Name Using Textual Evidence

Hurricane Katrina
When Hurricane Katrina made landfall at southeast Louisiana and
southern Mississippi early in the morning on August 29, 2005, it was
an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm. It went on to be one of the Answer the questions. Use textual evidence to support your
deadliest and most destructive storms ever to hit the United States. Causing answers.
over $108 billion in damage, Katrina claimed over 1800 lives and left millions
homeless due to the flooding that followed along the Gulf Coast and in New 1. What was significant about Hurricane Katrina?
Orleans. Katrina ranks sixth overall in strength of recorded Atlantic
hurricanes, and was also one of the largest.
The storm itself did a lot of damage, but the real impact was the
aftermath. Because New Orleans is below sea level, the area is protected by
a number of levees, embankments that are meant to protect an area from
flooding. Following Hurricane Katrina, over 50 levees in New Orleans failed,
allowing massive flooding that devastated 80% of New Orleans and the
entirety of St. Bernard Parish. 2. What caused the most significant damage?
The levees were designed and constructed by the United States Army
Corps of Engineers, who were to hand responsibility for components of the
levee system over to the local levee boards once construction was complete.
When Katrina hit in 2005, the levee project was not yet complete. Following
the disaster, five investigations were conducted by civil engineers and other
experts, who determined that the federal flood protection system failed due
to inadequate design and construction on the part of the Army Corps of 3. Who or what was responsible for the failure of the levees?
Engineers. A Senate hearing nearly a year later concluded that Katrina's
super destructive power was "aided by incomplete protection, lower than
authorized structures, and levee sections with erodible materials." The U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers did admit responsibility, but the reasons for the
design decisions that contributed to the disaster are still in dispute today.
While New Orleans and the surrounding areas have largely recovered,
that recovery has been slow, and many abandoned homes and business still
stand today as they did just after the devastating waters had receded, as
monuments to the tragedy.

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Name Using Textual Evidence

Is There Life on Mars?

Scientists have long known that there is water on Mars, in frozen and gaseous states.
At one time, in fact, Mars had rivers, lakes and oceans, just like earth. But NASA’s
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has recently made comprehensive
measurements of what looks like seasonal flows of liquid water on a global scale.
This is significant, because all life as we currently know it uses liquid water in its
metabolism in some way. It’s long been a scientific rule of thumb that where
there is water, there is life. Does the NASA discovery mean that there is life on
Mars?
In 2011, MRO scientists announced that they had discovered seasonal dark tracks
appearing on the warming Mars slopes in the southern hemisphere, tracks that they could
not explain, but they looked like the markings of a recent flow of liquid across the ground
surface. In the fall of 2015, their hunch was confirmed. The tracks contain a “signature” of
hydrated salts, which means that the tracks were formed by liquid water, which is able to
exist on Mars in a liquid state because it is a brine; essentially the water that has been
discovered is saltwater. The “salt” in the water, though, is perchlorates, a highly toxic type
of chemical that is used in a range of industrial processes, and which is a key oxidizer in
rocket fuel. Perchlorates are a powerful type of salt, which lower the freezing point of
water, essentially acting as an antifreeze for the planet.
Perchlorates are very toxic to humans, which puts a damper on the possibility of ever
realizing Mars colonization fantasies. Perchlorates are known to cause both thyroid
problems and, possibly, cancer, and pose a bigger threat to future Mars astronauts than
radiation. For the most part Mars is a dry, dusty world, and that dust, for all intents and
purposes, is poisonous. But it’s not poisonous to everyone or, that is, to everything.
Some microbes on Earth use perchlorates as an energy source, which means that strictly
speaking, there may be life on Mars after all.

1. What has been discovered and how does it differ from what scientists already knew?

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What is the evidence? ___________________________________________________________

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