ABSTRACT
When Hurricane Katrina made landfall on 29 August 2005, its eye-wall grazed the south-eastern edge of the New Orleans metropolitan area, causing extensive wind and storm surge damage to built structures large and small and, most infamously, the concrete and earthen levee system surrounding the city. Overtopping and breeches in levee walls inundated 55 square miles of Orleans Parish with an estimated 131 billion gallons of flood water (Smith and Rowland, 2007; Campanella, 2010). The chemical- and pathogen-laced deluge soaked some parts of the city for nearly six weeks, creating an unprecedented risk scenario for state and federal agencies charged with assessing the storm’s ecological and human impact.
