Background - Climate Change and Infrastructure, Urban Systems, and Vulnerabilities - page 5

Figure 1 Path of Hurricanes Katrina
and Rita relative to oil and natural gas
production platforms

New
Orleans

Henry Hub

Houston

Hurricane force winds—Katrina

Storm track for eye of Katrina

Oil or natural gas platform

Hurricane force winds—Rita
Storm track for eye of Rita

Source: GAO analysis of data provided by the National Weather Service and the Minerals Management Services.

the land mass (unrelated to climate change) (Figure 1 ) . More recent estimates indicate
that sea-level rise by 2100 may be twice as great as this study assumed, based at that
time on lower projections by the IPCC in its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.
Our expanding understanding of climate stressors is complemented by an enhanced
understanding of how infrastructure and the services they provide are at risk. The Gulf
Coast Study found that approximately 2,400 miles of major roads , 246 miles of railways,
3 airports and three-quarters of the freight facilities would be inundated by a four-foot
rise in sea level. It further found that more than half of the major roads and all of the
ports were susceptible to flooding from a storm surge of just 18 feet. By comparison, Ka-
trina's surge was estimated at 28 feet at landfall. As stark as these direct impacts are, the
ripple effects of damaged infrastructure on other essential services poses an even more
complex set of challenges. In the ensuing analysis of impacts of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita
and Ike, lessons were learned about the interdependence of various types of infrastruc-
ture and how interdependencies exacerbate the vulnerabilities of critical services. In this
region, fuel supply, shipping and communications were all disrupted as a result of inter-
ruptions in transportation services.
As an example, three critical transportation conduits, the Colonial, Plantation and
Capline pipelines, were knocked out by a power outage caused by Hurricane Katrina.
The pipelines were shut down for two full days and operated at reduced power for
about two weeks. These pipelines bring more than 125 million gallons of gasoline, diesel
and jet fuel to the northeast seaboard each day. As a result of the energy failure, fuel
shortages and price spikes resulted, afecting the transportation network (htp://money
.cnn.com/2005/09/01/news/economy/pipeline/index.htm). Gasoline price spiked as much
as 40 cents per gallon (or about 25% in September 2005) and aircraft were in danger of
being grounded for lack of fuel. In addition to the power outage, Katrina also caused
damage to crude oil pipelines and refineries that reduced oil production by 19 percent
for the year. Katrina also disrupted Mississippi River exports of the grain harvest. The
South Louisiana port is the largest in the U.S. in terms of volume, generally due to grain
movements; and there is no economically viable way to export the grain without this