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On This Day: Hurricane Betsy kills 76 in New Orleans in deadliest storm before Katrina
It alerted people of the new danger of hurricanes to New Orleans after the city had been remarkably unscathed for most of the 20th century
September 9: Hurricane Betsy – the deadliest century storm to hit New Orleans before Katrina – killed 76 people as it tore through the city on this day in 1965.
The Category 4 tropical cyclone caused billions of dollars in damages after 178mph winds also bruised the Bahamas, Florida and other places on the Gulf Coast.
But it was in New Orleans where it caused the greatest devastation – with 164,000 homes being flooded after water from the Mississippi River breached the levees.
Ironically, the new, tougher and taller flood defences built in response to Betsy were overwhelmed 40 years later when Katrina, a Category 5 storm, arrived.
Like the 2005 hurricane that killed 1,833 people, Betsy hit poor and low-lying Lower Ninth Ward hardest – with water rising to the roofs of some houses.
It took ten days to clear the flooding before the process of rebuilding could begin again in the storm-prone city.
But, unlike Katrina, the death toll was minimised by a more effective evacuation of the city.
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They had plenty of warning since Betsy had been heading the way of the Big Easy – a nickname earned by its love of jazz and a good time – since developing on August 27.
A British Pathé newsreel showed the storm battering Florida, filming boats bobbing in harbours and palm trees vigorously swaying on the beach.
Although, damage to the Sunshine State – which included destruction of 90% of the avocado crop around Miami – was significantly less than elsewhere.
As the hurricane reached the Gulf of Mexico it sank eight offshore oil platforms – with one owned by future President George H. W. Bush being insured for $5.7billion.
In Mississippi – after hitting New Orleans - 25,000 homes lost power while others were flooded after being battered by tides that rose 15ft higher than normal.
And in neighbouring Alabama, 20% of the pecan crop was destroyed by what became the third most severe hurricane in U.S. history after Carla in 1961 and Hugo in 1989.
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In the aftermath, the name Betsy was retired so that no future storm could be called that.
More significantly, it alerted people of the new danger of hurricanes to New Orleans after the city had been remarkably unscathed for most of the 20th century.
It brought the risk of flooding to the forefront and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were instructed to build new levees.
But they were designed to resist a fast-moving Category 3 storm like Betsy, rather than a slow-moving Category 4 hurricane like Katrina, which caused them to crack.
A month later, another hurricane – Rita – caused the levee system to fail, although the city coped much better Gustav in 2008.
Since then the Army has spent $6billion rebuilding defences – and estimate that the city will only face flooding once in 100 years.
But the structure is often poorly compared to the world’ best levee system in Holland, which protects the low-lying country from a one-in-a-thousand-year flood.
Such a system would cost $30billion to replicate in and around New Orleans.
