Under the disaster plan, preparations for the storm should have begun at least three days before it made landfall. With Katrina, New Orleans ordered a mandatory evacuation 20 hours before the storm struck. FEMA officials were supposed to have critical resources in place before landfall.

New Orleans has extensive defences against flooding, made up of 350 miles of floodgates and levees. A levee is an embankment or wall – usually made of earth and often running parallel to a river. Levees are designed to hold back rising waters in stormy weather.

Abstract. Nonstructural measures can make New Orleans less vulnerable to storm surge and can do so cost-effectively. These measures include incentives for elevating existing or new structures or for relocation to lower-risk areas and land use restrictions designed to curtail future growth in the floodplain.

After Katrina, Congress approved nearly $15 billion in projects to protect the greater New Orleans region, including massive floodgates, storm surge barriers, rebuilt flood walls and rearmored levees, and a mammoth pump station designed to carry massive amounts of water away from homes and into wetlands.

A second Hurricane Pam Exercise was planned for the summer of 2005, but did not take place, appartently due to a lack of funding. Agencies had anticipated expanding on aspects of response and recovery that were not explored in the 2004 exercise.

Much of the city’s land is already sinking. A 2016 NASA study found that certain parts of New Orleans are sinking at a rate of 2 inches per year, putting them on track to be underwater by 2100.

If all the ice covering Antarctica , Greenland, and in mountain glaciers around the world were to melt, sea level would rise about 70 meters (230 feet). The ocean would cover all the coastal cities. And land area would shrink significantly. But many cities, such as Denver, would survive.