ANNIVERSARY OF HURRICANE KATRINA: Design for Disaster
by Jill Fehrenbacher
Today marks the two-year anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina flooding tragedy and to make sure that people don’t forget it about the massive devastation that affected so many people on the Gulf Coast, we would like to remind people how important it is to tink about ways to improve home and landscape design so that something like this never happens again.
Despite the social and political factors involved in the 2005 disaster, we can’t help but think that if the urban landscape and individual houses had been better designed, we never would have had such a massive problem in the first place. There are many design solutions to tackle the problems of hurricanes, flooding, and displacement, and we’ve spent the last two year covering as many of them as we could: hurricane-resistant houses, flood-resistant houses, rebuilding competitions, and temporary shelter for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. In case you missed any of it, here’s a recap:
Housing Solutions:
+ Katrina Cottages
+ Hurricane resistant domes
+ Flood-resistant housing
Design Competitions & Rebuilding Efforts:
+ Gulf Coast Model Home Program
+ Designing the Future of New Orleans
+ Newer Orleans Competition
Please write in and give your thoughts if you have any ideas, opinions or suggestions about how to improve the current state of affairs in New Orleans, and how to prevent future disasters…
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In all honesty this will happen again and again. The key is what is learned and changed for the next event. The Katrina Cottage vs the FEMA trailer? Builindg below sea level or on piers? Levee design and wetlands values…. Florida learned a lot form Andrew. Let’s hope the lessons from Katrina are implemented as well.