Throughout New Orleans, Louisiana, residents are still beset with remnants of Hurricane Katrina 16 years after it made landfall, breaching New Orleans’ levees and ultimately devastating communities, leading to 1,800 deaths.
On the 16th anniversary of the tragic storm, the very same region was besieged by Hurricane Ida, which reached winds of 150 miles per hour and knocked out power to more than one million residents and all the city of New Orleans. But thankfully, this time, New Orleans’ levees were up to the challenge, preventing the onslaught of rain from overwhelming the vulnerable coastal city. Within two to-three days, several neighborhoods were receiving running drinking water and wastewater services.
Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Congress acted to raise New Orleans’ levee barriers from as low as five feet tall to as high as 30 feet. A complete overhaul in the system led to pump stations being built to withstand extreme winds surpassing 200 mph and levees being designed to stand firm even if water surpassed the height of the structures. The state has also prioritized restoring the coastal wetlands, which for decades stood as the lone barrier between the city and major storms.
While Ida was significant, the surge still did not amount to the level of threat posed by Hurricane Katrina, so it is too soon to tell how well the levees would hold up in an equal or greater weather event. However, local officials have expressed gratitude for how well the new levee system held up during Ida, a promising sign for the region as severe weather events will surely continue in the Gulf.
While prioritization in levees had a major positive impact on the region, New Orleans’ energy grid did not sustain itself through Ida’s powerful winds, resulting in more than 2,000 miles of transmission lines going out of service. The region’s transmission and distribution lines are aging and were already experiencing an above-average number of outages without severe weather and ultimately succumbed to Hurricane Ida’s impact. Crews expect hundreds of thousands of residents to be without power for up to three weeks, even as the region undergoes 90 -to 100-degree Fahrenheit heat. Additionally, dozens of residents have been rushed to the hospital with carbon monoxide poisoning.
Infrastructure is an interconnected network of systems which rely upon each other. Flooded roadways and closed bridges prevent crews from tending to damaged transmission and distribution lines to restore power to the region. Without power, drinking water and wastewater facilities are unable to operate. The culmination of these failures results in residents lacking access to air conditioning in extreme heat, clean water, and goods and services as roads and bridges are closed until further notice.
The success of New Orleans’ new levee system is certainly a positive story to come out of what could have been a devastating outcome from Hurricane Ida. As of now, the worst has been avoided. The complications stemming from a widespread power outage further stresses the importance of investing in all categories of infrastructure to ensure the entirety of the built environment can withstand severe weather events. ASCE’s Louisiana Section issued a report card for Louisiana’s infrastructure in 2017, which offered solutions for safeguarding the state’s systems against severe weather.