Hurricane Katrina wreaked massive damage along the Gulf Coast of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. While much of the damage associated with hurricanes is related to wind and flooding, damage as a result of storm surge in coastal areas in particular can be significant, and this damage mechanism is very similar to what can happen during a tsunami. This is clearly the case for Katrina. Development of design guidelines for coastal construction to resist storm surge and tsunami wave loading has been hampered by the lack of experimental research and field data. Although excellent records are often collected of coastal run-up, either via field surveys or satellite imagery, the effects of storm surge and tsunami loading on the built infrastructure is often not well documented. To supplement our work under a recently-received NEES-R grant to develop Performance Based Tsunami Engineering (PBTE), we will survey the structural damage associated principally with storm surge and the resulting hydrodynamic forces on areas of the U.S. Gulf Coast. A significant amount of the damage to the Biloxi coast area appears to have resulted from the storm surge and waves. However, it appears that large engineered buildings withstood the storm surge and waves. Damage to these types of buildings appears to be primarily from debris, either water-borne or wind-borne. The former appears to have caused the most significant structural damage, including partial collapse of several large structures. A first hand assessment of the storm surge and debris impact damage from Katrina will help us to focus more clearly on the damage mechanisms that occur in both hurricane storm surge and tsunami conditions. We also anticipate that damage from unexpected sources will become evident. The survey represents a rare opportunity to document the damage in an industrialized country resulting from a tsunami-like event.
