Katrina’s Victims Ask for Huge Checks

Hurricane Katrina’s victims have put a price tag on their suffering and it is staggering—including one plaintiff seeking the unlikely sum of $3 quadrillion.

A whopping $3,014,170,389,176,410 is the dollar figure so far sought from some of the largest claims filed against the federal government over damage from the failure of levees and flood walls following the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane.

Of roughly 489,000 total claims, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it has received 247 for at least $1 billion apiece, including the one for $3 quadrillion.

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For the sake of perspective: A mere $1 quadrillion would dwarf the U.S. gross domestic product, which Scott said was $13.2 trillion in 2007. A stack of one quadrillion pennies would reach Saturn.

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Daniel Becnel, Jr., a lawyer who said his clients have filed more than 60,000 claims, said measuring Katrina’s devastation in dollars and cents is a nearly impossible task.

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The corps released zip codes, but no names, for the 247 claims of at least $1 billion. The list includes a $77 billion claim by the city of New Orleans. Fourteen involve a wrongful death claim. Fifteen were filed by businesses, including several insurance companies.

Little is known about the person who claimed $3 quadrillion. It was filed in Baker, 93 miles northwest of New Orleans. Baker is far from the epicenter of Katrina’s destruction, but the city has a trailer park where hundreds of evacuees have lived since the storm.

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Most of the claims were filed before a deadline that coincided with Katrina’s second anniversary, but the Corps is still receiving them—about 100 claims have arrived over the past three weeks—and is feeding them into a computer database.

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