MCEER Team Returns to New Orleans to Assess Impact of Hurricane Gustav
Ochsner Baptist, formerly Memorial Medical Center, in Uptown New Orleans was one of the medical facilities visited by the team.
Within two weeks of Hurricane Gustav’s arrival on the Louisiana coast, MCEER organized a team to visit New Orleans. The reconnaissance trip, funded by the National Science Foundation, provided the team with a unique opportunity to collect and compare data following Hurricane Gustav with similar data collected after Hurricane Katrina. The investigation focused on two specific topics:
- Emergency preparedness and response of hospitals including organizational differences between Hurricanes Katrina and Gustav; and
- An aerial and ground remote sensing survey of infrastructure damage.
The emergency preparedness team was led by Daniel Hess, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University at Buffalo and Lucy Arendt, School of Business, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. Both investigators had previously participated in an extensive NSF/MCEER-sponsored reconnaissance effort following Hurricane Katrina, and this trip enabled them to determine if the hospital system had become more resilient.
Aerial deployment routes followed by the remote sensing team.
Ronald Eguchi of ImageCat, Inc. led the remote sensing effort, and sent Walter Svekla and Enrica Verrucci of ImageCat to survey and report on the damage caused by the hurricane. Members of the MCEER Remote Sensing Institute had previously participated in an extensive NSF/MCEER-sponsored reconnaissance effort following Hurricane Katrina, which provided an aerial and ground remote sensing survey of infrastructure damage.
