Saturday marks 10 years since Hurricane Katrina washed away much of New Orleans, and one UNC faculty member has been along for the ride from the storm’s approach through the rebuilding of the city.

Rick Luettich is the Director of the Institute of Marine Sciences at UNC Chapel Hill, and he works out of a satellite location in Morehead City. He vividly recalls monitoring models of Hurricane Katrina as it barreled into Louisiana on August 29, 2005.

“[The models] suggested a bad storm, a storm where water levels got high and, in some cases, may have exceeded the protection system that was there,” he says. “But into the evening and into the night, after dark, we didn’t anticipate the massive failures and the catastrophe that occurred.

“And that didn’t start to become evident until the sun came up the next morning.”

When the sun came up the devastation was overwhelming. The nation watched as families were stranded, standing on their rooftops hoping to flag down a rescue squad that had enough room to bring on additional survivors. We still don’t know for sure how many people died during the hurricane and the subsequent flooding, estimates range from 1,200 to more than 1,800. Damage totaled an estimated $108 billion.

The massive number of fatalities and damage was brought about because of the failure of the levees that were designed to protect the below-sea-level city.

“Not because the water in many areas had gone over the top of them,” Luettich says, “but simply because they had failed prior to reaching their design elevation.”

Luettich says that protection against flooding wasn’t new for New Orleans. They’ve been threatened for hundreds of years from the mighty Mississippi River in addition to the coastal waters.

In the two years following Hurricane Katrina, Luettich was one the prominent researchers studying the forensic data to find out what happened and what needed to be done to keep it from happening again, including rebuilding levees that would sustain the city.

“The modeling system that we have was used to understand and predict how high that needed to be,” he says, “whether it was 12 feet above sea level, or 25 feet above sea level, or what, around the entire perimeter of the city.”

Luettich says no matter how much preparation you put into protecting the city, there are certain challenges that will never subside.

“The biggest challenge that Louisiana faces is its geography,” he says, “its elevation relative to sea level, the fact that it’s sinking. That’s their biggest challenge.

“Probably the second biggest challenge is simply the high potential for storms going there. As you map out historical storm paths, southern Louisiana is a hot spot for those hitting.”

Luettich adds that New Orleans is in better position to protect itself today than it ever has been in the past, but that is still no guarantee.

“It will be a constant battle, if you will, between man and nature so long as New Orleans continues to be inhabited,” he says. “It’s easy to anticipate the next 50, maybe even 100 years there.

“But even as you look to much longer time spans – several hundred years henceforth – and predicted sea level rises, it becomes a much bigger challenge to wonder how long New Orleans can hold on.”

Luettich says, “I’d love to be able to come back every 50 years for the next several centuries and just peek at it.”