What do you think?
Rate this book
Catastrophe in the Making: The Engineering of Katrina & the Disasters of Tomorrow
When houses are flattened, towns submerged, and people stranded without electricity or even food, we attribute the suffering to “natural disasters” or “acts of God.” But what if they’re neither? What if we, as a society, are bringing these catastrophes on ourselves?
That’s the provocative theory of Catastrophe in the Making, the first book to recognize Hurricane Katrina not as a “perfect storm,” but a tragedy of our own making—and one that could become commonplace.
The authors, one a longtime New Orleans resident, argue that breached levees and sloppy emergency response are just the most obvious examples of government failure. The true problem is more deeply rooted and insidious, and stretches far beyond the Gulf Coast.
Based on the false promise of widespread prosperity, communities across the U.S. have embraced all brands of “economic development” at all costs. In Louisiana, that meant development interests turning wetlands into shipping lanes. By replacing a natural buffer against storm surges with a 75-mile long, obsolete canal that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, they guided the hurricane into the heart of New Orleans and adjacent communities. The authors reveal why, despite their geographic differences, California and Missouri are building—quite literally—toward similar destruction.
Too often, the U.S. “growth machine” generates wealth for a few and misery for many. Drawing lessons from the most expensive “natural” disaster in American history, Catastrophe in the Making shows why thoughtless development comes at a price we can ill afford.
That’s the provocative theory of Catastrophe in the Making, the first book to recognize Hurricane Katrina not as a “perfect storm,” but a tragedy of our own making—and one that could become commonplace.
The authors, one a longtime New Orleans resident, argue that breached levees and sloppy emergency response are just the most obvious examples of government failure. The true problem is more deeply rooted and insidious, and stretches far beyond the Gulf Coast.
Based on the false promise of widespread prosperity, communities across the U.S. have embraced all brands of “economic development” at all costs. In Louisiana, that meant development interests turning wetlands into shipping lanes. By replacing a natural buffer against storm surges with a 75-mile long, obsolete canal that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, they guided the hurricane into the heart of New Orleans and adjacent communities. The authors reveal why, despite their geographic differences, California and Missouri are building—quite literally—toward similar destruction.
Too often, the U.S. “growth machine” generates wealth for a few and misery for many. Drawing lessons from the most expensive “natural” disaster in American history, Catastrophe in the Making shows why thoughtless development comes at a price we can ill afford.
- GenresNonfictionSchool
224 pages, Hardcover
First published September 8, 2009
1 person is currently reading
50 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 1, 2010
"Catastrophe in the Making" started out with a well-crafted introduction on the formation and power of hurricanes. Later synopses of previous storms that hit New Orleans and their effects were equally compelling. Their overview of the immediate region and some of the early inherent environmental challenges it faced are concise and easily read as few assumptions about the reader's local knowledge are made. The political and economic background as they directly tie into the landscape of New Orleans are also addressed, for example highlighting that the construction of early canals was completed just as much for economic reasons as to improve drainage. The use of photos throughout the book complimented the accessible writing style making for easily understood assertions from the authors.
However, when the book launches into the meat of its thesis it lapses into a vituperative and myopic outline of the catastrophe that befell New Orleans. The blame follows a narrow sequence of loosely defined elitists (dubbed with the conspiracy theory sounding name of "The Growth Machine"), propelling the Army Corps of Engineers into building the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) that eventually brought about the Katrina catastrophe. The problem with this account is that it does not recognize the culpability of the inhabitants themselves for such things as moving into increasingly exposed and low lying areas, blocking off spaces beneath raised homes to create living quarters on ground level in flood-prone New Orleans, and their own support for such heavily criticized projects as MRGO. The thesis of this book ignores the fact that the crucial wetlands surrounding the city were being destroyed long before the completion of the MRGO. It also fails to acknowledge that levees were routinely breached, and the city subjected to lengthy periods of inundation long before Katrina, at great revolving costs to governments and insurance companies, as people kept moving back into these areas. For any historical study, there are rarely linear explanations of a sequential set of factors leading to a crisp, well-defined outcome.
While it is evident the book is well-researched by people with a high expertise level, there are some points that cast doubt on their assertions. The first is the off-hand dismissal of a 7000 page report by the Army Corps of Engineers on the technical aspects of the disaster as they relate to the MRGO that is countered solely by a footnote on page 116. If the Corps of Engineers was truly so far off the mark, it would be more convincing to give a detailed technical rebuttal against the lynchpins of the Corps' argument to help understand why their report is not accurate, versus funnel analogies and garden hose and straw comparisons. There is also an assumption made that because ships were being built that exceeded the capacity of the MRGO at the time it opened that it was obsolete. In 2004 Mediterranean Shipping purchased the MSC Texas, an 8000 TEU monster incapable of transiting the Panama Canal. However, in my capacity as a vessel planner at MSC I was responsible for planning a 250 TEU ship as well as many other capacities in between. In fact the vast majority of our fleet was still capable of transiting the canal. Building a ship that exceeds the capacity of a waterway does not automatically make that waterway outdated as is suggested in the book.
Equally disappointing in the book was the continual need to take potshots at whoever and whatever the authors could muster to the firing line. They compared city officials as following the immoral legacy of the pirate Lafitte in their exercise of political power. A former governor was ridiculed with the insinuation that the only useful thing he produced was the words to the song You Are my Sunshine. There are also random shots at American waistlines and Defense contractors among other things. It is the type of speech pattern one sees in far leaning political stump speeches, meant to incite support for those of a like-mind, but ultimately repulsive to those interested in narratives seeking the truth.
"Catastrophe in the Making" is fluidly written, and hence appealing to read. Despite the litany of perceived faults, I also think it provided a clear understanding of one facet of the events surrounding the catastrophe of Katrina. Therein lies its greatest weakness, this narrow focus that is outlined in the concluding summation with "...the hubris of a small number of 'great' or at least politically powerful people unleashes serious environmental harm... the consequences will usually be the most severe not for those who have started the cycles of suffering, but for others" (p. 168). Such a view ignores that these cabalistic members of "The Growth Machine" were also the same people that made New Orleans into a vibrant commercial and cultural center for much of its history and that they were also instrumental in such initiatives as the Bayou Sengette State Park, Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge and the Barataria Preserve. This view also removes any complicity by the citizens themselves, as if they live their lives in an ecologically responsible manner until the monolithic force of mis-guided technocrats and bad government destroys the balance.
Where a work like "An Unnatural Metropolis" by Craig Colten, clearly exceeds "Catastrophe in the Making" as a scholarly work is in its integration of multiple environmental factors to provide a broad understanding of the issues arrayed against the Crescent City. Limited solutions are offered and are not centered on combating a single source, whereas "Catastrophe in the Making" implies that by simply curbing the power of "The Growth Machine" and filling in the MRGO, the city will avoid future disasters. Admittedly Colten's book did not have the advantage of hindsight to analyze the Katrina catastrophe, but it also did not have to contend with the distorting, emotionally charged aftermath of Katrina either. Which is likely why his work provides a much clearer understanding of that tragic event.
However, when the book launches into the meat of its thesis it lapses into a vituperative and myopic outline of the catastrophe that befell New Orleans. The blame follows a narrow sequence of loosely defined elitists (dubbed with the conspiracy theory sounding name of "The Growth Machine"), propelling the Army Corps of Engineers into building the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) that eventually brought about the Katrina catastrophe. The problem with this account is that it does not recognize the culpability of the inhabitants themselves for such things as moving into increasingly exposed and low lying areas, blocking off spaces beneath raised homes to create living quarters on ground level in flood-prone New Orleans, and their own support for such heavily criticized projects as MRGO. The thesis of this book ignores the fact that the crucial wetlands surrounding the city were being destroyed long before the completion of the MRGO. It also fails to acknowledge that levees were routinely breached, and the city subjected to lengthy periods of inundation long before Katrina, at great revolving costs to governments and insurance companies, as people kept moving back into these areas. For any historical study, there are rarely linear explanations of a sequential set of factors leading to a crisp, well-defined outcome.
While it is evident the book is well-researched by people with a high expertise level, there are some points that cast doubt on their assertions. The first is the off-hand dismissal of a 7000 page report by the Army Corps of Engineers on the technical aspects of the disaster as they relate to the MRGO that is countered solely by a footnote on page 116. If the Corps of Engineers was truly so far off the mark, it would be more convincing to give a detailed technical rebuttal against the lynchpins of the Corps' argument to help understand why their report is not accurate, versus funnel analogies and garden hose and straw comparisons. There is also an assumption made that because ships were being built that exceeded the capacity of the MRGO at the time it opened that it was obsolete. In 2004 Mediterranean Shipping purchased the MSC Texas, an 8000 TEU monster incapable of transiting the Panama Canal. However, in my capacity as a vessel planner at MSC I was responsible for planning a 250 TEU ship as well as many other capacities in between. In fact the vast majority of our fleet was still capable of transiting the canal. Building a ship that exceeds the capacity of a waterway does not automatically make that waterway outdated as is suggested in the book.
Equally disappointing in the book was the continual need to take potshots at whoever and whatever the authors could muster to the firing line. They compared city officials as following the immoral legacy of the pirate Lafitte in their exercise of political power. A former governor was ridiculed with the insinuation that the only useful thing he produced was the words to the song You Are my Sunshine. There are also random shots at American waistlines and Defense contractors among other things. It is the type of speech pattern one sees in far leaning political stump speeches, meant to incite support for those of a like-mind, but ultimately repulsive to those interested in narratives seeking the truth.
"Catastrophe in the Making" is fluidly written, and hence appealing to read. Despite the litany of perceived faults, I also think it provided a clear understanding of one facet of the events surrounding the catastrophe of Katrina. Therein lies its greatest weakness, this narrow focus that is outlined in the concluding summation with "...the hubris of a small number of 'great' or at least politically powerful people unleashes serious environmental harm... the consequences will usually be the most severe not for those who have started the cycles of suffering, but for others" (p. 168). Such a view ignores that these cabalistic members of "The Growth Machine" were also the same people that made New Orleans into a vibrant commercial and cultural center for much of its history and that they were also instrumental in such initiatives as the Bayou Sengette State Park, Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge and the Barataria Preserve. This view also removes any complicity by the citizens themselves, as if they live their lives in an ecologically responsible manner until the monolithic force of mis-guided technocrats and bad government destroys the balance.
Where a work like "An Unnatural Metropolis" by Craig Colten, clearly exceeds "Catastrophe in the Making" as a scholarly work is in its integration of multiple environmental factors to provide a broad understanding of the issues arrayed against the Crescent City. Limited solutions are offered and are not centered on combating a single source, whereas "Catastrophe in the Making" implies that by simply curbing the power of "The Growth Machine" and filling in the MRGO, the city will avoid future disasters. Admittedly Colten's book did not have the advantage of hindsight to analyze the Katrina catastrophe, but it also did not have to contend with the distorting, emotionally charged aftermath of Katrina either. Which is likely why his work provides a much clearer understanding of that tragic event.
April 10, 2024
A good overview of the decision making and consequences of the MRGO canal.
January 14, 2013
A copy of this book was provided to me free via Netgalley for the purpose of review.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, I had just celebrated my twelfth birthday the day before. As I've lived my entire life in Maryland, I am and was then no stranger to hurricanes. With my memory of Isabel fresh, I heard the news of Katrina's approach with some passing interest. But the storm wasn't going to reach my house, so it seemed an absolute world away; Louisiana, New Orleans, and the entire Mississippi River / Gulf of Mexico region was utterly foreign to me and so of little consequence.
Then the footage of the flooding, the destruction, the suffering. The people packed into the Superdome. The pleas for information on missing relatives, friends, and animal companions. (That last I will admit broke my heart the most, given my intense love--and in this case, pity--for "domesticated" animals.) It was a natural disaster the likes of which I'd only seen once, that being in 2004 with the tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Between those two events, I formed my concept of the term "natural disaster".
Catastrophe in the Making, however, seeks to challenge that concept in a fascinatingly insightful way. Katrina, it posits, was no “natural disaster”, fitting a strict definition of neither “natural" nor “disaster”.
As Freudenburg, Gramling, Laska, and Erikson define it, Katrina was not a natural disaster so much as it was a tragedy of unintentional human design. “Disaster”, they explain, comes from dis and astro, a combination which would be translated as “bad star”--as in, simple bad luck with an astrological spin. But the idea that Katrina was merely a storm born under a bad star, so to speak, is the exact opposite of the message Catastrophe in the Making offers. So instead the term “tragedy” is offered, and it's certainly a better fit with its Aristotelian implications of one's own hubris begetting suffering.
I must say that I love that definition, and was very much intrigued by the related message that built over the course of Catastrophe in the Making. As the book goes through the human history of New Orleans, from its period of native habitation through the Louisiana Purchase and on to the current day, it explains the growth and so-called growth of city. And as this history unfolds, even a reader entirely unfamiliar with the region—that is, a reader like myself—gets a glimpse into one of the prime manifestations of perhaps the greatest mistake the U.S.A. has made: our tendency to think ourselves somehow above or separate from the rest of nature, compounded with our ability to so thoroughly mistake needless environmental destruction for “progress”.
Catastrophe in the Making is a wonderfully insightful look at New Orleans and Katrina from an environmentalist perspective, and I recommend it to anyone interested in reading on the subject of environmentalism, Hurricane Katrina, or “green” government reform and city planning.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, I had just celebrated my twelfth birthday the day before. As I've lived my entire life in Maryland, I am and was then no stranger to hurricanes. With my memory of Isabel fresh, I heard the news of Katrina's approach with some passing interest. But the storm wasn't going to reach my house, so it seemed an absolute world away; Louisiana, New Orleans, and the entire Mississippi River / Gulf of Mexico region was utterly foreign to me and so of little consequence.
Then the footage of the flooding, the destruction, the suffering. The people packed into the Superdome. The pleas for information on missing relatives, friends, and animal companions. (That last I will admit broke my heart the most, given my intense love--and in this case, pity--for "domesticated" animals.) It was a natural disaster the likes of which I'd only seen once, that being in 2004 with the tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Between those two events, I formed my concept of the term "natural disaster".
Catastrophe in the Making, however, seeks to challenge that concept in a fascinatingly insightful way. Katrina, it posits, was no “natural disaster”, fitting a strict definition of neither “natural" nor “disaster”.
As Freudenburg, Gramling, Laska, and Erikson define it, Katrina was not a natural disaster so much as it was a tragedy of unintentional human design. “Disaster”, they explain, comes from dis and astro, a combination which would be translated as “bad star”--as in, simple bad luck with an astrological spin. But the idea that Katrina was merely a storm born under a bad star, so to speak, is the exact opposite of the message Catastrophe in the Making offers. So instead the term “tragedy” is offered, and it's certainly a better fit with its Aristotelian implications of one's own hubris begetting suffering.
I must say that I love that definition, and was very much intrigued by the related message that built over the course of Catastrophe in the Making. As the book goes through the human history of New Orleans, from its period of native habitation through the Louisiana Purchase and on to the current day, it explains the growth and so-called growth of city. And as this history unfolds, even a reader entirely unfamiliar with the region—that is, a reader like myself—gets a glimpse into one of the prime manifestations of perhaps the greatest mistake the U.S.A. has made: our tendency to think ourselves somehow above or separate from the rest of nature, compounded with our ability to so thoroughly mistake needless environmental destruction for “progress”.
Catastrophe in the Making is a wonderfully insightful look at New Orleans and Katrina from an environmentalist perspective, and I recommend it to anyone interested in reading on the subject of environmentalism, Hurricane Katrina, or “green” government reform and city planning.
August 28, 2016
A number of years ago one of my lecturer for an American History course made the claim that though Katrina was a natural disaster, the real disaster was that of governmental failure. Therefore, when I saw this on NetGally, I automatically requested it. I was not dissapointed. Though maybe not a popular view, this insight into the issues of disasters and their preventions hits the nail right on the head. We could and should do more. Our governments can let us down. But unless we realize that this is the case, who will call them on it? But what I enjoyed even more about reading this text, was the fact that they took this even further than Katrina, showing why different areas, though perhaps not in danger of the same type of natural disaster, are still cause for concern.
April 18, 2010
This book goes beyond the usual focus upon levee failures and slow relief efforts in analyzing the circumstances of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Instead, the authors emphasize a link between Harvey Molotch's Growth Machine concept and a history of uncoordinated economic growth in New Orleans, which they claim made the area more vulnerable to disasters. The main theme here — that the disaster was caused more by human impacts than natural ones — is a welcome addition to Katrina-related studies.
January 20, 2015
I love the premise of the book and how it calls into question the very idea of "natural" disasters. However, it gets into the nitty gritty of canal plans, etc which sent me skimming through some of the chapters. I had hoped to use it as an undergraduate text, but I now think that the students will get lost (or bored to tears) in all of the details. It's a bit more specialized than I had realized.
December 14, 2015
The behind-the-scenes take on how hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans due to human negligence. The author cites multiple sources of neglect to prevent the disaster from happening and quite honestly I had no idea that so many agencies had been involved. I read it for a class in undergraduate and understood that even the most fortified cities can still fall because of lack of caution or foresight. Overall excellent resource for anyone wanting to go deeper into the impacts of the disaster.
April 25, 2025
Great introduction into the issues that enabled the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. It was a little hard to read at times but that is the nature of some nonfiction books. Definitely put into perspective engineering marvels yet also their greater impacts on the world, which are bound to have some negative results. I can see why this book is taught in college level courses.
Read
September 4, 2021really informative book on politics and land management that led up to the Katrina disaster - and best take-away is: there are only two types of levees -- those that have failed and those that will fail!
January 25, 2010
I realize by liking this book I am probably prescribing to a controversial point of view, but this book was fabulous. It's unusual to find a book of this genre that is so well written...
February 1, 2011
An insightful book on the politics and decisions that lead to the tragedy that was Hurricane Katrina, this book goes far beyond the often discussed aftermath.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews