What-if-the destruction had shifted fifty miles west and
the whole force of the storm had come to bear on New Orleans? We'd be thinking of
bulldozing everything south of Lake Ponchartrain while we focused the restoration
efforts on Mandeville, Slidell, Hammond and perhaps even Baton Rouge.
Had the eye crossed the French Quarter, or even a few miles
west, the demolition of the city would have started with the winds, been
accelerated by the flooding and completed by the bulldozers. The flooding would then have covered 90% of
the metro area including Algiers and all of Jefferson Parish as well as the lower lying areas of Orleans that
it actually flooded.
The worst case thirty foot coastal surge would have inundated
the west bank with Gulf waters right up to the Mississippi River levee. As the
storm approached, winds from the south would have driven the lake northward
drowning north shore communities from Hammond to Slidell. Then, as the winds
switched, the mass of water would have poured south overwhelming the New
Orleans canal levees, perhaps even the lake levees, flooding the east bank from
the spillway to the twin spans.
We dodged the worst case but still took a major hit from a
near miss. There is no question that this storm was not unique and that we
won't have to wait another 40 years before we face another major storm. Rita
roared past just 4 weeks later, and Wilma threatened a month after that. The Corps of Engineers knows they are in a
race against time to restore the levees to something that can protect the city
during the 2006 season.