When Katrina made landfall on August 29 near New Orleans on the U.S. Gulf Coast, it brought widespread destruction and flooding with it. Data sources included the Hurricane Katrina Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT) database and death certificates collected through Louisiana vital statistics and out-of-state coroners' offices. FIGURE 1 Timeline of Hurricane Katrina-related deaths in Louisiana, vital statistics (N = 799). Accessed Jan. 28, 2020. Hurricane Katrina was the costliest in U.S. history and left widespread economic impacts. The hurricane and its aftermath claimed more than 1,800 lives, and it ranked as the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. 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). Aerial views of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana, with the Superdome in the foreground, (left) on August 30, 2005, a day after Hurricane Katrina struck the city, and (right) again some 10 years later on July 29, 2015. Over the next two days the weather system gathered strength, earning the designation Tropical Storm Katrina, and it made landfall between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as a category 1 hurricane (a storm that, on the Saffir-Simpson scale, exhibits winds in the range of 74–95 miles per hour [119–154 km per hour]). Deaths or places where victims' bodies were recovered occurred predominantly in residences (36%), hospitals (22%), and nursing facilities (12%). 2008. At least 70 people who were classified as hospital inpatients died during the period August 29, 2005 to September 2, 2005, in New Orleans hospitals and an additional 57 victims were recovered from New Orleans hospitals and brought to the DMORT facility from September 5 to 12, 2005. 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. In Orleans Parish, the mortality rate among blacks was 1.7 to 4 times higher than among whites for people 18 years old and older, indicating that the effect of age on mortality confounded the effect of race. Gerber, Thomas C. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city the previous day, and an estimated 1.2 million people left ahead of the storm. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Hyer, Kathryn The deaths described in this report are not representative of Katrina-related deaths. Our objectives were to verify, document, and characterize Katrina-related mortality in Louisiana and help identify strategies to reduce mortality in future disasters. Results: We identified 971 Katrina-related deaths in Louisiana and 15 deaths among Katrina evacuees in other states. and Our objectives were to verify, document, and characterize Katrina-related mortality in Louisiana and help identify strategies to reduce mortality in future disasters. Zusammenfassung; Autoren » Brunkard J, Namulanda G, Ratard R-More. The date the body was found was available for 129 of 171 people that appear only in the DMORT database. The day Katrina hit, he traveled to Arizona and … We calculated age-, race-, and sex-specific mortality rates (per 10,000 population) for victims in Orleans, St Bernard, and Jefferson Parishes, where 95% of Katrina's victims resided. It continued on a course to the northeast, crossing the Mississippi Sound and making a second landfall later that morning near the mouth of the Pearl River. Dosa, David Seven deaths occurred in the 2 days preceding the storm and 4 deaths occurred after October 31, 2005 (Fig. and "openAccess": "0", Accessed Jan. 28, 2020. President George W. Bush touring the damage to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast caused by Hurricane Katrina, which struck the region in late August 2005. Zeitung » Disaster medicine and public health preparedness. Incorporating DMORT data allowed us to identify 171 victims who were not classified as Katrina related in vital statistics/death certificate data, including 17 victims whom coroners were unable to identify by DNA matching or other methods. West, Jill Rather, the hurricane was named in accordance with the World Meteorological Organization’s lists of hurricane names, which rotate every six years. Of the 446 Louisiana residents who died out of state, 53% were female; 59% were white; and their mean age was 67.3 years (95% CI 65.3%–69.3%). for this article. The evacuation of hurricane victims continued, and crews began to rebuild the breached levees. 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. Feature Flags: { By the time the storm strengthened to a category 3 hurricane, winds exceeded 115 miles per hour. Graphic by Lindsey Cook and Ethan Rosenberg for USN&WR/Source: Hurricane Katrina Deaths, Louisiana While the death toll in the study is 986, … Polivka-West, LuMarie Fifty-three percent of victims were men; 51% were black; and 42% were white. Before Hurricane Katrina, the deadliest hurricane to make landfall in the United States during the previous 50 years was Hurricane Audrey (1957), with an estimated 416 deaths.2 Hurricane Andrew (1995), the last category 5 hurricane to strike the United States, caused 26 deaths.2 Although several preliminary estimates exist of the deaths attributable to Hurricane Katrina, 1,3,4 no prior report has systematically reviewed all of the available death databases to accurately document Hurricane Katrina mortality in Louisiana. After Hurricane Katrina, which damaged more than 100 school buildings, the state seized control of almost all urban schools and turned them over to independent charter groups. Year » 2008. We limited our comparative analyses to Orleans, St Bernard, and Jefferson Parishes. Drowning (40%), injury and trauma (25%), and heart conditions (11%) were the major causes of death among Louisiana victims. It is also unknown whether the storm exacerbated preexisting medical conditions enough to lead to death. Clum, Gretchen A. Hodge, James G. The primary strength of this study is the use of multiple death databases to systematically verify each death as related to Hurricane Katrina using consistent and specific criteria. Most buildings held up well structurally. To identify high-mortality geographic areas, Louisiana death records with addresses (n = 687) were geocoded using Environmental Systems Research Institute's ArcGIS version 9.2 (Redlands, CA). Taylor, Eve (A hurricane … Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership, This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/event/Hurricane-Katrina, Science Kids - Fun Science and Technology for Kids! Shortages of food and potable water quickly became an issue, and daily temperatures reached 90 °F (32 °C). At … Data from all 3 sources (DMORT, vital statistics, and out-of-state death certificates) were entered into an Access (Microsoft Corporation, Seattle, WA) database. We limited all subsequent analyses to deaths we determined to be related to Hurricane Katrina (n = 986). The authors thank D. Bensyl, W.R. Daley, and D. Koo for useful comments on the manuscript. Garcia, Andrea M. Forty-nine percent of victims were people 75 years old and older. Fifty-three percent of victims were men; 51% were black; and 42% were white. Records with only a nursing facility name were matched to the address of the nursing facility in the Homeland Security Infrastructure Program Public Health, Nursing Home geospatial layer. There are many different conclusions on how many people actually died. The 15 deaths with victim of cataclysmic storm or other Katrina-related indications on their death certificates almost certainly represent a lower bound estimate of out-of-state deaths among Louisiana Katrina evacuees. If all the debris from Hurricane Katrina were stacked on a football field, the pile would reach over ten miles high. The mean age of Katrina victims was 69.0 years (95% confidence interval [CI], 67.8–70.2), and their age range was 0 to 102 years. It quickly intensified when it reached the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. "hasAccess": "1", We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. There were many decisions in the series of events leading to the storm that contributed to the high death toll. 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. The major causes of death include: drowning (40%), injury and trauma (25%), and heart conditions (11%). "relatedCommentaries": true, By the following afternoon Katrina had become one of the most powerful Atlantic storms on record, with winds in excess of 170 miles per hour (275 km per hour). Data on parish of residence and parish of death were available for 934 and 854 people, respectively. Beim Wiederaufbau gewannen Unternehmensgründer und Touristen. "peerReview": true, Excess mortality in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: A preliminary report, Atlantic hurricanes and natural variability in 2005, http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL122005_Katrina.pdf, http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E12.html, http://www.dhh.louisiana.gov/offices/page.asp?ID=192&Detail=5248, http://www.katrinalist.columbia.edu/stats.php, http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/hurricane.shtml. 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. At least 986 people in Louisiana died as a result of Hurricane Katrina, making it the deadliest hurricane to strike the US Gulf Coast in more than 75 years. * Views captured on Cambridge Core between September 2016 - 6th January 2021. Determining death counts after Hurricane Katrina, in 2005, was a similarly convoluted process.A study published in 2014, almost a … However, tens of thousands of residents could not or would not leave. IKEUCHI, Koji Race-specific mortality rates were also higher among blacks 55 to 64 years old in St Bernard Parish and 75 years old and older in Jefferson Parish, but results from race- and age-specific stratified analyses in these 2 parishes are limited by small number of observations (n ≤ 5). After levees and flood walls protecting New Orleans failed, much of the city was underwater. Omissions? Data from Louisiana vital statistics were collected at the local levels through parish coroners' offices and then sent to the state level. Lanier, William L. 2009. The majority of the 446 out-of-state deaths were from chronic medical conditions, primarily heart disease, respiratory disease, and cancer. 2009. OCHI, Shigeo 2 and 3). Marsh, Elizabeth Dinn and Hurricane Katrina Deaths, Louisiana, 2005 - Volume 2 Issue 4. ☠ Accessed Jan. 28, 2020. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. 2010. A massive rescue and recovery effort was launched by local, state, and federal governments and nongovernmental organizations. Krongkant, Parichatt Hurricane Katrina formed on August 23, 2005, and in less than a week grew from a tropical depression into a category 4 hurricane. 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. Harville, Emily W. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Ahmad, Mokbul Morshed A storm surge more than 26 feet (8 metres) high slammed into the coastal cities of Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi, devastating homes and resorts along the beachfront. 2010. Rapid identification of vulnerable populations and risk factors during disasters will enable response teams to provide appropriate interventions to these populations and to prepare and implement preventive measures before the next disaster. Second, classifying people who were evacuated and later died out of state from Katrina-related causes is inherently difficult, especially as regards older people who had serious preexisting medical conditions.