HURRICANE DEBRIS



How much is there?

The amount of Hurricane Katrina debris removed so far is 44,580,290 cubic yards. A cubic yard is 3 feet long by

3 feet wide by 3 feet high. This amount of debris:

Would fill 301,218 railroad boxcars. In a train, they would stretch from Biloxi to San Francisco.

Would pave 2,814 miles of a four-lane interstate highway

Equals 256,209 commercial busses. Lined up, they would stretch 1,941 miles, the distance from Savannah, Ga., to Las Vegas.

Piled on a 100-yard football field, would reach 25,078 feet into the air. Mt. Everest is 29,036 feet high. That means the debris from Hurricane Katrina would reach 86 percent of Mt. Everest’s height.

Would be taller than Mt. McKinley in Alaska, the tallest mountain in North America (20,320 feet) by almost a mile.

Would mean that each square mile of Mississippi’s total area of 46,907 square miles could contain 1,000 cubic yards of debris.



Where did it go?

Vegetative debris is buried, burned or recycled. Some of the recycling uses include material for landscaping, fuel for power plants and wood chips for pulp and paper mills.

The name for household debris that includes

appliances and the like is “white goods.” Most of this

material is recycled.

Construction and demolition debris and shingles are deposited into Class I landfills. Some concrete debris is recycled.

Hazardous debris is transferred by the Environmental Protection Agency to authorized disposal companies.

Vehicles are returned to their owners or disposed of through normal channels, such as scrap yards.



Source: Federal Emergency Management Agency