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Gone With the Water - October 2004
It was a broiling August afternoon in New
Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who
ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those
inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as
they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of
Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a
part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday. But
the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As
the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people
evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however---the
car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New
Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party. The
storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a
deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top
of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over.
Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level---more than eight
feet below in places---so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed
over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of
the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District,
until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like
the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters)
over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.....
Click here to read the entire story
Although this article was published in October 2004 it must have
been
written after Katrina struck. They only missed a few of the facts. They
failed to anticipate the levee failures from incomprehensible and
reprehensible design. They underestimated the effectiveness of the
evacuation. They seemed to overestimate the number of people who would
not evacuate, but since their projection includes heavy flooding in
East Jefferson I think their number is right.
They correctly attribute the heart of the problem to coastal erosion
caused by the Mississippi River levees and explain how the solution
will require diversions and more.
Check with the authors to see where they
got their time machines. If they tell you they just copied from the
Times Picayune series published in 2002 or the Hurricane Pam study in June, you should believe them.
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