katrina

New Orleans & Hurricane Katrina 10 years on

August 25, 2015

This week marks the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. It occurred just months after Google Earth was first released. Although Google Earth had existed as Keyhole Viewer prior to that, Google’s acquisition really helped to popularize it. Katrina was an early test for Google Earth’s capabilities in assisting with rescue efforts and reporting natural disasters. Within days of the disaster, Digital Globe imagery was put into image overlays by users and Google released image overlays with imagery from NOAA. Later the Digital Globe imagery was put into Google Earth’s database.

The Google Earth team was later recognized for their contributions to the hurricane relief efforts.

Two years after Katrina, there was a bit of controversy when people noticed that Google had replaced the post Katrina imagery with older higher resolution imagery from before the hurricane. Google responded to the ensuing media outcry by releasing new post Katrina imagery. At the time many Google Earth enthusiasts suggested a new feature to allow the viewing of alternative imagery sets. This was later added to Google Earth in 2009 as the now familiar and extremely useful ‘historical imagery’ feature.

So, images of a flooded New Orleans are still available in Google Earth today. In addition, the city has been given the 3D treatment, so you can have a look at some of the new flood defences built in response to Katrina.

We can also watch the construction of new defences in ‘historical imagery’:

According to this article over 100,000 houses were destroyed. However, the accompanying video says ‘damaged or destroyed’ and that 30,000 were restored. That still leaves 60,000 homes needing to be pulled down or rebuilt, which should cover a fairly large area. However, they must have been scattered in amongst undamaged houses, as we were unable to find much evidence of large scale rebuilding, except for the location shown below:

Abandoned theme parks in Google Earth

May 29, 2014

Last year we showed you a collection of the best roller coasters in Google Earth, highlighting some amazing parks around the world. A recent article in the Huffington Post takes it the other direction and highlights seven abandoned parks that can be found in Google Earth.

A great example is Six Flags, New Orleans, shown here:

From the article:

This theme park was closed just before Hurricane Katrina struck the region in 2005. It was heavily damaged in the storm and has been essentially abandoned ever since. Numerous attempts to rebuild it have fallen flat and the only salvageable ride (a Batman attraction) was moved to San Antonio. It has since become a film set and remains there today, crumbling into the dirt.

Using Google Earth’s historical imagery tool, you can go back in time to view some of the parks in their early days. For more, check out the full story on the Huffington Post.

Some amazing “before and after” images in Google Earth

September 9, 2013

One of my favorite features in Google Earth is the historical imagery. Being able to go back in time and see how a location looked years earlier is very cool. With that in mind, the folks at Mashable put together a list of “11 shocking Google Earth Before-and-After Photos“.

The majority of what they show are things we’ve highlighted over the years: the post-earthquake changes in Haiti, the northeast United States after Hurricane Sandy, post-earthquake imagery in Japan, images after the 2011 tornado in Joplin, images after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, and a handful of other examples.

It really helps to show the power of Google Earth, and just how striking the historical imagery can be. You can find similar visualizations using Google’s Timelapse project, and then check out this full article for yourself on Mashable.

Fresh Street View imagery in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Lafayette

August 14, 2012

A handful of cities in Louisiana were updated with fresh Street View imagery today. New Orleans was the big one, with a remarkable amount of fresh imagery, and Google updated Baton Rouge and Lafayette as well.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu wrote a blog entry for Google’s Lat Long Blog, in which he details some of the great places you can see in this fresh imagery. The imagery is indeed quite sharp, and it’s a great way to show off the progress that New Orleans has made in the seven years since Hurricane Katrina.
Don’t forget that not only can view this imagery in Google Maps, but you can view it inside of Google Earth as well. Here’s a quick video that shows more about how that works:

Hurricane Katrina, Five Years Later

August 30, 2010

Yesterday marked the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall in New Orleans, Louisiana, causing over $80 billion in damage and killing nearly 2,000 people. Google Earth Blog offered a great deal of coverage to the event, as Google was able to contribute a variety of imagery updates and other resources to help. I had just started running Google Earth Hacks at that time, and users submitted quite a few KML files related to the hurricane.
Despite only being on the market as “Google Earth” for a few months (it was previously available as “Keyhole”, though it was far less popular) many people, such as this couple, were able to use Google’s oft-updated imagery of the area to see the condition of their home.

In early 2007, after having posted post-Katrina imagery in Google Earth, they reverted the default layer to pre-Katrina imagery. While this was only done to insure the highest quality imagery, Google caught a lot of flack for this and resolved it a few days later.
Late last week, Google posted a short entry that recognized the anniversary of Katrina. As they mention in the article, Google Earth’s historical imagery tool is a great way to look back and see how the city changed from pre-Katrina, after the storm hit, and how it looks today.