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Home > Features > Case Studies
In January, engineering firm MWH Global was hired by New Orleans to oversee more than 100 reconstruction projects, a role that the mayor called a “tipping point” in the city’s recovery from Hurricane Katrina. It is an engagement that shoulders huge risks and expectations, all the more complicated by deep emotional and historical factors. Communication is the foundation for all that will follow.
On the morning of Aug. 29, 2005, the Category 4 monster named Hurricane Katrina plowed through the last stages of the Gulf of Mexico and struck the famed yet fragile city of New Orleans with the force of a meteorological heavyweight punch. Residents, battered by the high winds and torrential rains, were forced from their homes, setting off a chain of events that produced a range of responses, from anger and apathy to empathy and resolve.
Making matters worse, on September 22, another major storm pummeled the city that is, essentially, sitting at the bottom of a geological bowl that lies below massive Lake Ponchatrain. Early word of the developing Hurricane Rita and its predicted path over the Gulf of Mexico forced the city to put the kibosh on its planned reopening on September 19. When Rita eventually hit New Orleans less than a month after Katrina it was like a one-two punch that turned out to be the knockout blow for the city’s already compromised levee system. Residents were ordered to evacuate, and those that could not had to hole up in Superdome, which, strained to its limits of capacity, rapidly turned into a hellish nightmare.
In the aftermath of the storms, with Katrina eventually becoming one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S.
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