Mitigation Strategies: Use of Levees - Essay Example

In addition, the hurricane slew about 1,500 inhabitants along the U.S. Gulf Coast and caused huge damage, making it the most expensive natural disaster. The continued use of levees will mean people to continue dying as a result of this catastrophe yet it can be avoided by the use of a different and a better mechanism to counter this calamity. As Hurricane Katrina established, that the risks of inundation and flooding never can be completely eliminated by protective structures. Substantial dangers of living in flood susceptible to areas were not ever visibly communicated to people before Hurricane Katrina, it stated, and simply the reconstruction of New Orleans and its tempest protection system back to pre-Katrina heights would leave the city susceptible to another flooding catastrophe (Baltimore, 2009).

Moreover, the first floor of buildings in flood susceptible parts of the city should be elevated at least to the 100-year flood level, which the report named a "crucial flood insurance standard." But for deeply populated metropolises like New Orleans, that standard is insufficient, said the report, part of a 5 part study by the conservatories in the event of Katrina (Baltimore, 2009).Furthermore, the 100-year standard essentially specifies protection based on the supposed worst damage of the foulest flood in the last 100 years.

It regulates insurance tariffs for the National Flood Insurance Program controlled by the federal government. However, structures in New Orleans most flood susceptible areas have a 26% chance of swamping over the period of 30-year hypothecation, and the 100-year customary is "far too risky" to rely on, the report said (Baltimore, 2009).Although a calamitous levee letdown of the magnitude and effect of that experienced in New Orleans is unusual, present planning procedures for levees flop to capture the height of this effect and the resulting financial, social, and environmental costs.

If comparable planning, creation, and maintenance methods were applied to aircraft, dams, and nuclear power plants, the nation would be unprotected to knowingly more calamitous events than would be considered adequate (Haddow et al. 2011). Authorities should depress settlement in flood susceptible areas and cheer intended relocation away from them. They ought to also shore up electricity provisions that are important to running huge pumps that channel floodwaters away from the city, the report said (Baltimore, 2009).