Ten years ago this month, Hurricane Katrina—third most intense hurricane to make landfall in the U.S., based on central pressure—slammed into the U.S. Gulf Coast, beginning the nation’s worst and most widespread disaster since the Great Easter 1913 flood. Ten harsh lessons from both
“You need to pay attention to what is happening with Hurricane
Katrina,” advised the late Air Force senior historian Craig B. Waff (1946–2012), who called me from Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio, just a few days
after Katrina began battering the Gulf
Coast on August 29, 2005. “Many aspects
seem to be repeats of what you’ve been discovering about the 1913 flood.”
 |
| Flooded houses in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (left) and in Dayton during the Great Easter 1913 flood. Credit: Jocelyn Augustino/FEMA and Dayton Metro Library |
“But the 1913 flood wasn’t a hurricane; it was a winter
storm system,” I objected, at that time still rather narrowly focused after having
then researched the Great Easter 1913 national calamity for just over two years
and published just my first article on it.
“Doesn’t matter,” he replied. “The societal parallels are uncannily
striking.”
How prophetic he proved to be.
1 – Both 2005 and
1913 were really, really bad. The
protracted disaster that began with Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005
ultimately killed over 1,800 people
and devastated more than 90,000 square miles in at least half a dozen states
(Louisiana,
Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, and Alabama)—about the area of Great Britain. The Federal government spent more than $110 billion in disaster relief,
recovery, and rebuilding while private insurers and reinsurers covered nearly another
$62 billion in
insured catastrophe losses—the highest annual U.S. insured catastrophe loss ever. In comparison, the Great Easter 1913 disaster claimed some 1,000 lives, afflicted a similar area over parts of 15 states, costing the equivalent of
at least $116 to $130 billion (in 2013 dollars) of documented damage. In both cases, we’ll never know precisely just how bad, as many flood losses
were uninsured (and thus uncounted) and many people may have died months later
and not been counted as part of the original figures.
 |
| Rainfall during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (left) and during the Great Easter Flood of 1913 (right). Also shown are the devastating Easter 1913 tornadoes and multistate dust storm. Credit: NOAA and Trudy E. Bell |
 |
| Costliest hurricanes. Credit: AccuWeather |
2 – 2005 wasn’t just
Katrina. “Don’t Call it Katrina” is the title of a May 29, 2015 New Yorker article by Thomas Beller. Katrina was just the first knockout punch of a series
of devastating
hurricanes, followed three and a half weeks later by powerful Hurricane Rita,
hitting land over Louisiana and Texas on September 24, but already fading into forgetfulness. Katrina and Rita marked the first time that two hurricanes of Category 5 strength
on the Saffir-Simpson scale formed in the Gulf of Mexico in a single season. Really forgotten was the proverbial last straw: Hurricane Wilma—the most
intense Atlantic hurricane on record—which nicked the tip of Florida on October
24, doing another $29 billion in damage, but concentrated most of its fury over
the Yucatan. Not only did these hurricanes bring storm surges and torrential
rain, but they were also accompanied by tornadoes—59 for Katrina and no fewer
than 89 for Rita, putting both
hurricanes in the top 10 for number of tornadoes.
And of course, the Great Easter 1913 storm system consisted not only of
phenomenal flooding in the Midwest—still holding scores of records across Ohio
and Indiana; moreover, it was ushered in with a hurricane-force windstorm (would have
ranked as Category 2) that crucially crippled communications, and was
accompanied by more than a dozen tornadoes, including record-setters in Omaha
(still Nebraska’s deadliest twister) and Terre Haute.
 |
| Hurricane Rita: Credit: NOAA |
 |
| Hurricane Wilma. Credit: AccuWeather |
3 – 2005 wasn’t just
New Orleans. New Orleans was simply the largest city devastated by Katrina,
and the one toward which the media converged, possibly because in all the
devastation it was comparatively easy to reach, had the greatest concentration
of storm survivors and public officials, and had at least some functioning
facilities. New Orleans became the public face of Katrina. But that focus on
just
Katrina and just
New Orleans not only eclipsed the plight of millions of
other Louisianans, but also unjustly obscured the tragedy of Mississippi as well as all the victims of Hurricane Rita, especially those in Texas. This, of course, echoed what happened in 1913,
where Dayton became the focus of public attention as the result of its being
the first major city to get word of the disaster unfolding in Ohio, Indiana,
and elsewhere out to the world despite decimated communications—reinforced by
the fact that Ohio’s governor was also the publisher of the Dayton Daily News
and that Dayton’s savior John H. Patterson was the president of NCR, the city’s largest employer. Even today, the flood is still remembered around Ohio as “the great Dayton
flood,” as if the monumental floodwaters stopped at the city limits.
Ultimately, identifying a natural disaster with one city has the unfortunate
effect of diminishing public perception of both the scope and importance of a
monumental, widespread calamity.
Katrina and just
New Orleans not only eclipsed the plight of millions of
other Louisianans, but also unjustly obscured the tragedy of Mississippi as well as all the victims of Hurricane Rita, especially those in Texas. This, of course, echoed what happened in 1913,
where Dayton became the focus of public attention as the result of its being
the first major city to get word of the disaster unfolding in Ohio, Indiana,
and elsewhere out to the world despite decimated communications—reinforced by
the fact that Ohio’s governor was also the publisher of the Dayton Daily News
and that Dayton’s savior John H. Patterson was the president of NCR, the city’s largest employer. Even today, the flood is still remembered around Ohio as “the great Dayton
flood,” as if the monumental floodwaters stopped at the city limits.
Ultimately, identifying a natural disaster with one city has the unfortunate
effect of diminishing public perception of both the scope and importance of a
monumental, widespread calamity.
4 – 2005 wasn’t just
a “natural” disaster. Beller in his New
Yorker article “Don’t Call It Katrina” plus many other sources make the
point that inadequately maintained levees and other infrastructure compounded
the magnitude of the 2005 disaster in New Orleans and elsewhere. Human hubris
also played a key role in the devastation
wreaked by the 1913 flood, notably
houses and businesses built encroachingly close to rivers and widespread
deforestation that accelerated runoff. Those contributing causes were identified
immediately after both disasters—and likely will be the subject of
an entire future installment to this research blog. The chilling part is,
humans don’t learn. They still think it is perfectly okay to build on flood
plain—see photo at right that I took of the luxury condos built in 2012 in Rocky River, Ohio.
Or they feel that because the last major flood happened in 1913, another such flood is unlikely to happen again, so they are justified in trying to avoid
mandatory flood insurance—as several residents have tried to do in Troy, New
York. They would be well advised to read government reports that predict more frequent
intense greater rainfall and runoff in the coming decades for the Midwest and
Northeast (see top two references in “Benchmarking ‘Extreme’”).
 |
| Luxury condos built on flood plain just a few feet above the average level of the Rocky River. Another danger is the eroding cliff undercutting the houses above the condos. Credit: Trudy E. Bell |
5 – 2005 wasn’t the
worst that could have happened. Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita were “only” Category 3 hurricanes at landfall. They could have
been Category 4 or 5. In 1913, the intense rain fell when the Ohio, Missouri,
and Mississippi rivers were at normal height; they could have been in flood. As
monumental as both calamities were, they were not the worst theoretically possible.
6 – The disaster wasn’t
over when the waters receded and the media left. In 1913, some newspapers went
out of their way to pretend that cities were back to normal as soon as the
floodwaters receded—even to the point of spinning the disaster
as a “water
carnival” equivalent to having the city’s “face washed” and that yielded
nothing worse than some lost wallpaper (see “Spurning Disaster Aid”). In 2005, as recounted by Beller and in a 2012 Huffington Post Live half-hour roundtable discussion on how soon we forget, the reality of living with unsafe
water, inadequate food, temporary housing, filthy streets, devastated infrastructure,
improvised medical care, while trying to rebuild despite having little or no
flood insurance payments—all the time still needing to earn a living and care
for children—imposed huge medical stress on Louisianans and Mississippians (listen
around minute 16:00). One
astute advisor cautioned New Orleans residents, “As
bad as you feel now, you will feel worse in a year” when the adrenaline is gone
and the media are gone, yet residents will still be struggling with finding
gasoline and food. The long slog to recovery resulted in an undercurrent of
rage at slow bureaucracies and clueless public. Observed one Huffington Post Live commentator, “the disaster lasts longer than the news cycle.”
 |
| Paducah, KY, scoffed that the record 1913 flood was a disaster even though floodwaters filled most city streets up to 8 feet deep. Paducah News- Democrat, April 16, 1913, p. 4. |
7 – Plenty of post-disaster
blame was dished out. Blaming everyone in sight after a monumental natural
disaster is apparently a recognized psychological response. The Federal
government was excoriated for many failings in handling emergency response
after the hurricanes in 2005, as well as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the failed levees. That included blaming the very victims of the disasters—even to the point of
implying or stating in 2005 that New Orleans “got what it deserved” because of
its culture of partying and sinfulness (see Beller’s article) or stating the
same thing in 2012 after Hurricane Sandy because the New Jersey coast had the Atlantic
City gambling casinos (see the Huffington
Post Live video around minute 17:30). One
sobering caution regarding reports calling for revamping government responses: any
new procedures won’t get tested until the next Big One—and may themselves fall
short both because they are yet untried, and the next disaster will likely differ
importantly from the past.
after the hurricanes in 2005, as well as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the failed levees. That included blaming the very victims of the disasters—even to the point of
implying or stating in 2005 that New Orleans “got what it deserved” because of
its culture of partying and sinfulness (see Beller’s article) or stating the
same thing in 2012 after Hurricane Sandy because the New Jersey coast had the Atlantic
City gambling casinos (see the Huffington
Post Live video around minute 17:30). One
sobering caution regarding reports calling for revamping government responses: any
new procedures won’t get tested until the next Big One—and may themselves fall
short both because they are yet untried, and the next disaster will likely differ
importantly from the past.
8 – Big natural disasters
are more likely in future. The trend is clear. Many reports predict that weather
will grow more violent as the planet warms, increasing both the
number and the intensity
of future hurricanes (like 2005) as well as the magnitude of riverine floods in
the interior of the eastern half of the nation (like 1913). Costs of major
natural disasters are climbing because of increased population, increased
personal wealth, and increased infrastructure now in harm's way, as well as some people's magical thinking in continuing to believe that no big disaster could really befall them. Insurers and reinsurers
are taking projected climate trends very seriously, and cities
and utilities
are devising plans for “climate resilience.”
 |
| Flooding after Katrina made the cover of this 9/2014 global reinsurance forum on disaster risk resilience. |
9 – Unless
restructured, the funding of flood insurance is headed for a train wreck. This
topic is way too big to address in this one 10th anniversary post,
but is a major concern for both the U.S. Congress
as well as for individual cities. The need is clear although all solutions appear unpalatable. But this
elephant in the room is a clear case of “you can pay me now or pay me later.”
10 – We need to fight
the natural human tendency of “post-storm amnesia” in the words of the Huffington Post video (around minute 24:00).
Much of the forgetting of the scale, horror, and consequences of the 1913
calamity appears to have been quite deliberate—a topic I intend to explore in a
future post to this research blog. Moreover, “motivated forgetting” after the
trauma of natural disaster is a known psychological phenomenon. But such
forgetting also impedes individual or societal learning from past experience
and taking precautions for protection against a repetition.
 |
| Historian Craig B. Waff in Air Force 2. |
©2015 Trudy E. Bell
Next time: Service Above Life
Bell, Trudy
E., The Great Dayton Flood of 1913, Arcadia Publishing, 2008. Picture
book of nearly 200 images of the flood in Dayton, rescue efforts, recovery, and
the construction of the Miami Conservancy District dry dams for flood control,
including several pictures of Cox. (Author’s shameless marketing plug: Copies
are available directly from me for the cover price of $21.99 plus $4.00
shipping, complete with inscription of your choice; for details, e-mail me), or
order
from the publisher.
