Abstract
We noted in the prologue that Katrina became an event in human history when it left the waters of the Gulf and began to hammer the land, affecting areas that had been both settled and shaped by people. The largest concentration of population in the region, of course, is to be found in New Orleans, and for the people who lived there in 2005, the term “Katrina” has come to refer to a reality that has little to do with storm systems forming out at sea or winds spiraling at terrifying speeds as they slammed into the coast.
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Notes
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Ironically, the hypothetical storm was named Pam because planners expected that named storms in a given year would never go so far into the alphabet as P. In fact, with the exception of the letters Q and X (which have never been used), the 2005 season used up all of the letters of the alphabet and more, ultimately including five characters from the Greek alphabet.
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© 2009 William R. Freudenburg, Robert B. Gramling, Shirley B. Laska and Kai T. Erikson
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Freudenburg, W.R., Gramling, R., Laska, S., Erikson, K.T. (2009). A Mighty Storm Hits the Shore. In: Catastrophe in the Making. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-156-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-156-6_1
Publisher Name: Island Press, Washington, DC
Online ISBN: 978-1-61091-156-6
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