Incident

On the evening of August 23, 2005, a tropical depression formed over the central Bahamas, and that storm intensified into what would become Hurricane Katrina — one of the five deadliest hurricanes to strike the United States.

Hurricane Katrina reached Category 5 intensity while over the central Gulf of America (formerly Gulf of Mexico), and weakened to a Category 3 hurricane before making landfall on the northern Gulf coast on August 28. Although the hurricane weakened in intensity, it inflicted staggering levels of damage and loss of life in Louisiana and Mississippi, with significant effects extending into the Florida Panhandle, Georgia, and Alabama.

In Louisiana, one of the hardest hit of the states, over 1,000 people lost their lives. The storm surge produced by Katrina caused the levee system in southeast Louisiana to fail, leading to widespread coastal flooding. By August 31, nearly 80% of New Orleans was underwater.

Only 26 days after Katrina made landfall, Category 3 Hurricane Rita landed on the Texas-Louisiana border. These two hurricanes caused extensive damage throughout southern Louisiana.

Response

NOAA provided comprehensive scientific support and response efforts for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The National Weather Service provided crucial forecasts, warnings, and conditions reports; while the National Geodetic Survey used satellite and aerial imagery to create new maps for search and rescue teams navigating the flooded cities (as existing maps were rendered useless due to extensive flooding and landscape changes). The Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) led the charge on environmental cleanup, addressing thousands of oil and chemical spills, and the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations' "hurricane hunter" aircraft provided vital data for storm tracking and forecasting. Other teams assessed damage to fisheries, affected fishing grounds, and habitats, and provided real-time data on water levels and currents to aid in response and recovery.

Significant cleanup and salvage efforts continued in the months that followed. Katrina caused nearly 300 oil and hazardous materials releases from pipelines and facilities across southeast Louisiana, for which OR&R provided scientific support to the U.S. Coast Guard and Environmental Protection Agency. Responders identified and cleared over 17,000 hazardous material barrels and totes in southeastern Louisiana alone. The storms also wrecked or sank more than 1,000 vessels — from small fishing trawlers to large barges — creating both a pollution risk and navigational hazards.

OR&R Involvement

Science and Coordination

In response to Katrina and Rita, OR&R response specialists deployed on-scene to affected areas in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and Florida. They provided digital satellite imagery for search and rescue operations; environmental assessments and monitoring support for salvage and pollution response operations; flood inundation maps for waterway management operations; and coastal flood modeling and remote sensing for post-hurricane assessment.

OR&R addressed orphan hazmat containers displaced by the hurricanes in wetland and marsh habitat, by developing strategic and tactical response options with the use of airboats, air barges, marsh buggies, and heavy-lift helicopter operations, and provided field reconnaissance and monitoring.

Damage Assessment and Recovery

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita created extensive amounts of disaster-related debris across the Gulf Coast’s inland areas, wetlands, and waterways. Submerged marine debris posed a hazard to vessel traffic and adversely affected commercial fishing grounds. To address this problem, Congress tasked NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey and OR&R to survey areas impacted by submerged marine debris, conduct risk assessments, share project data, and lead outreach activities.  In total, the project team surveyed more than 1,500 square nautical miles of nearshore waters across Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and located and mapped more than 7,100 individual items.

Advances in Preparedness

Improving Response to Coastal Spills: OR&R continually upgrades its capabilities for responding to coastal oil and chemical spills. These efforts include updating environmental sensitivity maps for the Gulf states; upgrading assets and information about chemicals of concern in inundation-prone locations; improving oil spill trajectory forecasting tools; and expanding the ERMA® online response mapping software. OR&R has also increased training offerings to federal, state and industry responders on the science of oil spill response, shoreline cleanup assessment, and aerial observation of oil spills. In the years since Katrina, key policy developments — like the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act (2006) and amendments to the Stafford Act — fundamentally reshaped the federal government's response to major disaster declarations by refocusing on a comprehensive, all-hazards approach.

Reducing Impacts of Severe Storms: While hurricanes and severe weather events cannot be prevented, their impacts can be reduced if federal, state, and local decision makers are prepared for a variety of hazards and threats. NOAA's Disaster Response Center — a state-of-the-art facility — serves as a regional coordination center to enhance all hazards preparedness, response, and recovery. The center offers training courses and technology demonstrations; meeting space for emergency preparedness training and drills; and is a disaster-ready facility available as an emergency operations hub during crisis situations.

Responding to Disaster Debris: To aid in challenges caused by disaster-related debris, NOAA’s Marine Debris Program within OR&R has worked across coastal regions to develop state and territory-specific response guides, and a national-level response guide. These resources aim to improve preparedness and facilitate a coordinated, well-managed, and immediate response to this type of marine debris.