Employees of New Orleans’ Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness make lots of preparations for hurricane season.

This year will be no different.

Since 1992, 11 hurricanes have battered the Louisiana coastline. And in the past few years, the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board and the Office of Homeland Security have collaborated on countless projects.

Joseph R. Becker, spokesman for the board’s General Superintendent’s Office, said that during a hurricane 300 employees usually live in the city’s 24 pumping stations, working around the clock. He also said the stations generate their own power needed to run the stations.

“We’re basically in a bowl, so water won’t drain without being pumped out,” Becker said. “Our drainage system pumps water out of the city into Lake Pontchartrain. It basically moves water from one point to the next.”

Robert Jackson, public relations director for the sewerage board, said over the next several years, New Orleans is scheduled to make more than $800 million in emergency preparedness improvements – although he didn’t go into detail.

“In the case of a flood or hurricane, our job is to make sure we have the staff and equipment necessary to pump the water out,” Jackson said. “Water is our history.”

In August 1992, Hurricane Andrew made landfall in southern Florida as a Category 5 storm, causing catastrophic damage, and hit the Louisiana coast as a Category 3 storm. Seven people died and 94 were injured across southern Louisiana.

In 2005, which broke all records with 27 named storms, including three that reached Category 5 strength, hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged the Louisiana coast and outlying cities 20 days apart.

At its peak, Katrina was a Category 5 storm with winds up to 175 miles per hour, but weakened to a Category 3 before making landfall on the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. The storm is nationally known as the natural disaster that weakened the city’s levee system, which broke in several places – although the Industrial Canal levee was punctured by a barge – and over 90 percent of New Orleans was flooded. Then Rita hit Louisiana as a Category 3 storm, re-breaching the Industrial Canal levee, causing massive reflooding of the area.

The city still hasn’t fully recovered.

“The main response activity for police, fire and medical workers is to evacuate in the event of a Category 3 or higher storm, then we do whatever else under the mayor’s direction,” said Tom Ignelzy, senior planner for the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. “But what we’ve found is that not many people have the finances to evacuate the city. It takes some money.”

That was evident on television stations nationwide in scenes of local residents who couldn’t leave the city making their way to the Superdome instead.

Despite forecasts of active hurricane seasons in 2006 and 2007, no storms made landfall in the United States.

Evacuation preparations were better in 2008 for Hurricane Gustav, the fourth-most -destructive hurricane ever to hit the United States. “Last year, for Gustav, we evacuated 20,000 people and went to 70 pickup points in the city, and put them on state-sponsored buses that took them to shelters,” Ignelzy said. “That’s the biggest project we work with.” Gustav made landfall along the Louisiana coast as a strong Category 2 hurricane, just one mile per hour below Category 3, killing 46 Louisiana residents.

Fourteen days later, Hurricane Ike made landfall. Levees overtopped in St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Terrebone, St. Mary and Jefferson parishes, and eight Louisiana residents were killed.

It is estimated the Gulf Coast sustained $27 billion in damages from Hurricane Ike.

Ignelzy said there are several areas in New Orleans that drain slower than others after a heavy rain, though this doesn’t necessarily cause flooding in those areas.

“We look at the areas that are prone to any kind of water collection activities and we try to make sure to clear those up,” Ignelzy said. “We’re confident that we have enough to withstand the storm season this year.”

Storm season officially runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, but storms can form close to those dates. In 2005 a storm named Epsilon became a hurricane two days after the hurricane season ended –  only the fifth hurricane in 120 years to form in December.

No storms have been known to have hit the United States between December and May, and this year appears to be no different, although stormy weather was expected this Memorial Day weekend. All three days of the extended weekend were forecast to have  at least a 50 percent chance of rain or higher, according to the National Weather Service.

Ignelzy said Homeland Security works closely with the National Weather Service in Slidell to keep updates on weather and possible evacuations.

“There are no tropical storms in the Gulf right now, just a non-tropical depression that rolled through Florida,” Ignelzy said. “We figure we’ll get some bans of rain over the next three days, roughly three inches. That’s nothing more than a good soaking.”