"Having visited New Orleans after Katrina, you could not escape the feeling that neglect, and dereliction of duty of our elected officials displayed before, during, and after the event. Strong words came to mind at the time, something akin to treason, but time has passed, and we move on to other issues."
That's the understatement of the decade. New Orleans was a deathtrap, and a large part of the damage was self-inflicted.
The city sank itself by drawing water out of the aquifer below (which gradually leeched out the dissolved limestone, a bit like the sinkholes in Florida, but not as dramatic). The barrier islands that the locals have been callously destroying, mostly by ripping out the vegetation ("weeds") that held them together used to protect the coastline from the massive storm surges that come along with the bigger hurricanes pretty much every summer.
To top things off, the levies weren't built to spec -- the Army Corps of Engineers cut corners, as usual, not driving the supports in deep enough to anchor them into solid ground. So they drifted under hydraulic pressure from the canals, and eventually started to leak, since they were anchored in soggy earth. In spite of complaints about flooding from the leaking levies, no one bothered to examine and/or repair them.
On top of that, the way that they've screwed up the Mississippi's outflow gives it only one place to go when it floods: New Orleans. Which, being below Lake Ponchartrain, the Mississippi, AND the Gulf, leaves the water with no way out.
So the only thing that kept the 3 major bodies of water out of the city were the levies that were poorly built and unmaintained.
That's not just neglect, it's bordering on suicide.
That's the understatement of the decade. New Orleans was a deathtrap, and a large part of the damage was self-inflicted.
The city sank itself by drawing water out of the aquifer below (which gradually leeched out the dissolved limestone, a bit like the sinkholes in Florida, but not as dramatic). The barrier islands that the locals have been callously destroying, mostly by ripping out the vegetation ("weeds") that held them together used to protect the coastline from the massive storm surges that come along with the bigger hurricanes pretty much every summer.
To top things off, the levies weren't built to spec -- the Army Corps of Engineers cut corners, as usual, not driving the supports in deep enough to anchor them into solid ground. So they drifted under hydraulic pressure from the canals, and eventually started to leak, since they were anchored in soggy earth. In spite of complaints about flooding from the leaking levies, no one bothered to examine and/or repair them.
On top of that, the way that they've screwed up the Mississippi's outflow gives it only one place to go when it floods: New Orleans. Which, being below Lake Ponchartrain, the Mississippi, AND the Gulf, leaves the water with no way out.
So the only thing that kept the 3 major bodies of water out of the city were the levies that were poorly built and unmaintained.
That's not just neglect, it's bordering on suicide.