KANSAS DISASTER ASSESSMENT PROGRAM

2003 Assessment Plan

Johnson County and
Katrina

Poisonous snakes, rotting dead animals, a wide range and wide path of destruction, sweltering temperatures, and increased health risks of harmful mold. All are lifelong memories that Heart of America Disaster Assessment Team members shared about their almost two-week deployment to assess damage from Hurricane Katrina.
Members returned to work after being part of a 10-member Kansas team of code inspectors and construction engineers deployed to Mississippi to help assess the damage from the deadly storm. The team was sent to Gautier, Mississippi, a community of about 12,000 residents located on the Gulf Coast between Biloxi, Mississippi, and Mobile, Alabama.

Images of the destruction in Gautier remain vivid. "It was really ground zero from the worst part of the hurricane," Mallory said. "It caught the blunt of Katrina. The amount of damage was horrific. "The job of the Kansas team was to assess damage to buildings located in the FEMA designated flood plain due to the storm surge/flooding and high winds caused by Hurricane Katrina.
 
“We arrived in Gautier two weeks after Katrina had hit so there were already a lot of repairs being done. Electricity was on again in most places and a lot of the businesses that were not severely damaged were reopened, although most were not operating on a full schedule.” said Don Hovey. “In Gautier, there was an estimated 15-to-30-foot storm surge with lots of flooding, but since the ground is above sea level the flood waters receded soon after the initial surge and so there aren’t flood waters there now like in New Orleans.” Some residents reported water levels from storm surges of up to 30 feet. In assessing the damage, team members found evidence of standing water levels of 9 and 10 feet on buildings four miles off the coast.

Team members inspected about 3,000 buildings, both homes and businesses, during its deployment.  “In some of the areas, the damage was devastating. Along the coast, entire neighborhoods were almost totally destroyed. We saw a lot of houses where the only thing left was the foundation, said Jim Hendershot of Arkansas City. Further inland, the houses were still standing but a lot of them had been flooded and so were uninhabitable. “Most of the stuff in the houses that had been flooded was destroyed and by the time we got there the people had piled it all up on the edge of the streets. It really smelled bad from the spoiled food from the refrigerators and freezers and the wet and moldy furniture, carpeting, and building materials.”

Roughly 90 percent of the structures in the community were damaged by Katrina. About 25 to 30 percent of the buildings had serious structural damage and probably will have to be razed and rebuilt. Many of the remaining dwellings may face a similar fate because of mold, which is becoming an increasing health risk and challenge in the recovery and rebuilding of Gautier and other communities, large and small, in the aftermath of Katrina. As an example, Mallory told of an elderly couple trying to get back into their home three weeks after the storm while he was in their neighborhood. He helped to clear a path to the residence and entered the home to check out to see if it was safe to enter. It wasn’t.

                                                                         Continued              

More Katrina and Johnson County

Pictures from May 8th, 2003 Seward County Disaster 
Sunday, May 4, 2003, was a bad and sad storm day in Kansas and also in parts of Missouri:

Disaster Assessment Inspectors meet at Girard Kansas at the Sheriff's Office. Pittsburg had been hit, Cherokee Co., Franklin and Mayberry.

Wyandotte County/Kansas City, KS. was hard hit. Early estimates are that 400 structures received damage, many are completely gone.

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