Building And Use Community Resilience - 1613 Words

The purpose of this research paper is to identify a community that is recovering from a disaster, and has decided to build and use community resilience as part of the recovery process. The community I have chosen to write about is New Orleans, as they suffered from one of the largest Hurricanes in history known as Katrina. In addition, other areas such as Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, where even affected. However New Orleans took a significant hit in regards to total destruction, death toll, and last but not least displacement of individuals forced out because of Katrina. Furthermore, I will also discuss reasons as to why some citizens of New Orleans did not build or use community resilience prior to Katrina. Plus how did the†¦show more content†¦New Orleans is a city known largely for its culture involving such things as Mardi Gras, Jazz, Art, and even the culinary dishes of exotic foods prepared just to name a few things. It is no secret that the city of New Orleans has faced adversity before when it comes to natural disasters. Furthermore it has been documented that during the past century hurricanes have flooded New Orleans at least five times: in 1915, 1940, 1947, and 1965. Consequently New Orleans has always been at risk, though due to its geographical location being that it is utterly bounded by mass amounts of water. Engineers created a system of levees and barricades with the hopes of trying to keep the city from flooding as they stretched levees and barricades along the Mississippi river, and other calculated locations that had been mapped out and listed as possible at risk areas. The Levees were designed for category three hurricanes, and Katrina peaked at a high of category five. Every levee was breached, and that caused a catastrophic chain of events to follow shortly after. Within a matter of minutes, eighty percent of New Orleans was under water when the levees broke, and some areas where about 20ft deep. Residents we re at the mercy of Katrina for those who decided to stay behind and endured the storm. A majority of residents who stayed behind lived in neighborhoods that sat below sea level, and were generally built in part of the city’s poorest