If all the debris from Hurricane Katrina were stacked on a football field, the pile would reach over ten miles high. The deaths described in this report are not representative of Katrina-related deaths. Doc, Nurses Arrested In Katrina Deaths July 18, 2006 / 9:45 AM / CBS/AP A doctor and two nurses who worked through the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina were arrested … Ablah, Elizabeth In New Orleans, where much of the greater metropolitan area is below sea level, federal officials initially believed that the city had “dodged the bullet.” While New Orleans had been spared a direct hit by the intense winds of the storm, the true threat was soon apparent. An absence of basic sanitation combined with the omnipresent bacteria-rich floodwaters to create a public health emergency. The power outages and dire conditions reported in certain New Orleans hospitals after the storm underscore the importance of disaster preparedness. Hyer, Kathy and Drowning and injury-related deaths occurred predominantly near levee infrastructure breaches. Rather, the hurricane was named in accordance with the World Meteorological Organization’s lists of hurricane names, which rotate every six years. Inside eyewall of Hurricane Katrina shortly before the storm struck Louisiana, August 2005. Lavie, Carl J. "metrics": true, Fewer than 10% of victims were younger than 45 years old. Updates? The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It is unknown whether these people would have died had the storm occurred or not. United States Geological Survey. Areas east of the Industrial Canal were the first to flood; by the afternoon of August 29, some 20 percent of the city was underwater. Hurricane Katrina was the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States.It was the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded and the third-strongest landfalling U.S. hurricane on record. It is also unknown whether the storm exacerbated preexisting medical conditions enough to lead to death. and They either remained in their homes or sought shelter at locations such as the New Orleans Convention Center or the Louisiana Superdome. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). We further stratified by race within each age category, where sufficient observations existed, to determine whether there was an age-specific effect of race among victims. YASUDA, Goro Dosa, David Deaths. Hayashi, Jennifer The day Katrina hit, he traveled to Arizona and … George W. Bush surveying the damage to New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina as he heads to Washington, D.C., aboard Air Force One, August 31, 2005. There are at least 2 possible explanations for these findings. Buekens, Pierre Hurricane Katrina, tropical cyclone that struck the southeastern United States in late August 2005. Lawry, Lynn This infographic details Katrina's path and devastating impact. His death certificate specified drowning while trying to save a family member who resided in the greater New Orleans area as the cause of death. "isLogged": "0", TABLE 2 Demographic Data for Katrina-Related Deaths: Louisiana, 2005. FIGURE 2 Location of Hurricane Katrina deaths, southeast Louisiana, 2005 (N = 687), FIGURE 3 Location of Hurricane Katrina deaths, Orleans Parish, 2005. Victims died primarily in Orleans Parish (70%), St Bernard Parish (14%), Jefferson Parish (4%), and East Baton Rouge Parish (3%). Three people have died following Hurricane Zeta's landfall in southeast Louisiana Wednesday. For the deaths recorded in the DMORT database only that did not have date of death available, it is unclear whether the person died at the location or the body was brought to the location after death. Results: We identified 971 Katrina-related deaths in Louisiana and 15 deaths among Katrina evacuees in other states. The state coroner was forwarded 446 out-of-state death certificates for Louisiana residents. Garcia, Andrea M. However, stratified analyses evaluating the effect of race within age groups revealed that the dominant effect of age on overall storm mortality masked the differential effect of race in most age groups in Orleans Parish, where race-specific mortality rates were on average 2.5 times higher among blacks compared with whites. Hurricane Katrina Project- Casualties (4a) Period 4 Gatfield. 2010. Hurricane Katrina was a tropical cyclone that struck the southeastern United States in late August 2005. Out-of-state death certificates of Louisiana residents during the period of August 27 to October 1, 2005, and others that state coroners deemed worth consideration for potential association with Hurricane Katrina were forwarded to the Louisiana coroner's office from coroners' offices in 26 states and the District of Columbia. Other victim races included Asian (n = 4), American Indian (n = 4), and other (n = 1). and Including all deaths classified as indeterminate (DMORT, n = 23; and out-of-state, n = 431) yields an upper bound estimate of 1440. In both St Bernard and Jefferson Parishes, the sex and racial distributions of Katrina victims were not significantly different (P > .05) from census population figures for those parishes, except for Hispanic/Latino victims in St Bernard Parish (P = .03; Table 2). Of 799 deaths in vital statistics records in which date of death was recorded, 650 (81%) occurred on August 29, 2005. * Views captured on Cambridge Core between September 2016 - 6th January 2021. Data from all 3 sources (DMORT, vital statistics, and out-of-state death certificates) were entered into an Access (Microsoft Corporation, Seattle, WA) database. Xiong, Xu Of the 446 deaths, only 15 people were classified as Katrina-related deaths by a state coroner and thus included in our final mortality count. The hurricane and its aftermath claimed more than 1,800 lives, … The overall proportions of deaths among non-Hispanic blacks and whites in the most affected parishes—Orleans, St Bernard, and Jefferson—were remarkably consistent with their pre-Katrina race/ethnicity distributions from the 2000 US Census (Table 2). Three hundred eighty-seven victims drowned, and 246 people sustained trauma or injuries severe enough to cause their deaths. 2009. Feature Flags last update: Wed Jan 06 2021 17:23:48 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) Hurricane Katrina not only left more than 1,800 human deaths in its wake, it also rendered thousands homeless as more than 800,000 housing units were destroyed or damaged in the storm. When Katrina made landfall on August 29 near New Orleans on the U.S. Gulf Coast, it brought widespread destruction and flooding with it. Jünger und weißer: Hurrikan „Katrina“ hat vor zehn Jahren der schwarzen Mittelschicht schwer geschadet. Drowning (40%), injury and trauma (25%), and heart conditions (11%) were the major causes of death among Louisiana victims. 2008;2:215–223). Data on race/ethnicity were missing for 42 victims (4%), age was missing for 22 victims (2%), and sex was missing for 4 victims (<1%). We limited our comparative analyses to Orleans, St Bernard, and Jefferson Parishes. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. On August 27 Katrina strengthened to a category 3 hurricane, with top winds exceeding 115 miles per hour (185 km per hour) and a circulation that covered virtually the entire Gulf of Mexico. It was not until September 2 that an effective military presence was established in the city and National Guard troops mobilized to distribute food and water. Data from Louisiana vital statistics were collected at the local levels through parish coroners' offices and then sent to the state level. 2010. Ultimately, the storm caused more than $160 billion in damage, and the population of New Orleans fell by 29 percent between the fall of 2005 and 2011. Corrections? Another possible explanation is that older people are more likely to die of drowning and injury during a hurricane or flood and that comorbidities contribute to their vulnerability to storm-associated mortality. Hirsch, Glenn A. Year » 2008. Kennedy, Emily Objective: Hurricane Katrina struck the US Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, causing unprecedented damage to numerous communities in Louisiana and Mississippi. Burch, Berre Data on both parish of residence and death were available for 844 storm victims; more than 80% of these victims died in their parish of residence. This report is the first to combine multiple death databases to assess the number of storm-related deaths among Louisiana residents and people who were in Louisiana at the time of the storm and to provide information regarding the causes of death. More than 25% of victims (n = 262) were found in other locations, including roadways, the New Orleans airport, the Convention Center, and the Superdome. Descriptive and inferential statistics were calculated using Stata version 9.1 (StataCorp LP, College Station, TX). Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite image of Hurricane Katrina, taken on August 28, 2005. victim races included Asian (n 4), American Indian (n 4), and other (n 1). Fifty-three percent of victims were men; 51% were black; and 42% were white. A flooded neighbourhood in Port Sulphur, Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina. Results: We identified 971 Katrina-related deaths in Louisiana and 15 deaths among Katrina evacuees in other states. The storm that would later become Hurricane Katrina surfaced on August 23, 2005, as a tropical depression over the Bahamas, approximately 350 miles (560 km) east of Miami. The role of poverty in Katrina mortality is unclear because we did not have income data for victims, but socioeconomic status merits future research to determine whether age- and race-associated poverty may have increased the vulnerability of these populations or limited their ability to evacuate. "crossMark": true, 2 and 3). The role of Hurricane Katrina in the majority of the 446 out-of-state deaths will probably never be clearly delineated because coroners in different states may have used different criteria for classifying victims as storm related. The majority of evacuees had lived in Orleans Parish (40%), Jefferson Parish (22%), St Tammany Parish (5%), and St Bernard Parish (4%). The final death toll was at 1,836, primarily from Louisiana (1,577) and Mississippi (238). The levee system that held back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne had been completely overwhelmed by 10 inches (25 cm) of rain and Katrina’s storm surge. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. and First, a universally accepted standard definition of a hurricane-related death has not been established. Older black people in Orleans Parish, particularly men, were disproportionately represented relative to their underlying population distribution. and and Improving mortality reporting timeliness will enable response teams to provide appropriate interventions to these populations and to prepare and implement preventive measures before the next disaster. We conducted stratified analyses by parish of residence to compare differences between observed proportions of victim demographic characteristics (sex, race/ethnicity, and age) and expected values based on 2000 US Census data, using Pearson chi square and Fisher exact tests. In Orleans Parish, men were more affected (χ2 17.4, df = 1, P < .001), and women were less affected (χ2 18.7, df = 1, P < .001) by storm mortality, relative to their underlying population distributions. Following the historical damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina, the name “Katrina” was retired from the lists of names. The most dramatic difference occurred among people 75 years old and older (Pearson chi square [χ2] 2400; degrees of freedom (df) = 1; P < .0001; Table 3). "relatedCommentaries": true, Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, Hurricane Katrina Deaths, Louisiana, 2005, https://doi.org/10.1097/DMP.0b013e31818aaf55. Accessed Jan. 28, 2020.