Katrina how many deaths

Mutter was interested in what standards existed for counting how many people were killed by a hurricane. Standards are extremely important for the grim task of counting the dead. They settle questions with no obvious right answer — for example, whether to include deaths that occurred immediately before a storm hit such as someone who died in a fall while cutting down tree branches to mitigate anticipated damage. What are known as indirect deaths are the most confounding to the count.

Direct deaths are those that occur from drowning or an injury sustained during the storm or post-storm flooding, while indirect deaths occur from some other cause that might be linked to the storm, such as an inability to access medical care to treat an illness. After Katrina, government counters in Louisiana chose to include indirect deaths based on an arbitrary time cutoff — people who were evacuated from New Orleans and died after Oct.

The authors of the study that counted Louisiana deaths took a different approach, counting only deaths that could be directly attributed to the storm. NOAA, meanwhile, has reviewed death reports and removed indirect deaths from its count, a major reason that its total went down. Most of the storms are listed by where they made landfall because they occurred before hurricanes were named.

Neither does the U. Mutter decided to try to improve on the existing counts for Katrina, seeking to include indirect deaths that had never before been linked to the storm. Some of the responses were helpful. Mutter is sure the true death toll is higher than the official figures. Another effort arrived at a total of more than 4, with a method that researchers use to estimate civilian deaths in conflict zones.

Mutter ran out of funding in , and his work largely stopped then. But people still send him new names for his count, especially around the time of year that Katrina struck. The database — which includes all events since colonial times in which 10 or more people died — was compiled by Wayne Blanchard, a retired manager of emergency management instruction at FEMA. The findings — estimates of the total number of deaths for Katrina and the other storms, broken down by direct and indirect causes — are expected to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

The project has taken an emotional toll on the NOAA employees who have been involved. Reviewing death records is very different from forecasting storms. Other federal agencies treat the keeping of official death counts as a core job, done by specialists, rather than the side project of people who are trained for other work.

The U. Katrina flooded New Orleans less than four years after the Sept. Again, much of this damage was likely unavoidable in the face of a storm as strong as Katrina — but the harms could have been at least mitigated by better government preparation and a stronger response, based on the many reports that have reviewed the situation since Katrina.

Despite the massive damage left behind by Katrina, another storm like it could still decimate the region again. A report from the Lens, a local news outlet in New Orleans, and Politifact found that the anti-flooding system built after Katrina couldn't handle another storm like it. The system could endure a year storm — a storm with a 1 percent chance of happening on any given year — but Katrina was considered a much stronger year storm.

Still, the new system is certainly much stronger than what existed before it, so it could diminish a lot of the damage that Katrina caused. Another report by the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council concluded that levees and flood walls can never be large or sturdy enough to fully protect New Orleans from another disaster similar in scope to Katrina. In fact, this is perhaps the most lasting, dangerous public policy failure after Katrina: The report noted that the new structures built around the city give a false sense of security, leading the public to believe that they will be protected if another storm like Katrina comes.

But the reality is the nature of New Orleans — mainly, its status as a city largely below sea level — will always leave it exposed to these kinds of storms and floods. Ultimately, the report concluded that voluntarily relocating people from areas exposed to floods should be considered as a viable public policy option — otherwise, the same problems may repeat themselves in the future. This is perhaps the most disheartening fact about Katrina: 10 years later, something like it could happen again.

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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Hurricane Katrina, in 7 essential facts. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Water spills over a levee toward New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. AFP via Getty Images 10 years after Hurricane Katrina overran New Orleans, the city is still recovering from a disaster that was as much human-caused as natural. Related I worked for the governor of Louisiana during Katrina.

Here are 5 things I learned. Delivered Fridays. Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email. Email required. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy. For more newsletters, check out our newsletters page. Nearly half the fatalities in Louisiana were people over the age of Private Insurance Payments. Insurance Information Institute Report.

National Flood Insurance Payments. Impact on the Gulf Coast. More than one million people in the Gulf region were displaced by the storm. At their peak, hurricane relief shelters housed , people. Later, approximately , households were housed in FEMA trailers. Impact on New Orleans. By , the estimated population had increased to , , according to the Census. Photos: Hurricane Katrina: Then and now.

Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on August 29, At least 1, died in the hurricane and subsequent floods. It was the costliest natural disaster in U.

Now — Houses stand in the Seventh Ward on May 12, Then — Residents of the B. Cooper housing project play on mattresses on June 10, Before Hurricane Katrina, B.