered the region with far more rain than a fast-moving storm would have. Hurricane Katrina reached Category 5 strength in the Gulf Coast, and although it was a Category 3 when it made landfall, it was still one of the "worst disasters in U.S. history," according to World Vision. [33], During the evening on August 31, about 700 elderly and ill patients were transported out by military helicopters and planes from Louis Armstrong International Airport to Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base in Houston. Isaac Chipps contributed reporting to this story. Miller told a reporter. He flew on to Gonzales, where his wife was waiting for him. Most of the tragedies associated with Hurricane Katrina could have been avoided, but due to a variety of reasons, the hurricane quickly became one of the worst disasters to ever occur in the United States. The National Guards headquarters had flooded, so the entire operation had moved to the Superdome. Hurricane Katrina had intruded on the last safe place. Hours before three major levees were breached, President Bush announced that New Orleans had "dodged a bullet," despite the fact that Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco had already requested federal assistance two days before the hurricane hit, according to The Society Pages. Hurricane Katrina's Devastation in Photos - HISTORY Huge crowds of seething and tense people jammed the main concourse outside the dome hoping to get on the buses to the Astrodome in Houston, 350 miles away. https://www.britannica.com/event/Hurricane-Katrina, LiveScience - Hurricane Katrina: Facts, Damage and Aftermath, Hurricane Katrina - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). At 7 am Katrina is a Category 5 with 160 mph maximum sustained winds. It was the most eerie sight Ill ever recall in my life. . Emergency lights worked intermittently as engineers struggled to keep backup generators running as the area around the dome flooded. For the remainder of that night, it was just Doug Thornton and a few remaining members of his management and security teams. While Mouton and Thornton worked to find space for them to operate, two massive, 18-wheeler refrigerated trucks pulled into the loading dock, not far from the door where new arrivals entered the building. They found a 50-foot fuel line and screwed it into the reserve tank of the generator, then ran it out to the truck, which was parked in several feet of water outside the exterior door. [5] Maj. Gen. Bennett C. Landreneau of the Louisiana National Guard, said that the number of people taking shelter in the Superdome rose to around 15,00020,000 as search and rescue teams brought more people from areas hit hard by the flooding.[6]. One of the worst disasters in U.S. history, Katrina caused an estimated $161 billion in damage. It was going to be the big one. Hurricane Katrina, the tropical cyclone that struck the Gulf Coast in August 2005, was the third-strongest hurricane to hit the United States in its history at the time.