An audience of more than 50 members of the Duke community met in the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy Thursday night to discuss what were deemed the failings and future direction of public policy related to the Hurricane Katrina tragedy.
Bruce Kuniholm, director of the Sanford Institute, introduced the event as an “impromptu policy forum on the events of last week.” Different perspectives and opinions were exchanged as professors from diverse disciplines—including geology, engineering and public policy—shared their expertise.
Displaying aerial images of the Mississippi coast, Orrin Pilkey, James B. Duke Professor Emeritus in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, and Andrew Coburn, research associate in the same department, talked about the dynamics of barrier islands and coastal development.
Pilkey emphasized the repeated history of hurricane devastation in the area.
“This is what it looked like to me in 1969 when I went there,” he said, referring to the damage caused by Hurricane Camille more than 30 years ago.
Pilkey advocated making fundamental changes to coastal development, such as building further from the shoreline.
He went on to call the New Orleans tragedy “the greatest engineering disaster in our history” and faulted the engineering community at large for not warning the public of the dangers associated with the region.
As the head of the new Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, Visiting Associate Professor David Schanzer commented on the accountability of the local, state and federal governments for the poor response to the crisis.
He noted that the greatest errors came before the storm—particularly in the placement of 100,000 people in shelters within the evacuation zone.
Schanzer, who served as the Democratic staff director on the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, also faulted the federal government for its lack of oversight in the emergency planning for the area. He advocated the use of Department of Defense resources to prepare for such crises.
“We had 48 hours advanced notice of a really catastrophic storm; couldn’t we have had a Department of Defense and National Guard convoy that would have used both air and land assets to get people who couldn’t afford transportation out of New Orleans?” he asked.
Karl Linden, assistant professor of civil engineering, focused on the toxicity of the stagnant water now covering New Orleans.
He explained that the water contains raw sewage, industrial wastes, petroleum, heavy metals and dangerous levels of the bacterium E. coli.
Questioning the immediate drainage of water out of the city and into Lake Pontchartrain—located outside New Orleans—he said that although taking care of the human tragedy was first and foremost, the government should stop and consider the long-term consequences of emptying the pollutants into the lake.
“We have a chance to upgrade the technology, upgrade the treatment processes and make things better... our engineering solutions have come a long way in the last 10 years,” Linden stated.
A question-and-answer session immediately following the presentations revealed the audience’s concerns about the policies that created the situation, the dangers of rebuilding destroyed towns in low-lying areas and the consideration of underprivileged communities in emergency planning.
Afterward, the speakers and audience members mingled, reacting to each other’s ideas and discussing related topics in a general mood of collaboration.
“I was really impressed by the level of scholarship.... [The forum] raised issues I hadn’t even thought about,” sophomore Jenn Tanaka said.
Another sophomore, Andy Cunningham—who made an announcement about the Erin Anderson Fund, a special fund for underprivileged families in New Orleans—said that it is crucial to engage in policy discussions in the aftermath of the storm “on behalf of the people.”
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