Mississippi Oral History Project

Transcription

1 Mississippi Oral History Project Hurricane Katrina Oral History Project An Oral History with Cheryl Ann Blain Interviewer: James Pat Smith Volume

2 2008 The University of Southern Mississippi This transcription of an oral history by The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage of The University of Southern Mississippi may not be reproduced or published in any form except that quotation of short excerpts of unrestricted transcripts and the associated audio recordings is permissible providing written consent is obtained from The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. When literary rights have been retained by the interviewee, written permission to use the material must be obtained from both the interviewee and The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. This oral history is a transcript of an audio recorded conversation. The transcript was edited and punctuation added for readability and clarity. People who are interviewed may review the transcript before publication and are allowed to delete comments they made and to correct factual errors. Additions to the original text are shown in brackets [ ]. Minor deletions are not noted. Original audio and transcripts are on deposit in the McCain Library and Archives on the campus of The University of Southern Mississippi. Louis Kyriakoudes, Director The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 118 College Drive #5175 The University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg, MS An Oral History with Cheryl Ann Blain, Volume 834 Transcriber: Carol L. Short Editor: Josh Cromwell, Stephanie Millet, Linda VanZandt

3 Biography Born July 5, 1965, in Columbus, Ohio, Dr. Cheryl Ann Blain was one of three children. Her father, Paule D. Blain, was a budget analyst for the US Department of Defense, and her mother was Mrs. Marie Cecile Sutter Blain. Dr. Blain has two brothers, David Lawrence Blain and Michael John Blain. She is single and the mother of two adopted daughters from Guatemala, Maria Beatrice Blain and Andrea Nicole Blain. Dr. Blain attended Lake Braddock High School in Virginia; she earned her bachelor of science in science and engineering from the University of Notre Dame, and she earned her master s in science and civil engineering at Princeton University. Returning to the University of Notre Dame, Dr. Blain earned her PhD in civil engineering in 1994; her dissertation emphasis was on storm surge modeling. Since 1994, Dr. Blain s major occupation has been as a civil engineer and oceanographer with the Naval Research Lab, at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Dr. Blain enjoys music and plays both piano and oboe; she played in bands in high school and college. She is active in her church in Slidell, and she is an advocate of adoption in her community. Additionally, Dr. Blain volunteers with the Girl Scouts and is a lifelong member of the Girl Scouts. Dr. Blain has earned many professional awards, including in July of 2007, being awarded the Storm Surge Modeling Award from the Naval Oceanography Lab.

4 Table of Contents Personal history... 1 Credentials as oceanographer and research scientist... 2 Watching Katrina s movement... 5 Evacuating... 5 Slidell, Louisiana... 6 Returning to work at Naval Research Lab... 7 Damage to home, personal losses... 7 Personal stress from storm... 7 Negotiating with insurance company... 8 Effects of Katrina on neighborhood s demographics... 8 Faith community... 8 Support from Naval Research Lab... 9 Challenges still extant twenty-three months post-katrina... 9 National Guard presence post-katrina Damage to Slidell, Louisiana, from Lake Ponchartrain Storm surge s high point in Slidell An oceanographer s assessment of Katrina and Camille... 11, 21 Size of Katrina Surge of Katrina Wind versus water relative to damages Interaction of wind and wave Shallow depth of Mississippi Sound Counterclockwise-moving Katrina in Gulf of Mexico interacting with oscillatory motion of Lake Ponchartrain The role of barrier islands in hurricanes Interagency Performance Evaluation Team Panel study of effects of tree canopy heights on storm surge Barrier islands as Swiss cheese versus contiguous land Deer Island, Chandeleur Islands Post-Katrina analysis by Interagency Performance Evaluation Team Army Corps of Engineers Lessons learned by scientific community regarding Katrina Topographic data Predicting storm surge inundation Role of US Navy and its storm models Importance of tropical storm cyclone model Some unfortunate sacrifices in pure research More public availability and use of storm-related data Coastal restoration... 19, 23 Dutch storm surge system compared to US Addressing research and public policy, public action Utilizing prediction of Katrina s dangerous storm surge An oceanographer s assessment of Katrina and Camille... 21, 11

5 Importance of evacuating... 21, 30 Center for Higher Learning, Joe Swaykos Value of visualization in storm warnings and safe evacuations Value of archiving and cataloging gathered data... 23, 30 Comparison of Gulf of Mexico coastline and East Coast coastline and their potential for hurricanes Neglect of research on advanced circulation model post-katrina Bird and fish populations and habitat, dead zone in Gulf of Mexico Volunteers Insurance industry Lesson learned regarding contact information to reconnect with primary and secondary groups after storm Importance of support from employers, post-katrina Value of archiving and cataloging gathered data... 30, 23 Importance of evacuating... 30, 21 Worst day Best day Benchmarks of community s progress post-katrina Rate of recovery from Katrina Obstacles to recovery Everyday, day-to-day living post-katrina Unique positive relationships forged post-katrina... 33

6 AN ORAL HISTORY with CHERYL ANN BLAIN This is an interview for the Mississippi Oral History Program of The University of Southern Mississippi. The interview is with Cheryl Ann Blain and is taking place on July 30, The interviewer is James Pat Smith. Smith: Interview with Dr. Cheryl Ann Blain of the Naval Research Lab at Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi. Dr. Blain is a research scientist and oceanographer or hydrographer. Her interview discusses the surge and wave action that occurred during Hurricane Katrina and the research and its effects on research models as well as the effect of the storm on her personally and on the Naval Research Lab at Stennis Space Center. The interview takes place on July 30, 2007, in Dr. Blain s offices at the Naval Research Lab, Stennis Space Center, July 30, The interviewer is James Pat Smith of the USM [University of Southern Mississippi] history faculty. Blain: My name is Cheryl Ann Blain, and it s Monday, July 30, Smith: And, Dr. Blain, do you mind telling us your date of birth? Blain: No, I don t mind; it s July 5, Smith: Your place of birth? Blain: Columbus, Ohio. Smith: What major occupations have you pursued in your career? Blain: (laughter) Just one; this is it. I basically went to undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame, and I graduated with a bachelor s in science and civil engineering, and then I went on to get a master s in science and civil engineering at Princeton University. And I studied groundwater modeling, developing models of groundwater. And then I went back to the University of Notre Dame and finished a PhD in 1994, also in civil engineering, and my expertise at that time was storm surge modeling. Smith: Storm surge modeling. Where did you go to high school? Blain: I went to high school I grew up in Virginia, Burke, Virginia, outside of Washington, DC, and I went to high school at Lake Braddock Secondary School.

7 2 Smith: Let me ask you a little bit about your family. What was your father s name? Blain: My father s name was Paule and my mother s name was Marie. Smith: Paule Blain? Blain: Paule Blain. Smith: And your mother s name, maiden name? Blain: Marie. Smith: Marie. Blain: Her maiden name was Sutter. Smith: Marie Sutter. Blain: Yeah. My dad was Paule Dean Blain; he had a middle name, Paule Dean. And my mom was Marie Cecile Sutter. Smith: What was your father s occupation? Blain: He was a budget analyst for the government, Department of Defense. Smith: Do you know much about his family background, his parents and their background? Blain: I know some. He grew up in Kirkersville, Ohio, and his parents were divorced, and his grandmother lived in Barnesville, Ohio, and I know all their names. Smith: Well. Blain: OK. Smith: You want to lay their names out? Blain: Oh, sure. Smith: Somebody, someday, may want to know. Blain: OK. Phyllis Keller was his mother; she remarried at some period after the divorce. His father s name was Odie Walter Blain. And his grandmother s name was Myrtle Moore, M-O-O-R-E. And let s see; that s probably about it.

8 3 Smith: They all lived in Ohio? Blain: Yeah, they all lived in Ohio, and I even think my grandfather s parents, I believe, also lived in Ohio; I m not sure where. Smith: Do you know what your grandfather s occupation was? Blain: He worked for the railroad; that s about all I know. Smith: How about your mother s family? Blain: They re all from Akron, Ohio. Her mother was Beatrice Sutter; her maiden name was Deshane(?). And her father was Lawrence Joseph Sutter Sr. Her brother is Lawrence Joseph Sutter Jr. And there is now a third, the son. So, they all lived in Akron, and they her mother immigrated to the United States from Ireland. And her grandparents lived in Syracuse, New York, somewhere near there. Smith: Do you have any brothers and sisters? Blain: I have two brothers, David Lawrence Blain and Michael John Blain. And David lives in North Carolina with his wife and four kids. And Michael lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and he s a bachelor. Smith: Do you have any interests other than those that give you a living, interests, hobbies? Blain: Oh, sure. I love music. I play the oboe, and I ve played since I was in the seventh grade. And I also play the piano; took training from the third grade all through high school. And I participated in the bands all through high school, and then through college at the University of Notre Dame, I was in the band. Smith: That s an interesting mix, civil engineering and music. Blain: Yeah, well, they say it s the same side of the brain, music and math and science. Smith: You went to Notre Dame. Do you have a, you or your family, have a religious affiliation? Blain: Roman Catholic. Smith: Roman Catholic. Are you involved in any professional organizations or civic activities?

9 4 Blain: I ve been involved in the Girl Scouts; I m a lifetime member of the Girl Scouts. Let s see, active in my church in Slidell. And I have two children that are both adopted from Guatemala, and so I m an advocate of adoption in the community. Smith: Do you want to share their names? Blain: Sure, their names are Maria Beatrice and Andrea Nicole, both with Blain as the last name. Smith: OK, great. Did you serve in the military? I know you re a civilian employee at the Navy. Blain: No, I never served in the military. (brief interruption) Smith: Do you have any awards, honors that you care to relate? Blain: Well, there s a lot that I ve garnered professionally, I guess. The most recent was just two days ago I received, or last week, I guess, I received a technology award for the transition of a storm surge forecast system to the Naval Oceanographic Office, and that was really an outgrowth of all the Katrina-related modeling that we did following the storm. Smith: Great. How long had you lived on the Gulf Coast, I guess at Slidell, before Hurricane Katrina struck? Blain: I moved here in November of Smith: In Blain: So, it was about Smith: Almost eleven years. Blain: Yeah. Smith: Almost eleven years. I m very interested in the storm modeling that you ve done related to Katrina, but I also know that you had a personal history with this storm. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, where you were, what was happening when you first started hearing about this storm, and what your family plan became in dealing with the storm? Blain: Sure. I was at work on Friday before Katrina struck, and of course, being an oceanographic institution, we watch the weather closely. And all of a sudden we saw the track change, and everybody kind of went into a panic mode and realized that it

10 5 didn t look good for where we lived. So everybody basically went home and made a plan. And my plan is always to get out. I studied storm surge and modeling. As part of my dissertation, I modeled [Hurricane] Camille along the Gulf Coast, and I would never stay. Smith: What are the ages of your children? Blain: They re now five and a half and two and a half. So, they were actually my youngest daughter I only had six weeks when Katrina hit. I had just picked her up from Guatemala in early July. And my other, oldest daughter was, I guess, three and a half. So based on just having kids, I wouldn t stay, but I probably wouldn t have stayed regardless. That was the third or fourth time I had evacuated, since living here, for a storm. So you know, loaded up the car with (laughter) mostly kids stuff and not too much of my stuff, and I drove out a friend that also works here; we drove in tandem, went to my brother s in Atlanta. Just called him up the night before and said, Hey, we re coming. He said, No problem. And he didn t know we would be there for three weeks. And I remember one thought. (laughter) I was listening to the radio. I could hear in listening to the storm all night as I was packing; we never actually really went to sleep before we left, probably left at 5:00 a.m. and ended up, I think it was, leaving 5:00 a.m. Sunday morning. And as I heard on the radio and the storm was a Category Five, and they said that if you put up plywood and stuff on your windows, it probably wouldn t make much difference with a Category Five. So I was celebrating because I didn t have any plywood on my windows. I thought, All right, good, I didn t waste time doing that. But other than that, it looked pretty grim, and I know my friend and I, we had some radios in the car and going back and forth, and we re talking about the stuff we d left behind, and we figured we probably wouldn t see it again as we drove out. And so, but after that, you know, let s see, we went to Atlanta, and honestly I think you tend to go into this sort of state of shock as you see things evolve, and I really wasn t able to monitor the storm as much. With two kids, I basically didn t really want them watching the television or anything like that, so. In some ways it was just as well that I didn t watch every gory detail of what was going on. But I think the thing that hit me while I was in Atlanta was that I really didn t know what was going on because I really didn t know if we had a house, really didn t know really didn t know anything, so. Smith: Were you in a very low-lying area in Slidell? Blain: I felt good about the house when I bought the house here. I was given advice to buy a house in a three-inches-per-hour rain and watch where the water goes, and so I have one of the highest houses in my neighborhood at sixteen feet above sea level. And I felt like it had weathered a number of things, and I wasn t that worried about storm surge, per se. I guess it would be hard for me to imagine that I would ve had storm surge in my house. Now, whether or not the drainage would back up, that would be an issue certainly. So you know, we got on the Internet and tried to find out different things, and my parents came down from Virginia and helped out with the kids and logistics. And the lab, NRL [Naval Research Lab], I got in touch with all

11 6 their employees and started trying to help them figure out, you know, what was what. And so, you know, we just had little anecdotal things here and there. You d see some piece of information that, Oh, gee, someone in your neighborhood went back to their house. And I said, Oh, well, that s good; their house is still there, so. But eventually the main confirmation came with NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration]; [they] had some aerial photos of the area, and so I was able to locate what I thought was my house and saw that it was still there, and that for the most part, the roof was there. There was a lot of roof damage, but anyway, so I was generally relieved; I wouldn t say excited, but relieved that I had a house. So after two weeks we monitored the situation and figured out we could get back to Slidell; they would let us in. And my friend and I and my brother from North Carolina, we drove to my house and went to assess the damage and see if we could live there. So I left my kids with my parents in Atlanta. So I came back and spent probably, I don t know, four days. My brother got up and did some roof repairs, put on our own blue roof, got a thing. And generally speaking, it had water on the inside and mold on the floor where the water had blown in and came into the rooms and stuff. Smith: Water that came through the roof? Blain: Came through the roof, right. And Smith: So you didn t have the surge. Blain: No storm surge, no storm surge. And I saw the line of the water, how far it had risen. And I live on the retention pond is behind my house, and I had about a foot to go before the water went over the sides of that and then probably would have made its way rapidly to my house, but I would say I was pretty, pretty well off and relieved, thankful that we didn t have a storm surge. And so, you know, by comparison you know, at that time you re thinking, Oh, wow, awesome, we have our house. The roof is there; you pretty much can live in it. We hauled the refrigerator outside, went and bought a new one (laughter) after I cleaned it out and realized that was really silly; I don t want to use it even if it was cleaned out. So, I went and got another one because I knew that I really wanted to bring my kids back. And if I was going to go to work, you know, I needed to be able to bring them back, and then they needed to be able to live there and stuff, so. Aired out the place and basically got it ready to move back. And then NRL called its employees back and told us to get back to work within three weeks, that certainly if you had a situation where you couldn t lots of I don t know; 10 to 15 percent lost their homes altogether, but they were going to do everything they could to get people back to work. So NRL worked on getting people housing, and you know, all kinds of different things. So anyway, so I came back to work, and the day care here on-site was up and going, and so we returned. But then like, I think, many of the things related to the storm things were always changing, you know, and certainly we were thankful we didn t have a storm surge, but as we were living in our house, we were realizing that it really, it really did stink. And we looked around, and you realized you really had a lot more

12 7 water than we thought at first, and because you always compare yours against the next guy, you re like, Oh, well, we have our house, so we re good. But the reality was that in the end, we had a lot of ceiling damage and water in the attic, and the insulation was wet, and it went down the walls, and went in the floors, and under the carpets, and all that stuff. So over the period of from mid-september through October, I sort of came to the realization that we were going to have to have major work done on the interior of the house. And once I sort of realized that, actually life got better because the uncertainty of not knowing what to do or, you know, and sort of in this black hole of information, and you know, all these contractors from wherever. Anyway, so we decided to get the house fixed. We got a PODS portable storage device; I loaded up all the household contents into that. And we got a contractor, and they started work then in January on the house and said it would take, like, a month. So we basically had ceilings repaired and floors all ripped out, wall, and lots of painting and stuff like that. And so in the end, we were doing fine; we had our beds, you know, living in our house with them coming in and doing work until they ripped up the floors. We came home from work one day, and all of our beds and everything that was left was piled up in our garage. And you know normally it d be like, Oh, OK, but with two little kids, that was probably one of the most traumatic things that could ve happened to them, basically, to come home and there be you know, not be able to live in your house. And so basically we called one of our friends and said, Hey, you know, I think we need to come over to your house and stay. And they said, Fine. But we didn t have any clothes; we didn t have anything. And so I went back to the house and tried to sift through what I could get to in the garage to get them a few clothes. But I actually had to go buy some underwear and stuff like that. And they said basically the flooring would take three days. OK, we can live with our friend for three days. Well, it ended up taking eight weeks, which is a typical Katrina story. So we stayed with our friend for eight weeks, and you know friends are great, but (laughter) staying with your friend with two preschool-aged kids for eight weeks, I expect, you know, it gets really old. So, anyway, everybody survived; we got back into our house. Our contractors started not showing up, and you know, typical kind of thing, so we finally cut them off and basically tried to get our life back together in June after the storm. And so it was really a big upheaval, and I d say being myself with just two kids, it was just I mean going through two adoptions is stressful in and of itself, but I ve never, ever in my whole life experienced so much stress as brought on by the storm and trying to cope with fixing your house and everything else. Smith: Did you have an easy time of it with your insurance company? Blain: I did, and probably primarily because I didn t have any storm surge, so. Smith: So they Blain: Yes, it was all wind damages. So a guy came out, and the first estimate that came was real, oh, I thought it was fair and generous, and I was able to, for the most part, cover, like, everything with my insurance, so but I didn t have any flooding. So you know, life post-katrina, when you go to the store and you know you had to be

13 8 really flexible about the meal plan, make it up when you got there as to what was available, and things like that. And so anyways, I would say by the time we got our entire house put back together now, we still have stuff; we just don t have pictures on the walls and stuff like that, but I know that s kind of minor, but where you really felt like you were done with the storm, for the most part, was Thanksgiving of the following year. So, and like I say, our damage wasn t like most people s. Smith: About fourteen months, the house is OK. Blain: Right. Smith: How about the community around you, Slidell? What was going on in that community that maybe you didn t expect when you got back? Blain: Well, I think the one thing that hit me the most was how people really pulled together. And you know there s different kind of personalities; there s certain people that just left and never came back, and then there were people that moved, and interacting with people elsewhere that say, Well, why did you go back? How could you live there? And honestly I think part of the recovery was living there with people that went through it all and basically everybody trying to get back on their feet together. So, in my neighborhood it s very it was very friendly before the storm, but everybody pulled together, were helping each other, and just in lots of different ways. Although, I will say, there was also, even in our neighborhood which had, relatively speaking, minor damage, there s been a huge turnover in people. We probably lost most, many well, I don t know; maybe a third or more of the people turned over in the neighborhood, and one of our immediate neighbors has since moved. And people moved for different reasons; jobs was one big issue, and then some people were opportunistic. The houses in our neighborhood, after a while, they went up in value because they didn t flood; so then they saw an opportunity to sell and move, make money, I guess, and go somewhere else. But for the most part, people really pulled together and very generous, I think. I found that people gravitated towards their if they had a faith community, they sort of gravitated towards that; it became a center, a centering force, I guess, a resource. It s kind of real familiar to everybody. It was like the only institution left that, it seemed to me anyway, that was kind of still there and still functioning, you know, with its routine or whatever, and people really came from all over to and it became a source of strength and community and stuff like that; I found that to be true. Also the workplace, I would say that you never really know much about your employer until they re really put to the test, or the Naval Research Lab people, we have the lab in DC and in Monterrey, and people made a massive amount of donations in terms of material things got sent here and then later following up with individual families, whoever needed specific things, you know, mental health, you know. They basically followed up with you for as long as you wanted. Basically, a year or more, they would check in with you every few weeks and see, How s it going? Is there anything we can do? What s the situation, kind of thing. And I don t think anyone ever expected the employer to be that good. And, you know, people at work pulled together. Though it was kind of interesting; I think at first, people that

14 9 lost everything versus it was kind of people that lost everything were in stuck together, and the people that had damage and were having to deal with repairs but didn t lose everything, they would sort of stick together. And you kind of didn t want to complain about your situation if you still had your house. But, you know, it was kind of a different dynamic that got set up, which has settled out over time, and people can talk about it more, but people laugh about it now in a way, and the people that lost everything, in some ways often said it was, after they grieved their loss, it s easier because they didn t have to deal with all the rebuilding and all this kind of stuff. But it was definitely kind of difficult at first because everybody was going through some level of trauma, just different from different sources, and it was hard to get it sorted out, I guess. Smith: If you look at the community [of] Slidell right now, it s twenty-three months almost to the day after Katrina. What in your mind is the biggest challenge that still remains for that community? Blain: Well, it s hard to say. The part of town where I live, life is pretty much functioning as normal, I would say. People have most of their activities, and you know, the day-to-days is pretty normal. There s a lot more people definitely having to deal with. But Slidell is a community. I mean there s a good third of it that s still, like, not there. You know, things aren t rebuilt. So, as far as the challenge, I m not really sure. There s in some ways, a challenge would be just dealing with the infrastructure and dealing with, there is a lot more people, and they are living in a lot less of Slidell at the present, and you know, but maybe some areas will be rebuilt. It s probably one of the things maybe, that s more disappointing, is there really isn t much planning after the storm; it s really just happenstance, just random. You know, people wanted to come back, and it depends on their financial situation. It depends on their job situation, insurance situation as to whether or not they rebuilt or whether or not they fixed their house so the next time it wouldn t have maybe potentially as much problem as it did before. It s really random. There s not I don t see a whole lot of planning going on. There s been a lot of planning, I think, in terms of emergency response but not in terms of stepping back and, Should we do anything different? It s pretty much just Smith: The day that you returned to Slidell after the first time you went back, what was the most shocking or surprising thing that you saw? Blain: Well, the first thing, I guess, that was surprising was the National Guard, the guys driving around in the military Jeeps. Smith: This was like two weeks after the storm. Blain: Right, with their guns and stuff like that. That s not something that you typically see in Slidell. And then when I drove around and went to the more heavily damaged parts, just the degree of damage; I mean, [it] really couldn t be described unless you saw it. And you could even take a photo and show somebody, but it really

15 10 didn t capture the level of destruction. And it certainly even knowing what storm surge is and having studied it, I don t think you could ever imagine the level of devastation. It s not really something that you probably ever thought that much about, but it was just really unimaginable driving in neighborhood after neighborhood and seeing the level of destruction. I mean, I ve seen tornadoes before, and you know, a house or two that gets wiped out, but you know, just whole entire sections of a town just eliminated. Smith: Slidell is on Lake Pontchartrain across the lake from New Orleans. In New Orleans, people would be familiar with the levee system breaking. Is there a levee protecting Slidell from Lake Pontchartrain? Blain: I don t believe so. There s probably a seawall. I know over in, sort of near Mandeville, there s, like, a seawall, but I don t think there s really a levee. Smith: There s nothing like, nothing like the levee system in New Orleans? Blain: No, no. Smith: So, most of the damage that you, that Slidell took was water coming off of Lake Pontchartrain? Blain: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure, yeah. And I think you one thing that was apparent to me, too, is that when you look at a you know, we look at maps of the water all the time and, like, the Gulf Coast and Bay St. Louis, and all these water bodies, but what we don t often have overlaying that is the roads and where the town is and all that, and I think you know, I never would ve imagined the surge to have gone in Slidell as far inland, you know, in terms maybe of like an interstate exit, you know, when Slidell has three exits, and it went all the way up to the third or not including the third one, but close to the third exit, and I never would ve imagined that. Smith: So the third exit is where [Highway] 10 and [Highway] 12 Blain: Gause Boulevard to [Highway] 190. Smith: come together. Blain: Yeah, right, right. So south of that. Pretty much, I guess, up to the Old Spanish Trail exit, you know. I would ve never imagined that. And when I came back driving down the interstate, I could see where there had been sand and water. You know, or we d look around and like, Geez, I don t remember there was water in that, you know, some spot between the interstate exchange or something. You know, and later when you think about it, and you re like, Yeah, I don t think that was water there, you know, and now it s kind of a little oh, it s probably gone now, but you know, there was a little lake there for a while because of so much water. And, but, yeah, and even like they re saying coastal, on the Mississippi Coast when you see

16 11 where the damage is, when you re driving on the interstate, you think you re so far; you think you re inland, but you re not really inland that much as far as in relation to some of the things which, like I say, you don t think about it when you re living on the land. Smith: We were talking about the general landforms along Blain: Yeah. Smith: even Interstate 10 in Mississippi. Blain: Right, I mean you don t realize how far inland Bay St. Louis and its associated marshes extend, you know, because you don t largely you don t see that from an interstate system. You re kind of isolated. So, if you just got home from work back and forth on the interstate and all that, you think you I don t know; it s easy to forget. Smith: Do you know how many employees there are with the Naval Research Lab here in Hancock County? Blain: Ooh, I don t really. Our division has about 100 to 120 in the oceanography division, and there are two and a half divisions here at Stennis Space Center, so I m not really sure. Smith: So you would be unsure about the number of people who lost their houses. Blain: Oh, yeah, I don t have a good sense of that number. Smith: Well, you described your awareness of the storm and your feelings that you ought to get out no matter what; you evacuate a lot during storms. From your perspective as somebody who s studied storm surge and you studied Camille for your doctoral dissertation, what was different about this storm? When did you become aware that there was something different about the storm, just as a scientist? Blain: The storm was huge. I mean the radial extent of the storm, I think, is what really set it apart from any other storm. When you can go from west in Louisiana from, like, Hammond or even, well, even west, further west of Lake Pontchartrain and then drive all the way over to Mobile and still have Katrina damage, I mean that s just an enormous area. So, for me that s, I mean that really was what set it apart is that it was just a huge storm. And of course, you know, it sat out there as a Category Five for a few days, and from what I know about storm surge, you know, basically piled up the water significantly in the Mississippi coastal area, you know, into Lake Pontchartrain and all that, and you don t have to have a Category Five at landfall. All you really needed was enough wind to push all the water inland. I mean it s very lowlying in here. So basically the storm surge had already kind of been built up. So,

17 12 given that it was a Category Five, and it was so huge, I mean you really didn t have to come ashore as a Five to get concerned, but Smith: Let me get you to think a little bit about what you know about Camille versus Katrina. Do you know how much, what the storm surge was with Camille? Its eye crossed around Pass Christian, Mississippi. Blain: Right, right. Yeah, you know, I don t have those numbers in my head, honestly, about the Camille storm surge. I don t know. Camille was a much smaller storm. I mean that was probably the biggest difference. I mean Camille came across with higher winds, certainly, when it made landfall, so you had a lot of wind damage, but there was also a lot less development on the Coast at that time. So you re not going to see you ll see, you know, there was a lot of damage, but it didn t seem quite as bad because it was, I think, a more sparsely populated coastal area. But as far as the surge, I think Katrina s surge was somewhat higher but maybe in yeah, well, it must ve been because it moved a lot further inland, I think; so it was higher. But it was also I think Camille was more localized. It was a much smaller storm so there was just a smaller area that inundated. Smith: Are there any other differences between the storms that you ve become aware of as a scientist? Blain: Well, one of the big ones I think is the amount of time that it sort of sat in the Gulf as a Category Five. Camille sort of went through and I m trying to think if I think their forward speeds were actually fairly similar, but Camille sort of grew and then hit as a Five, and Katrina, you know, basically ramped up quickly to a Five and kind of sat there and pushed the water up against the Coast, and then came in and kind of died off, but just you know like I said, it wouldn t take much to push all that water inland. And just the extent; I mean you re talking hundreds, a couple of hundred miles versus tens of miles. Smith: Is there a pretty good consensus about the size of the Katrina surge? Blain: There is, I believe. We did a number of comparisons. There s been lots of high-water-mark measurements around the thirty, twenty-eight feet or so, in that range, and I think that s pretty much agreed upon. Smith: Do you have any observations from your background about any of the technical points that have come to issue with insurance companies about wind versus water? Is there a way that as a wave expert or storm surge expert that you might approach to try to unravel that knot in insurance issues, wind versus water? Blain: Well, I m not going to say a lot on that other than you can t have wind I mean you can t have any storm surge if you don t have wind, so it s hard to understand the argument, I guess, and that, like I say, in order to get a surge you have

18 13 to have wind; that s basically the definition of storm surge. So as a scientist, it s difficult to separate wind from surge. Smith: So if you were trying to get with a bunch of engineers to do the structural assessments, you don t particularly have any light to shed on their problem of trying to estimate what damage is wind versus what is water, from what you know about wave action and things like that? Blain: Yeah. That would be speculation. Smith: OK. Well, let s go back to your background as a scientist, and here be sure that we talk about points that we had mentioned earlier that you think are really significant here to talk about. But scientifically, what facts are known about the surge that came with Katrina as far as the key facts about the Coast, the Mississippi Sound, the barrier islands, Lake Pontchartrain? How does all that stuff work together, the interaction of wind and wave? Blain: Right, right. Well, basically off the Coast of Mississippi, it s a very gently sloping bottom. You know, the ocean bottom is gently sloping, and so in that type of environment it extends out, you know, tens of miles out into the Gulf beyond the barrier islands. Smith: Gently sloping to a lay person, what might that mean in terms of Blain: Well, closer to flat. (laughter) Smith: Close to flat? Blain: Uh-huh. Smith: How far out is it till you get to, I don t know, twenty-five feet depth on average? Would it be to the barrier islands? Blain: Oh yeah, it should be beyond the barrier islands. Smith: Beyond the barrier it s less than twenty-five, for the most part. Blain: Right. Smith: And between, say, Ship and Cat Island and the shore, much more shallow. Blain: Oh yeah, yeah, it s true, yeah, you know, tens of meter ten meters, fifteen meters.

19 14 Smith: So, would it be accurate to say that if you stood on shore in Bay St. Louis or Long Beach or Gulfport and you looked out to sea as far as the eye could see, you re probably not looking at water that s more than twenty feet deep? Blain: Yeah. Smith: It s very shallow water. Blain: It s very shallow, very shallow. Smith: The Navy would not operate submarines in that area. Blain: No. In fact, even from the oceanographic perspective of collecting, you know, just oceanographic observations, they have to go, you know, beyond the barrier islands to typically, with any of their research vessels, to collect data. I mean it s just you know, there are some smaller vessels they can take between the islands. There are other, some shipping channels between the islands and stuff, but yeah, it s very shallow. You need a flat bottom kind of boat. Smith: Well, what did this mean for Hurricane Katrina? Blain: Well, that s the area where surge is generated, on the shelf, and when it s very shallow and extends out a great distance, then there s the potential for generating water surge, especially if the wind is pushing the water up onto the continental slope, and there s lots of area for it to push it up over, and it just keeps piling it up. It s easy to overcome the very shallow slope; so it just keeps piling water up and piling water up. So, the storm out the fact that it was out sort of in the central Gulf or, you know, north central Gulf, I mean that s perfect for pushing water up onto the Mississippi Coast. And then because the storm rotates in a counterclockwise direction, that means it would also push water into Lake Pontchartrain. And Lake Pontchartrain has an oscillatory motion. Basically, you know, waters from the storm, when the water is being pushed in on one side and the winds are rotating counterclockwise, as the storm moves forward and past the lake, then the winds would be coming from the opposite direction, and it s also very shallow. It s like twelve, ten to twelve meters, so the water will just shift from one side of the lake to the other in a big wave, big (inaudible) wave. And that s pretty much what happened there, and it has happened in other storms, which is no big surprise; just the magnitude of it was much larger than in the past. So I think because for the Mississippi Coast, anyway, the entrance to Lake Pontchartrain is very narrow; the Rigolets [straits are] there, so it s like a funnel, and the water piles up outside there as well. All those things make it bad for the Mississippi Coast in terms of generating lots of easily generating lots of storm surge with a big storm. Smith: If there was if some sort of floodgate was constructed at the mouth of Lake Pontchartrain to protect New Orleans, what would the implications be for the areas east of Lake Pontchartrain?

20 15 Blain: Well, I think they could expect more, more storm surge, meaning the water levels would rise, and the water wouldn t go into Lake Pontchartrain, and it would just build up at those barriers and generally cause a rise in sea level to the east of those barriers, and that would it s hard to imagine it would do anything except for enhance the storm surge and then the resulting inundation of the water. Smith: There s been a lot of popular speculation about the offshore islands of Chandeleur and Ship Island, Cat Island, Horn Island back down the Coast toward Mobile in their role in the storms. Your personal expertise on the way the bottom is out there and the way storm surge works, can you talk a little bit about the role of those islands from your point of view? Blain: Yeah. We re actually actively studying that right now. We re trying to figure out that s kind of the beauty of a model; we can have the islands there as they were completely overtopped. We could raise them to whatever level we want and see what impact that would have or just eliminate them altogether. And surprisingly enough, in some of the preliminary looks for a storm like Katrina, the islands really are kind of a minor, a minor factor. I mean they are like a little speed bump basically that the surge was so great that, you know, the overtopping was on the order of several feet, not, you know so raising, in the case of Cat Island, I think they re going to raise the island like seven I m trying to think of it; it was seven meters, could ve been seven meters before we didn t have overtopping. I mean so there s no way you re going to restore an island to that kind of level. So, actually, you know, it helped, in the timing of it; it helped some hold back the surge just slightly, but in reality, you know, like I say and some of these simulations are a little bit preliminary, but the islands didn t really have a huge impact in a storm of that size. Now, maybe a smaller storm, I think it would retard the surge somewhat, but you know, they re pretty small. Smith: In the early colonial history of the Coast, the islands are recorded as having been covered with timber, covered with a lot of woods. Blain: Um-hm. Smith: And up until the Civil War, at least Ship Island and Cat Island had quite a bit of timber on there [that] were cut by 20,000 soldiers camped out there at one time. Would the timbering of the islands change this, or are you basically saying you ve got to come up twenty meters? Blain: Well, I think the trees does make a difference. Some of the work that s been done through the IPET [Interagency Performance Evaluation Team] Panel has shown that the canopy heights do make a difference in terms of the wind, you know, and to the level that they ve incorporated into the surge modeling places where there s significant canopy and reduced the wind stress at the water s surface. So, yeah, I think that would, could ve had a larger impact than simply raising the islands.

21 16 Smith: I think it s generally believed that Deer Island might ve been two or three times longer three hundred years ago than it is now, even if the island didn t have much additional height where just the length of a wooded body like that began to have impact. Blain: I think certainly, you know, as it is now there s so many passages through the islands that it s like Swiss cheese. I mean that s what the Chandeleurs are like now. I mean there s hardly any islands left anyway. But, yeah, the more contiguous land you would have, I would think the better off you are. Smith: Now, you Blain: And certainly I think that would enhance the chance for land building, also, that over time that the potential for accretion of more sand and whatever would be greater, the more sort of contiguous you have. Smith: You spoke of a modeling group; you used a technical term there for some of the surge modeling. Blain: Oh, the Interagency Performance Evaluation Team that is doing the postanalysis of Katrina. Smith: What s that? Can you describe who makes up that Interagency Performance Evaluation Team? Blain: It s the Army Corps of Engineers, and my advisor, Joannes Westerink, I know is one of the people on the team and we keep in touch from the University of Notre Dame. And we ve had a professional relationship since I left graduate school, so. And we use the surge model that he developed with Rick Luettich, and he was from North Carolina. Smith: Can you stop and spell those names, particularly the two professors you re talking about? Blain: Oh, Joannes is J-O-A-N-N-E-S, Westerink, W-E-S-T-E-R-I-N-K. And Rick, R-I-C-K, Luettich is L-U-E-T-T-I-C-H, University of North Carolina. So they developed this model over decades and had since been working on a specific model for Southeast Louisiana before the storm came, so they had been looking at some of these issues about wind drag and all that. Then all that research got accelerated after Katrina and Joannes Westerink was part of this evaluation team put together by the Army, I think. Anyway, so I just, I know some of the details of that work. Smith: Well, what has Katrina taught the scientific community about storm surge problems?

22 17 Blain: Well, I think one of the things now and after the fact, of course if you want a really detailed picture of the storm surge and the inundation, you know, down to meters scale, then you need all the detail of all of the levees, all the roads, you need information about the canopy, land views. They now have the high resolution LIDAR [laser imaging detection and ranging] topographic data and all that, so all that now makes it possible. So, before Smith: LIDAR is basically flyover laser measurements of the land? Blain: The elevation of the land. Smith: Elevation above sea level. Blain: Right. Smith: And how accurate is that? Blain: It s within, like, a meter. Smith: It s a very, very Blain: It s very high resolution. Smith: accurate Blain: Yeah. Smith: estimate of where the land is in relation to the water line or the sea level. Blain: Right. Well, it s just elevation or roads and elevation of, you know, that house, which is this house kind of thing; so of course, all that type of data hasn t always been available, or if we had the computing power, even if it was, how would we use it? You know, what would we do with it? But now they re to the point where they can use all that information in the models, and so it s that level of detail now. I mean nothing has changed about basic understanding of storm surge; it s all in this level of detail. And like I say, the fact that the wind experiences a greater drag over a tree canopy than over a marsh or over water, and sort of accounting for those differences. So now they can get very detailed maps of storm surge inundation; predict that. So, it s a function of the data that s out there and the computing power, and then the level of interest. (laughter) After Katrina, there s a huge amount of interest in, or awareness I guess, of the importance of being able to predict inundation or that sort of thing. Whereas before, you know there are certain communities that were interested in it, and certain government entities, it s their job to be interested in it, but for the most part it wasn t a high priority. And it s become a really, really high priority. Most of the people that I mean for example, when I finished my dissertation, I was an expert in storm surge modeling, and I came to work for the

23 18 Navy, and they said, Well, that s great, you know, but the Navy s never going to do anything in a hurricane. So just tuck that away; you know, we ll do something a little bit different. And even in the Navy today, there are several new programs that have started. The Navy s mostly focusing on the atmospheric aspects of modeling the hurricanes because their atmospheric models and products didn t do a great job at predicting Katrina, and so they want to improve on that. Smith: Are those pretty much the same models that the National Weather Service uses? Blain: Yeah, they do use one of them. The NOGAPS, [Navy Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System] the Navy, let s see; what is it? Global Prediction System, the Atmospheric Prediction System is used in that mix of models that the Weather Service or the Hurricane Center uses, so, but it needed it didn t have a tropical storm cyclone model embedded in it. So now they re working on that, those physics and stuff. But even, like I say, our community of coastal modelers and the Advanced Circulation Model, ADCIRC, which we use, has been meeting for ten years in you know, certainly there was storm surge activity going on, but there was interest in other areas of research, developing the models to look at a broader class of coastal dynamics and so on. But after Katrina it s the research; there s so much money in doing post-katrina analyses and generating these storm surge and inundation maps for all the coastal areas along the Gulf and the East Coast that all of the people that I ve been involved with with this modeling for ten and twelve years, they re now, they all got sucked in to do the storm surge modeling. And then there are just tons and tons of contractors that are, you know they basically follow the money; it s like they all came out of the woodwork with these huge amounts of money coming into storm surge modeling. And, well, certainly I would never say it s bad to do something that s in the interest of public safety, but it s coming at the expense of everything. Basically a lot of other areas of research are getting shut down, and the focus is strictly on this, and it s sort of becoming rather myopic in a sense of developing, like I say, these maps, these inundation maps for certain parts of the coastal areas even so far as their making the models, you know, very specific. And one day we will have made those maps, you know, and kind of be done with that phase, to a certain degree, but then, you know, so there s no other advancements going on basically outside of this realm. And like I say, even researchers that were working on other things are all sucked into this storm-surge-related stuff, which prior to Katrina, honestly, you could hardly ever get money to purely study storm surge. People would say, Ah, done, we ve solved that problem a long time ago; that s not new. So, it s kind of interesting in a way after the storm. And of course just prior to the storm, actually, I mean a day, really, we were set, I was set to work with some folks from the Army Corps of Engineers and some people from the University of New Orleans doing some coastal restoration projects in the Louisiana coast, and after the storm it was, like as was true with all the people and everything everything sort of got thrown up in the air and scrambled around, and you see where it comes down. And so I m not involved in that anymore, in large part because everything got reoriented, and money got shuffled around, and different