Digital Thoughts – Looking For Katrina, Part One

This week saw one of the more unexpected and larger transactions of the year. After two week’s of little news on the acquisition front, one of Japan’s largest internet firms, Rakuten, announced its intent to purchase affiliate network pioneer and last of the large, independent affiliate platforms, LinkShare for the rather unexpected sum of $425 million in cash. With ten years online operating experience, patented technology, and an impressive client list, LinkShare makes an attractive candidate for the publicly traded Rakuten, interested in creating a US footprint. The price paid represents an impressive nine-fold increase compared to the price ValueClick paid for Commission Junction in September 2003. Yet, as exciting as this purchase and its implications are, talking about it will have to wait until at least next week. There is a bigger story, and there should be no surprise when you find out, that story is Katrina.

A little more than ten day have passed since Hurricane Katrina made landfall in the Southern United States, laying waste to parts of Mississippi and Louisiana, including, and most notably, New Orleans. Like New Orleans itself, the story of Katrina is rich and complex. With more than 10,000 predicted dead, Katrina stands to be among the costliest and certainly most deadly tragedies to occur in the United States in recent history. Unlike the 9-11 tragedy of fours years past, this disaster was expected – not just in the days before the storm hit but for the past 105 years, a year that saw 8000 die when a hurricane or similar force destroyed the once bustling city of Galveston Texas. Yet, for all our experience with disasters, including the similar but more powerful Asian tsunami, it took almost five days before those that could bring aid seemed mobilized. Five days of torture and torment before we figured out what was going on. In this week’s Digital Thought Part One we explore the factors that set the stage as well as summarize the mass of information about the event itself.

For many reasons, most of which are geographic, New Orleans makes a poor choice to build a major city. 70% of the city lies below sea level, and unlike Death Valley, California, which also lies below sea level; New Orleans sits not just near water but is surrounded by it including two major lakes – Pontchartrain and Borgne, the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River, and industrial canals. Were it not for a complex levy system managing the flow of the water, the city would have been under water a long time ago. In other words, the city always knew of its vulnerability. That was certainly my assumption, and thirty seconds of research unearthed an article supporting that belief. Written less than a year ago the title says it all “Direct hurricane hit could drown city of New Orleans, experts say.” Hurricane Ivan, part of last years record Hurricane season helped set the stage for Katrina’s destruction by wiping away the protection of Breton and the Chandler islands south of the city. The natural counterpart to the levies, the city’s other natural barrier, its wetlands, which for so long have absorbed much of the storm surge of approaching hurricanes, too, weren’t sustained and have been disappearing at a rate of 28,000 acres per year.

The US and the 1.3 million people in and around New Orleans dodged a bullet in 1998 when Georges, a Category 2 hurricane, made a last minute route change towards the coastal town of Biloxi, Mississippi instead of New Orleans. It left 230,000 without power but fortunately led to no deaths. Hurricane Georges came close enough that it pushed the Mississippi River to within one foot of the top of the levees. The last hurricane to hit New Orleans directly was, like Georges, also a Category 2, Hurricane Betsy. That storm killed more than 70 people and its storm surge overflowed the levees, flooding the streets with water to the tops of many buildings. It’s just the event that should have lead to better levies. It did, but funding cuts by the Bush administration never saw the levies completely updated. Ten feet were added, but that only prepped the city to handle a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina made landfall as a Category 4. Weather forecasters thought it might even hit as a Category 5.

Katrina hit in the early hours of Monday, August 29. On Sunday, the day prior, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin declared a state of emergency and ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city, describing the arriving storm as a threat unlike any they have ever faced before. Those that could leave did, but far too many stayed, either unable to afford the journey or like so many, unable to believe the storm would cause such destruction. One in six people do not own a car, making it that much more difficult for a complete, let alone quick, evacuation. Many could understand the damage high winds would do to the buildings, but few understood what those same winds meant for the water surrounding the city. And it’s the rising waters brought in by the rain and wind that posed the real threat. Forecasters predicted that the storm surge, as it is called, could reach 28 feet. Yet, the highest levees around New Orleans stood only 18 feet high.

Only six or so hurricanes of equal or greater strength have hit the United States since records were kept, the costliest Andrew which Katrina will beat by almost ten fold, and the deadliest, the 1900 storm that destroyed Galveston – a city that never recovered its wealth and glory. The surge has left as much as 20 feet of chemical-laden, snake-infested water trapped in the man-made bowl, exactly what was predicted a year ago. Those unable or unwilling to leave and not trapped in the industrial waste have had few options. The Superdome and Convention Center stood above sea level but were ill prepared for the volume of people. At the end of the day, everybody knew, but nobody really believed, a storm like Katrina would happen, not in their lifetime. Every few years though, something that everybody knew but nobody expected in their lifetime does happen, and we must do our best to clean it up. In Part Two of this week’s Digital Thoughts, we look at the cleanup and examine ways in which technology if properly applied might help such disasters in the future