Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans Levee Failures
Hurricane Katrina’s levee failures demonstrate how an engineering system can satisfy individual checks yet fail to protect the public as a complete system. When Katrina struck in 2005, breaches and failures in the levees and floodwalls contributed to the catastrophic flooding throughout New Orleans. Investigations identified problems involving design assumptions, soil conditions, construction, maintenance, risk communication, and fragmented responsibility among federal, state, and local organizations. Residents commonly understood the structures as providing greater protection than they actually did, creating an additional duty to communicate residual risk honestly. This case shows that merely complying with minimum technical standards may be insufficient when infrastructure protects entire communities and the consequences of a failure are severe.