Remembering lessons from failures of Katrina

By Eric Kevin Stern / For The Conversation

Hurricane Katrina looms large in the history of American emergency management, both for what went wrong as the disaster unfolded and for the policy changes it triggered.

As the nation looks back on the disaster 20 years later, I believe as a crisis and emergency management specialist that it is more important than ever to remember Katrina’s lessons to avoid repeating past mistakes.

When Katrina hit New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, its storm surge broke through levees protecting the city. Water quickly poured into low-lying neighborhoods, flooding houses up to their rooftops and inundating an estimated 80 percent of the city. People who could not evacuate before the storm and were lucky enough to escape to their roofs were stranded for days in some cases.

Once the water had receded and the death toll counted, it became clear that nearly 1,400 people had died as a result of this devastating storm. The hurricane did more than $100 billion in damage, equivalent to about $170 billion today when adjusted for inflation.

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