Geography Teaching Today

In this lesson students carry out an investigation into what extent was Hurricane Katrina was a ‘natural’ disaster?

Key questions:

• To what extent was Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster?

Key Concepts:
Interdependence
Cultural understanding & diversity
Human & physical processes

To what extent was Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster? 
Hurricane Katrina’s scale (the storm was 500 km across) and magnitude (wind speeds as high as 240 km/s) meant that even though its path veered away from New Orleans at the last minute it still had a huge impact on the city as well as devastating the Alabama coast.  

The magnitude and scale of Katrina was a key factor as the flood defences were rendered ineffective. Unusually high sea temperatures in the Gulf or Mexico (possible an effect of global warming) helped build Katrina into Category 5 storm when defences were only built to withstand a category 3 hurricane.  The distribution of the population throughout the region is responsible for much of the heightened natural hazard risk. 

New Orleans is a major urban centre of 485,000 people. It is a hazard prone area that has continued to attract population but as pressure on land has increased, many affluent Americans, oil industries and gambling businesses have moved into areas of hazard risk, whereas several decades ago, it was only the poorest (and often African American) populations that lived in these areas or on and around the levee system. It was parts of the population without the social or economic means to leave the hazard zone in response to the threat of Katrina that became the victims. 

Hazard mitigation depends primarily upon the effectiveness of the social response to natural events. Access to cars and the location of homes an impacted on the demographic of those who became victims of the Katrina.

There was no plan to use trains or other mass public transport to evacuate those without cars or money. The most recent census showed that in a city 87% black and 30% poor, there were 112,000 households without private vehicles to escape.  

Click on an activity:
Starter
Main activity

Downloads:

Word circle

Word circle instructions for teachers

Hurricane Katrina Newspaper article

Six-hat thinking cards & PPT

Six-hat thinking Teacher instructions