Technology in Place Prior 2 Disaster Event Essay

Technology in Place Prior 2 Disaster Event - Essay Example "During the first 30 years of the 20th century, the average annual loss of life in US hurricanes was 329. During the next 40 years, the average number of deaths dropped to 70 per year and since 1969, the average has fallen to less than 20".Hurricane research succeeded in prediction and therefore saving lives. People would salvage their property on their own without warning. Those who made it survived and those who were not able to would die. But all the same, New Orleans would not be deserted. People came back after the hurricane to settle down again. Prior to the hurricane, people did not build high walls and canals to drain water. It was not thought of until a research was done after the hurricane. Disasters would strike again and again. People would move away when disaster strikes and come back when it had gone.It is in Virginia Key, FLA. that an accurate hurricane forecasting may be found in the wreckage of its worst failure. Many people died because weather officials did not recognize the powerful dynamics of the storm and failed to warn residents until it was too late to do anything. Homes and businesses were destroyed. Bodies floated in Galveston Bay for days. This is an example of what used to happen long before current technology was used in forecasting and therefore preparing people for such disasters. Discuss Technology Utilized Before, During and After the Event After previous hurricanes, levees, sea walls, pumping systems and satellite hurricane tracking provide a comfort safety margin that has saved many lives. Modern technology and engineering was however an alarming fact. "In the generations since those storms menaced, champagne's ancestors, South Louisiana has been growing more vulnerable to hurricanes, no less". These flood protection efforts here caused sinking land and coastal erosion. These have opened dangerous ways for relatively weak hurricanes and tropical storms to affect new areas inland. A combination of sinking land and rising seas put the Mississippi River Delta very low relative to sea level than it was one century ago and it goes on. It has opened an avenue for the hurricane to proceed to the inland. Having a flood wall divided the Orleans Avenue from the Orleans's Avenue Outfall canal, which is one of the drainage canal that helps to drain storm water into Lake Pontchertrain. This lake helps to back up the canals, resulting in flood waters having a beehive into the heart of the city. In some places such as Shell Beach the owners of Campo Marina raised the clock and Marina shed. This was mainly to stop water from coming up although it is still continues. Computers have shown that there is a threat of flooding across a wide area. Use of digitized maps of the delta landscape from 1800s to a projected map for 2020, has shown how flooding from a hypothetical storm get deeper and spread steadily westward and northward as erosion and subsidence take their toll. Scientists have come up with audacious plans to avert disaster e.g. insurance scientist proposed bisecting New Orleans and Jefferson Parish from East to west with flood wall rising 30ft above sea level starting at the foot of Esplanade Avenue running toward Lake Pont Chatrain and then across the city along the interstate 610 corridor into Metairie. Discuss Who Were The Decision Movers, How Did They Communicate Collaborate With Various Stakeholders. Only recently, the government agencies and political and community leaders mobilized to address people on the risks that are from the storm