From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hurricane Katrina 2005 Atlantic hurricane season

General Timeline Meteorological history Preparations New Orleans preparedness Impact Economic effects Political effects Criticism of government response Social effects Effects by region Effects on Florida Effects on Mississippi Effects on New Orleans Levee failures Infrastructure repairs Reconstruction Relief Disaster relief International response Analysis Fringe theories Historical context Media coverage Other wikis Commons: Katrina images Wikinews: Katrina stories Wikisource: Katrina sources

Hurrican Katrina fringe theories include various unscientific conjectures that the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina was not an ordinary natural event, but was instead influenced by human behavior or supernatural forces.

Assertions of the influence of global warming

The tremendous destruction caused by recent Atlantic tropical cyclones, such as Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma, caused a substantial upsurge in interest in the subject of global warming by news media and the wider public, and concerns that global climatic change may have played a significant role in those events. Time Magazine, for example, published an article titled, "Is Global Warming Fueling Katrina?"^[1] — however, the article itself addressed hurricanes in general, rather than Katrina specifically, and was inconclusive.

Shortly after the hurricane, former Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan wrote an op-ed piece for the Globe titled, "Katrina's Real Name", declaring that the hurricane's "real name is global warming." Gelbspan went on to assert:

"Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the relatively blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico."

Gelbspan did not single out Katrina from other recent storms in that regard; in the article he went on to attribute other major weather events over the preceding year to global warming, including a blizzard in Los Angeles, high winds in Scandinavia, wildfires in Spain, and a drought centered in Missouri.

Britain's deputy prime minister, John Prescott, has linked Katrina with global warming,^[2] and statements made shortly after the hurricane by Germany's environment minister, Jürgen Trittin,^[3] indicate he believes that global warming is responsible for an increase in the frequency of destructive natural events.

Kerry Emanuel had recently published a paper in the journal Nature^[4] that found a good correlation between hurricane intensity and sea surface temperatures. Some journalists have claimed Emanuel's paper concludes that the recent increase in intense Atlantic storms is due to global warming,^[5][6] but Emanual stated that "it would be absurd to attribute the Katrina disaster to global warming".^[7]

Assertions of supernatural causation

"The 20 percent of the city that was spared, 80 percent of those parts of the city are gay [neighborhoods]," said Larry Bagneris, executive director of the New Orleans Human Relations Commission. "The benefits of living in that environment -- the French Quarter, the Marigny, the Bywater, Uptown -- where most gay people live, they were spared the water. We've come back not only to dry land, but to our jobs."

Various political and religious leaders have suggested that Hurricane Katrina was sent as a divine retribution for the sins of New Orleans, or of the South, or for the United States as a whole.

• New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, in a speech of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (the "Chocolate City speech"^[8]) said that

  "God is mad at America... [for] being in Iraq under false pretenses... [and is] upset at black America also... We are not taking care of ourselves. We are not taking care of our women, and we are not taking care of our children when you have a community where 70 percent of its children are being born to one parent."

• Muhammad Yousef Al-Mlaifi, a Kuwaiti government official,^[9] credits God's retribution for American foreign involvement:

"I do not think – and only Allah [really] knows – that this wind, which completely wiped out American cities in these days, is a wind of mercy and blessing. It is almost certain that this is a wind of torment and evil that Allah has sent to this American empire."

• Avner Bosky^[10] credits God; God's reason: U.S. Pressure for Israel to withdraw from Gaza:

"What happens in Israel affects the rest of the world, and how any country treats Israel has a lot to do with how God treats that country. We are praying, deeply concerned and grieved about the onset of Katrina."

• Fred Phelps,^[11] the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, credited Katrina as God's retribution for homosexuals: "New Orleans, symbol of America, seen for what it is: a putrid, toxic, stinking cesspool of fag fecal matter.... Pray for more dead bodies floating on the fag-semen-rancid waters of New Orleans."

One of the hundreds of churches and other places of worship in New Orleans devastated by what some consider divine wrath.

• Steve Lefemine^[12] credited God: "In my belief, God judged New Orleans for the sin of shedding innocent blood through abortion.... Providence punishes national sins by national calamities.... Greater divine judgment is coming upon America unless we repent of the national sin of abortion." (article originally from the Washington Post, as carried on the Houston Chronicle site, also reposted on the ExChristian.net site)
• Reverend Bill Shanks^[13] credits God; God's reasons: Abortion, debauchery, homosexuals, witchcraft:

"New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion -- it's free of all of those things now.... God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there -- and now we're going to start over again."

• Rev. Dwight McKissic, the senior pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas said "New Orleans flaunts sin in a way that no other places do. They call it the Big Easy. There are ten abortion clinics in Louisiana; five of those are in New Orleans. They have a Southern Decadence parade every year and they call it gay pride. When you study Scripture, it's not out of the boundaries of God to punish a nation for sin and because of sin. When I look at our country, at what's happening, and what's happening in New Orleans in particular, it's not beyond the realm of possibility."^[14]

• The Rev. David Crowe, executive director of the conservative Christian group Restore America, based in Oregon, said "We've known for decades and longer that New Orleans has been a place where immorality is flaunted and Christian values are laughed at. It is the epitome of a place where they mock God."

• Gerhard Maria Wagner, briefly an auxiliary bishop of Linz, also attributed Hurricane Katrina to God's ire.^[15] James Gill, columnist for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, satirically called for the Pope next to elevate Wagner as Archbishop of New Orleans after protests from Roman Catholics in three New Orleans congregations over the merging of their churches by aging Archbishop Alfred Clifton Hughes.^[16] The churches had been depopulated in part by out-migration resulting from Hurricane Katrina. Elevated by Pope Benedict XVI on January 31, 2009, Wagner resigned on February 15, 2009 amidst criticism, in part over his views of Hurricane Katrina.

• Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.^[17] (in an editorial issued before the full extent of damage to New Orleans was known) facetiously credited God; God's reason: Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's memo urging President Bush not to sign the Kyoto Protocol

"In 1998, Republican icon Pat Robertson warned that hurricanes were likely to hit communities that offended God. Perhaps it was Barbour’s memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailings for the Mississippi coast."

• Ovadia Yosef here credits God; God's reason: George W. Bush's support for Israel's unilateral disengagement plan

"He (Bush) perpetrated the expulsion (of Jews from Gaza). Now everyone is mad at him. This is his punishment for what he did to Gush Katif, and everyone else who did as he told them, their time will come, too,"

Similarly, a press release from Repent America's website cites such things as Girls Gone Wild, the supposed immoralities of reality television, Southern Decadence, abortion, and the fact that New Orleans has always been known as one of the "Murder Capitals of the World" with a rate ten times the national average as possible reasons. Repent America director Michael Marcavage stated: "Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city."^[18]

These responses immediately placed Hurricane Katrina, and particularly the devastation of New Orleans, in a line of events which have been taken as examples of divine retribution for supposedly immoral acts. Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church has made many claims that natural disasters and terrorist attacks are punishment for human actions that contravene Biblical proscriptions. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City, televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson suggested that God may have ceased protecting the United States as a result of secularism, feminism and the sexual revolution.

In fact, Pat Robertson was falsely credited with having asserted that God sent Hurricane Katrina as punishment for the selection of Ellen DeGeneres to host the Emmy Awards. A Dateline Hollywood article satirically purported that Robertson had stated: "By choosing an avowed lesbian for this national event, these Hollywood elites have clearly invited God’s wrath.... Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres’ hometown?"^[19] Because Robertson had made similar pronouncements in the past, this was believed by many to be a factual report.^[20] This article has since been cited as a possible truth in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

Some victims of the disaster also made attributions to supernatural causes, that they were being punished for their sins, or that God was testing them, or even that the event was "the work of Satan."^[21]

Criticism of conjectures

Most religious leaders reject such claims. One Christian response to claims that the flooding of New Orleans was divine retribution might be to point out that, according to the Book of Genesis, God promised Noah that he would not punish via deluge again. Critics of claims of supernatural causation in the past have, as well as pointing to scientific explanations (such as the fact that New Orleans lies below sea level), accused those making such claims of being religious fundamentalists and trying to exploit tragedies in an attempt to influence political decisions. Many lay persons have severely criticized any forms of conjectures regarding divine retribution, saying that it is absolutely inappropriate to make such claims in a time of national crisis.

A gay blogger from New Orleans noted that "about the only parts of the city that weren't severely damaged by the massive flooding from burst levees were the gayest areas."^[22]

A rebuttal in About.com's "Urban Legends and Folklore" section, titled Hurricane Katrina: God's Punishment for a 'Wicked' City?, points out (among other things) that the French Quarter was one of the least devastated parts of the city.

The town Buras saw even more massive storm surge and hurricane winds than New Orleans.

On balance, the analysis of the path of Katrina shows that, in the final few hours, the hurricane veered away from downtown New Orleans, heading actually slightly northeast through Mississippi where most people had evacuated or had trees to climb. The storm tide in Mississippi was typically 20-32 feet (10-m) high after 4 hours, gutting 3rd-floor rooms, while in New Orleans, the tide was less than 7 feet (2 m) due to being on the weak (west) side of the eye-path.

Also, just before landfall, Katrina's eyewall replacement cycle reduced wind-speed from a Hurricane-Camille force down to only 125 mph (200 km/h), which might have shattered most windows in the French Quarter, but the wind subsided. The 50,000 left in New Orleans could have faced a gushing sea of broken glass, but instead, saw slowly rising water for days, and had time to leave or wait for evacuation help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Although Katrina's reduced winds might seem like a made-for-New Orleans miracle, many hurricanes have undergone a similar eyewall replacement cycle as winds will slow suddenly when a hurricane approaches a wide land mass.

Rumors about the New Orleans levees

Various "conspiracy" centered websites have asserted that some of the New Orleans levees were intentionally weakened in advance of the storm or deliberately breached after it had passed.^[23] The Greater New Orleans area was flooded by a series of canal floodwall and levee breaches, some 20 in the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, three in the Industrial Canal, two in the London Avenue Canal, and one in the 17th Street Canal. Speculation has arisen that the levees were destroyed either by explosives or by ramming of a barge into it, and a range of potential responsible parties have been suggested, including corporate interests, Islamic terrorists, and the U.S. federal government.

One site purporting to transcribe an instant message "chat" (presumably over a cell-phone) from a resident taking refuge in the Superdome claims that the resident wrote: "The 17th street levee was bombed by the Army Corps of Engineers to save the more valuable real estate in the city," further asserting that others had heard the explosions, and that seven explosions had been heard.^[24] The suggested motive seems at odds with the fact that the area flooded by the 17th Street Canal breach included large neighborhoods of upper middle class homes in the West End and Lakeview neighborhoods accounting for some one third of the city's property taxes, indeed some of the most "valuable real estate in the city".

The Wayne Madsen Report website posted a claim that the 17th Street Levee was broken by a loose barge:

This barge (ING 4727, owned by the Ingram Barge Company) landed in what had been a residential neighborhood of the Lower 9th Ward.

September 7, 2005 -- Locals from Lakeview subdivision of New Orleans report that after Katrina passed, a loose barge struck the levee, causing a breach that flooded city. WMR has just been informed by evacuees in Baton Rouge from Lakeview, a well-to-do New Orleans neighborhood, that the flooding of the city was caused by a loose barge striking the levee on the 17th Street Canal thus weakening the retaining wall. The breach was not caused by rising flood waters as reported by FEMA and other agencies. Lakeview is some 1.5 miles down Veterans Boulevard from the 17th St. Canal breach. Distraught evacuees want to know why the Coast Guard or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not secure the barge. The evacuees who witnessed the barge striking the levee also want to know why the major media is not covering this story.^[25]

Possibly this was a confusion with one of the two breaches in the Lower 9th Ward side of the Industrial Canal, which indeed deposited a large barge, the ING 4727, in that residential neighborhood. Some have alleged that the barge was deliberately piloted into the Lower 9th Ward to destroy the neighborhood. The more conventional explanation is that it broke free of its moorings during the storm. Steering a barge during severe hurricane conditions seems a rather difficult task in any case.

Radio talk show host Hal Turner has placed a story on his web site claiming that explosive residue was found on underwater debris chunks from a failed levee:

"One diver, a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, saw the burn marks and knew immediately what caused them. When he surfaced and showed the evidence to his superior, the on-site Coordinator for FEMA stepped-in and said "You are not here to conduct an investigation as to why this rupture occurred, but only to determine how best to close it." The FEMA coordinator then threw the evidence back into the water and said "You will tell no one about this."

At that point, the diver went back down to do more inspection of the levee. On the second dive, he secreted a small chunk of the debris inside his wet suit and later arranged for it to be sent to trusted military friends at The U.S. Army Forensic Laboratory at Fort Gillem, Georgia for testing.

According to well placed sources, a military forensic specialist determined the burn marks on the cement chunks did, in fact, come from high explosives. The source, speaking on condition of anonymity said "We found traces of boron-enhanced fluoronitramino explosives as well as PBXN-111 embedded in the debris. This would indicate at least two separate types of explosive devices."^[26]

A number of Lower 9th Ward residents have alleged that their area was allowed to flood in order to "save the French Quarter". The motive seems less likely when it is realized that the French Quarter is geographically at the highest elevation in the city, and thus would be one of the last places to flood in almost any scenario of a major flood of New Orleans.

The 2009 novel Katrina Nights: Love in the Time of Flooding by Fouad Khan posits the theory that the disaster was a well orchestrated terrorist attack, and the levees were weakened by detonation of strategically placed explosives just after the hurricane.^[27]

Historical background

River levee blown up in 1927

During the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, a Mississippi River levee was indeed blown up in Caernarvon, St. Bernard Parish, a rural area below the city in an effort to protect the city itself from dangerously high waters.

During Hurricane Betsy in 1965, a breach in the Industrial Canal flooded the Lower 9th Ward. Persistent stories alleged that the levee was blown up to save more valuable land on the other side of the Canal.

Other possible sources of "explosion" sounds

Others have pointed out that claims regarding the sounds of explosions may be explained by the likelihood that a catastrophic breach would give rise to loud noises, rumblings and booms.

Most of these reports include mention of hearing loud noise like explosions. It is therefore vital to understand that when a structure such as the 17th Street levee and containment wall fail, it can do so rapidly, "explosively" even. A blow–out of the levee canal containment wall could most certainly generate loud noises, rumblings and "booms." Also, rushing floodwaters raging through the breach can pick up and carry large objects and these in turn can become sources of loud, booming noises as they slam into other debris, structures, etc.^[28]

See also

Tropical cyclones portal

• Conspiracy theory

References

Hurricane Katrina
Timeline | Meteorological history | Preparations | New Orleans Preparations | Economic effects | Political effects | Criticism | Social effects | Human rights | Effects by region | Mississippi | New Orleans | Florida | Levee failures | Infrastructural repair | Reconstruction | Disaster relief | International response | Theories | Historical context | Media coverage