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TechnoratiThe Failure to Learn From Katrina
Three years after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, a new storm is threatening the city. We're still not prepared
Nearly lost amid the political hoopla of two presidential nominating conventions is a sombre milestone. Today is the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's deadly strike on the Gulf of Mexico coast, a catastrophe that nearly destroyed New Orleans and, with its aftermath of botched rescue efforts, has done more than anything but the Iraq war to discredit the Bush presidency.
As if following some kind of karmic timetable, though, Tropical Storm Gustav is now gathering strength over the Caribbean and about to enter the Gulf. Forecasts indicate it will head toward Louisiana, meaning a possible deadly blow for New Orleans. The machinery of mass evacuations has cranked into motion across the Gulf coast. Fema and other federal agencies, having learned some lessons with Katrina, are pre-positioning aid and personnel.
And Republicans, whose convention to nominate John McCain for the presidency gets underway on Monday in St Paul, Minnesota, are panicking. White House officials say President Bush may opt out of his planned Monday speech, and there's talk of postponing the convention altogether. The potential spectacle of Republicans partying and launching political attacks on Barack Obama while a storm rains destruction on American communities would indeed hurt McCain's chances. It would seem callous - a Republican weakness to begin with - but also evoke images of the Katrina aftermath, when the Bush administration spent more time pinning blame on Democrats than on rescuing citizens trapped in flooded New Orleans.
The fact that Republicans are concerned almost wholly with how things look, not the actual threat of the storm to life and property, isn't surprising. The fact is, America's leaders - Republican and Democrat - never really learned the lessons of Katrina.
Katrina represented a failure of the government at all levels - not just in emergency management, but in the basic idea of government itself, protecting citizens from harm. In the decades before the storm hit, the US government embarked on an ambitious plan to protect New Orleans and its surrounding suburbs from hurricane storm surges. It managed to totally botch the job. Not only was the new levee system a patchwork, full of gaps and shoddy construction, some floodwalls were built using faulty designs and fell down soon after the water rose.
Moreover, as scientists learned more about hurricanes, it was clear by the 1980s that New Orleans would be destroyed if a hurricane hit it head-on, as floodwaters swamped its levees and filled the city like a soup bowl. Every summer, as new hurricanes roared over Gulf waters, the US played a game of hurricane roulette with one of its major cities. Yet nothing was done to address this mortal threat. Meanwhile, the city itself and its surrounding marshes were sinking into the sea, steadily opening it to greater risks.
New Orleans is an excellent proxy for the broader challenges posed by global warming, which will mean rising seas and (probably) bigger, more dangerous storms. The deltaic landscape of south Louisiana is changing very fast, so the risks from storms and flooding are rising faster than flat-footed, special interest-dominated American institutions are able to handle. In the coming decades, there will be more New Orleanses in America and elsewhere around the world.
Katrina provided an early warning, offering some valuable lessons on how to handle climate change. Protecting New Orleans from future storms would mean not only preserving a US city and a valuable cultural heritage. It would force institutions to reform and devise smarter policies that could be adapted to the coming challenges.
But New Orleans proved too politically marginal to get much attention from Washington, and protecting and rebuilding it - which ought to be a national priority - soon became a tertiary concern. The result: The levee system is being upgraded, at a cost of $13bn. But the upgrades only protect against relatively weak storms. We're still playing hurricane roulette.
Forecasters say Gustav will strengthen to a Category 4 storm, with wind speeds between 131-155 mph (210-249 km/hr), and would easily overwhelm the levees if it comes close enough to the city. That could undo the past three years of rebuilding, and destroy what Katrina missed.
This is bad for New Orleans, of course. I am sceptical, given that the institutions charged with protecting it are so weak and slow-moving, that the city will still be there a century from now. But more ominously still, this shows how fundamentally unready the US government is to tackle the coming challenges of climate change.
42 Comments so far
Show AllOne more observation: McQuaid writes "Forecasters say Gustav will strengthen to a Category 4 storm, with wind speeds between 131-155 mph (210-249 km/hr)"
The Forecasters were off. It wound up at cat 2. These are very smart people and they can not always get it right on. The variables are tremendous.
McQuaid also commments: New Orleans is an excellent proxy for the broader challenges posed by global warming, which will mean rising seas and (probably) bigger, more dangerous storms." Again I don't think anybody can predict what will happen in the next 10, 20, 100 years. The variables are tremendous. So please, think before you start screaming "the sky is falling".
CNN is just reporting that the storm surge walls and levees in NO Lower Ninth Ward have been over-topped and NO is flooding. With Hurricane Gustav at a Cat 2. There are also reports that the levees are 'spurting water' through cracks. That means the levees will again fail catastrophically.
The US Army Corp of Engineers said the levees were repaired to withstand a minimum Cat 3.
Can I say 'I told you so'?
Walk in peace.
Hey are you going to admit you're wrong? No shame in it, everybody makes mistakes.
Learn from your mistakes and move on.
You are so hell bent on trying to prove you're right on all your predictions.
Give it up, you were wrong. You decided to believe in prophecies instead of the cold boring data.
So no.... You can not say "I told you so".
Funny... No major issue actually reported on CNN and no catastrophic flooding yet.
You predicted the end of the world. A "Monster Storm". Hurricanes will inflict damage but I think my prediction was closer to the mark.
You still want to take that bet with me?
"Prayer: The last refuge of the scoundrel" - Lisa Simpson of the Simpsons.
Instead of praying to a non-existent deity, how about facing the fact that sea level rise estimates didn't consider the fact that ocean and air temps are WAY over normal worldwide.
This means two things. We are going to have greater levy-busting surge in the next few years (figure on multiple twenty foot events instead of ten foot events.)
And second we have more ambient temperature in the water (2005 = 90 degree F sea water on my yacht.) to fuel more cat 5 McCaines.
Looking at trends from the past means nothing. In the past you didn't have two billion more people driving cars. (See, you scholars forgot to factor that in didn't you? Everybody in India and China this year has traded in their donkey for a green-house-gas spewing machine.....
We, and the fragile Greenland icesheet are in serious trouble by around 2010.
I sold my yacht from the sheer guilt of non-emission-control diesels spewing clouds into the air for my amusement; but now some other capitalist owns it.. so the problem didn't go away....
I sold my yacht from the sheer guilt of non-emission-control diesels spewing clouds into the air for my amusement; but now some other capitalist owns it.. so the problem didn't go away....
Knock off the sob story!
If you wanted to make the problem go away you should have removed all fluids from the hull pull all the metal and other recyclable material and sell it for scrap and sink her in 50 foot water to make an artificial reef. You provide a habitat for marine life and the dirty capitalist doesn't get his precious yacht.
I being a sailor though would have held on to the boat. Oh well.
It irks me when people such as McQuaid act as if the elites are merely stubborn and prone to bungle things.
Anyone who thinks that the Hurricane Katrina disaster was a "failure" is being way too kind to the Bush administration.
Look at the people in power and those harmed by the catastrophe.
Damn, it's not even that they don't care, they HATE, and they PROFIT from the miseries they concoct. The proof is there. These people are as inept as sharks.
Gustav is bouncing all over the Safir-Simpson scale.
It has now been down graded to a Cat 3, large but still dangerous, and it is still aiming right at the LOOP terminal, whose operational downtime is now expected to be weeks instead of months. Still very bad, but not the absolute disaster they predicted on TheOilDrum.com.
Walk in peace.
I don't agree with John McQuaid insofar as he doesn't see permanent evacuation of New Orleans as a solution. I would have thought that that was the lesson to be learned from hurricane Katrina. The city is a bowl beside the coast, where hurricanes occasionally come ashore. Come on! This is as bad as building and maintaining cities in the desert, destroying life-giving water ways to the north. Just because you can do (or get away with) a thing, That doesn't mean it should be done.
The destruction caused by Las Vegas's presence in the desert might not happen dramatically overnight, or involve suddenly appearing dead bodies, but it's real. Since Katrina, U.S. governments should have been helping residents of New Orleans to relocate out of that death bowl.
When Katrina happened, I, like others, read quite a few articles about it. A few things stuck out. Such as the fact that the original inhabitants understood that they were living, dangerously, in a bowl beside the shoreline. They had the intention I believe, of quitting the settlement. But capitalists, appreciating the profit potential that settling at such a strategic location - made so by shipping - could bring wanted everyone to stay put, which happened. (Correct me if I'm wrong about that. I'm not an expert. I haven't studied New Orleans history, other than to read around following Katrina, as I stated.)
But I guess doing such a thing as permanently evacuating a major city, even if it involves protecting many American lives, is too big a project for an America that isn't doing imperialism. Where's the profits to the corporatocracy in that?
"Created at Bretton Woods in my home state of New Hampshire in 1944, the [World] Bank was charged with reconstructing countries devastated by the war. Its mission soon became synonymous with proving that the capitalist system was superior to that of the Soviet Union. To further this role, its employees cultivated cozy relationships with capitalism's main proponents, multinational corporations. This opened the door for me and other EHMs [Economic Hit Men] to mount a multi-trillion dollar scam. We channeled funds from the Bank and its sister organizations into schemes that appeared to serve the poor while primarily benefiting a few wealthy people. Under the most common of these, we would identify a developing country that possessed resources our corporations coveted (such as oil), arrange a huge loan for that country, and then direct most of the money to our own engineering construction companies - and a few collaborators in the developing country. Infrastructure projects, such as power plants, airports, and industrial parks, sprang up; however, they seldom helped the poor, who were not connected to electrical grids, never used airports, and lacked the skills required for employment in industrial parks. At some point we EHMs returned to the indebted country and demanded our pound of flesh; cheap oil, votes on critical United Nations issues, or troops to support ours someplace in the world, like Iraq.
"In my talks, I often find it necessary to remind audiences of a point that seems obvious to me but is misunderstood by so many: that the World Bank is not really a world bank at all; it is, rather, a U.S. bank. Ditto its closest sibling, the IMF..." - John Perkins, THE SECRET AMERICAN EMPIRE
Other than Perkins's contention that the World Bank's mission quickly morphed into a mission to prove capitalism's superiority, all else that he relays is really directly observable. (Capitalism is triumphant. But it's also good for nothing. It's like cancer, for which reason we are now reading books like Noam Chomsky's HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL and Naomi Klein's SHOCK DOCTRINE, which looks at what she calls, very appropriately in my view, 'disaster capitalism'. I hope that most of it's victims see the truth about capitalism, but I'm not at all sure they do.) It's nothing that a lot of other folks haven't already conveyed. I'm not an expert on John Perkins and, in fact, find his present New Age-looking work to be strange and unsettling. But I didn't just pull his books off a shelf at random. I did come by them via other sources. In effect, he's vouched for. Or at least the Perkins who wrote CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HITMAN is vouched for.
In summation, The lessons that the corporatocracy have been learning have nothing to do with 'helping' poor and vulnerable people. Maybe we should help the corporatocracy.
** 11.5 TRILLION $, and counting, reside in offshore tax havens while political 'leaders' whine that they can't afford social spending! **
Hurricane Gustav, now a Cat 5 super-monster, has a storm foot-print 900 miles across, and is generating a 25 ft. storm surge. Water levels from Mobile to Beaumont will be extreme back to Baton Rouge, with levels as high as 28 - 30 ft. above mean sea level. Even a near miss will be devastating.
NOLA Mayor Ray Nagin just announced MANDATORY evacuations no later than noon tomorrow, calling Gustav 'the storm of the century.' The official word is a direct strike on the west bank parishes, the ones that Katrina spared. However, the NOLA levee and pump system is only 'repaired' to pre-Katrina levels, and many are expected to fail.
The LOOP oil terminal, which is the only super tanker off loading terminal on the eastern seaboard, is expected to have extensive damage and is expected to be off-line for months. All of the tankers bound for the LOOP terminal are expected to be re-routed to Europe for off-loading. The pipelines from off shore oil and natural gas drilling rigs are expected to suffer severe damage due to scour action. Many of the off shore oil and gas rigs on the LA coast are expect to require extensive downtime for repairs.
May God help the people of New Orleans and the United States.
Walk in peace.
Where are you getting your reports?
Gustav is Cat 3 and not a "Super Monster"
Quit the Hyper reporting will ya?
I am getting my info from the BBC and TheOilDrum.com.
Walk in peace.
May I suggest the NOAA at noaa.gov
Nice clean boring data.
No hype and doom and gloom. "Just the facts sir"
Gustav is back to Cat 4. That's from NOAA and the National Weather Service. And NOLA is off to one side , but will be caught by the same dangerous backside winds that smashed it last time. The LOOP terminal is still going to take a direct hit though.
Walk in peace.
Dude I don't know what your reading. NOAA has this beastie at 115mph and losing some steam. They have not posted what you have stated in the last 12 hours. Prob. charts have it staying at cat3 48%, more likely weaker. No Hurricane is to be taken litely but quit hyping it up.
No-one in the US government will ever have the guts to say "We are not going to spend any more money on a coastal city that is below sea level. Building a city on delta mud in a hurricane zone was a dumb idea."
But it's what needs to be done. New Orleans needs to be abandoned.
MiMI CCS: You're off your climate change denying rocker this time, buddy! I stopped into State Farm to pay my auto insurance and had to wait, so I noticed a print out on the table. It listed all the pay-outs by insurers JUST to the state of Florida since l985. There was only ONE year where there was not cost over ONE billion for either tropical storms and/or hurricanes. Some of the worst damage has come from tropical storms, particularly when they sit there and let loose 20 inches of rain on one region. When I read the statistics of those 20 years, I felt less annoyed with my annual insurance costs. I had NO idea how much has been spent. As a Florida resident, we had SEVEN hurricanes hit our state during 2004-2005. That was against ALL statistical averages, and anyone watching The Weather Channel knows that the Gulf of Mexico is like a big boiling pot, and hurricanes that start at category 1 or 2 rapidly progress to 4 or 5. It is by the GRACE of God, and likely LOTS of decent people praying, that the magnitude recedes somewhat when these monstrous systems begin to be diluted as portions of their centrifugal force, all those spiraling bands, no longer feed off the heated waters. I think you will be forgiven for your ignorance on this one, as you obviously wish to learn, or would not be in this forum.
"MiMI CCS: You're off your climate change denying rocker this time, buddy! "
Please read more carefully. No where did he deny climate change.
"As a Florida resident, we had SEVEN hurricanes hit our state during 2004-2005. That was against ALL statistical averages, "
While this may be true, it doesn't prove that the storms are a result of climate change.
"It is by the GRACE of God, and likely LOTS of decent people praying, that the magnitude recedes somewhat when these monstrous systems begin to be diluted as portions of their centrifugal force, all those spiraling bands, no longer feed off the heated waters."
This might be true, but it is also true that hurricanes almost always lose strength over land.
Living in a city which averages 3 typhoons (Asian hurricanes) per year. There is normally very little damage because the infrastructure was been upgraded to prevent flooding. This is a city where the river flowing through the city is at a higher level than the city streets, and water flowing from the mountains creates a raging river. We routinely get 15-30 inches of rain from these storms, but unless there is an infrastructure failure, there is little damage (except for the farms where crops are damaged, and the mountains where a mudslide might wipe out a road, and some rural areas that have poor infrastructure).
If you read my post, you would have noticed that I mentioned the problem with damage in the US from hurricanes in hurricane prone areas is because you have lousy infrastructure.
Also, the link I provided has the facts from the Hurricane Weather Service on storm size and frequency. You can point to 1 or 2 years, and your particular state, but thats local weather, not global climate.
And as to the payout by insurers, I own a home in the US, north east, beach front property and pay flood insurance. This area has not been flooded in over 50 years. My flood insurance has went from 700 dollars per year to over 3,000 since 1995, and god knows what it will be next year paying damages to those who keep building and rebuilding in flood prone areas and do not invest in their infrastructure to prevent damaging floods. Maybe if your state would raise taxes and upgrade your infrastructure I can stop subsidizing the free loaders in Florida.
I have little to learn from people who resort to insults when presented with truths they can not handle, and do not read comments completely or open links provided.
There is no 'Man vs. Nature'.
That is a typical Cartesian reductionist fallacy perpetrated to blind us to our intricate link to, and effect on, the wider environment.
My my Galen, what grand terms you use! "Cartesian reductionist fallacy". I haven't heard that one in a while.
As for your last grand predictions... I have to agree with paleo. You seem to take too much pleasure in the misery of others. I'll make you a wager. "Nawlins"
will survive and Blackwater doesn't move in.
I'll check with you in a week.
Relax. The "man" isn't out to get us.
I thought the article was going to aim at the larger issue--that the prevalence and magnitude of these storms are increasing due to climate change caused by a callous, careless energy policy on the part of "leaders." An intelligent, caring president for instance, noting the phenomenal damage of Katrina would have asked not how to more quickly profit his oil buddies and those palms requiring greasing to get deals expedited, but how to alter public policy around energy. But no, that's not for George or the majority of the DC lobby system. Business as usual, as usual meaning as a million are killed for a war of sheer caprice, as usual as home "values" are eviscerated, as usual as regulatory agencies cease and desist from protecting the public welfare, and the list goes on and on. Of course the topic under discussion is New Orleans and the seeming fate of that city to stand out as our own "Gulf War" insofar as the world's (allegedly) most prosperous/blessed nation takes on the battles with Mother Nature that its own policies of attrition and/or warfare have most assuredly courted. Suits the "End Times" crowd rather well, and may in fact fill up yet another evangelical church that calls upon the blessing of 'god' and/or Jesus, while financing the next weapon system.
The larger issue you favor discussing does not exist. What else does not exist?--------------------------lizard
"the prevalence and magnitude of these storms are increasing due to climate change caused by a callous, careless energy policy on the part of "leaders." "
Even if the "prevalence and magnitude of these storms " were on the increase, there is no possible way one could conclude it was a result of climate change.
Yet they are not occurring with greater frequency or strength.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastint.shtml
Of the 20 cat 4 -5 hurricanes at landfall since 1856, only 3 have occurred since 1970.
Katrina and other "cat 5" hurricanes in recent years were cat 3 at landfall.
The destructiveness of a hurricane is directly related to the quality of the public infrastructure, not necessarily due to the hurricane being so destructive.
Today, US infrastructure is decaying and reverting to 3rd world status, so the effects of hurricanes (or typhoons) tend to cause damage on a par with what you see in Burma and the Philippines, as opposed to Taiwan and Japan.
The problem is not our energy policy. It is that we do not invest in infrastructure upgrades and maintenance.
Last time I checked the NOAA stats the prevalence and magnitude of Hurricanes striking the US has not increased. It looks like its been slowly decreasing since 1950. Oh well.
Galen - written with such a grin on your face - as if you enjoy people and lives hurt? Tell me fool, what plans have you made? I'll bet your one of the first rable to line up at the hand out center to get your big govt free - bees.
Paleomarc - I live in BC, on the other side of the continent, in another country.
I'm just relaying the reports from other sites.
People have a right to be informed, as well as the opportunity to be prepared.
And as for lining up for government hand-outs, I work for a living thank you, and am starting my own business, WITHOUT goverment subsidies.
Walk in peace.
NOAA and FEMA are reporting that Hurricane Gustav has strengthened to Cat 5, packing winds of 155 mph, with an 18 ft. storm surge, and will probably make landfall just west of NOLA.
Translation: The Gulf State oil infrastructure is toast, and anything that Katrina and Rita didn't smash is gonna get hit this time. New Orleans is gonna be a repeat of three years ago. Blackwater is already mobilizing. (Though strangely, they don't want mercs who hail from Alaska....)
US national oil and NG reserves are already well short of last year, and this will undoubtedly be the punch that finishes US off shore gas and oil exploration off the table. The LOOP terminal is the only NG off-loading point on the East Coast. And there is no spare refinery capacity for the rest of the country.
Massive oil price spikes and shortages are on the way, folks. Time to get your act together.
Walk in peace.
It's beginning to look like the worst case scenario for the oil companies is coming true. The oil infrastructure near NOLA is going to bear the full brunt of a minimum Cat 3 Gustav. The LOOP oil terminal has been evacuated, and all the pipelines and oil rigs Katrina and Rita smashed are gonna get 'wind pretzeled' again this time.
Check TheOilDrum.com for the latest on their thread.
Batten down the hatches, stock up on food and gas, and be ready for a long, cold, hungry winter.
Walk in peace.
We're prepared!
I'm sure that Prince and his private political army is standing by to shoot any survivors.
That's what we pay taxes for, isn't it?
Only a Communist country like Cuba shelters it's citizens.
Yup.
Absolutely no surprise that Blackwater has put out a call for mercenaries with 'law enforcement' backgrounds.
After all, Blackwater trains many police departments in SWAT tactics, and counter-insurgency. Among the forces so trained are the FBI and LAPD.
To NOLA residents who might remain in the city: Keep your heads down. These animals will shoot at anything.
Walk in peace.
I don't know why anyone would be surprised if NO takes another beating. I don't know why anyone would still be under the illusion that the government, on any level, cares about the former residents of NO and how they'll fare against Gustav. Katrina was a gift from God to the developers and gentrifiers who wanted to get rid of the 'darker elements' and build a city for the white and wealthy.
If you think I'm being a paranoid, reverse racist reactionary, just read the Katrina Pain Index (http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20080825144002421) and see for yourself. After Gustav finishes the job, the only people that will be able to afford to live in NO will be the ultra rich.
"Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." --- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
In the war of Man vs. Nature, Nature is going to eventually win. *That* is the lesson failed to learn from Katrina, and it's disappointing that the author didn't address that.
There is no 'Man vs. Nature'.
That is a typical Cartesian reductionist fallacy perpetrated to blind us to our intricate link to, and effect on, the wider environment.
Humans are no more removed from nature than a rock in a stream is.
If, as you posit, man was 'apart' from nature, he would rapidly die due to lack of oxygen.
It was a wonderful happenstance that granted us our abilities.
We have slipped deep into hubris, thinking we are 'special' and set apart from nature, and 'granted' stewardship over a world that one war-mongering religion that commanded us to 'go forth and multiply, and take dominion over the earth'.
I suggest you read the excellent book 'The World Without Us' for an idea of just how absolutely inconsequential humans really are to the greater ecology of this planet.
Walk in peace.
"There is no 'Man vs. Nature'."
Forgive me, I was not clear. I was referring to the etensive engineering efforts used to keep the Mississippi in it's present course, which will ultimately fail. That is a vs. of some kind.
"I suggest you read the excellent book 'The World Without Us' for an idea of just how absolutely inconsequential humans really are to the greater ecology of this planet."
I tend to agree already, and will consider the book.
"Walk in peace."
Thanks, same to you.
Way back, when the French first started to build New Orleans, their engineer did a survey, took one look at the results and walked off the job.
That, right there, should have been a HUGE hint.
No matter how high you build the levees, without the extensive coastal wetlands that man has so industriously destroyed, the natural bowl that the city sits in will keep being filled until it is a minor estuarial lagoon created by the action of wind, tide and hurricane.
The smartest thing to do would be to rescue the best architectural treasures, loot the banks and museums, and let the ocean take new Orleans.
Walk in peace.
"Way back, when the French first started to build New Orleans, their engineer did a survey, took one look at the results and walked off the job."
It's my understanding that the natives told them they were nuts as well.
"The deltaic landscape of south Louisiana is changing very fast, so the risks from storms and flooding are rising faster than flat-footed, special interest-dominated American institutions are able to handle."
"No matter how high you build the levees, without the extensive coastal wetlands that man has so industriously destroyed, the natural bowl that the city sits in will keep being filled ..."
Agree. The levees have historically played a poor second to the Delta's coastal wetlands for protecting the area from major storms. Unfortunately, the levees play the most significant role in the destruction of those wetlands... it's a feedback situation.
The loss of wetlands over the last 50 years equates to the size of a football field every half hour. Katrina devastated a huge area, simply because it had been immeasurably weakened by the levee system. No matter how dead-on Gustav will land, it too will leave a significant mark.
Loss of that protection means New Orleans and other Louisiana areas will be openly susceptible to flooding by storms that fall significantly below category 3 hurricane levels, chiefly because the Corps of Engineers factored in a strong wetlands in their calculations for protection levels of the current levees. There is little in this revised equation that leaves much hope. Even if the NO bowl is filled above sea level, the destructive brunt of a wider range of storms will soon be right on their doorstep.
And of course... this outlook doesn't even take into consideration a rising sea level.
Speaking or rising sea levels, the Greenland Ice Sheet is melting faster and faster, with some glaciologists worried about a complete breakup before 2010.
Loosing the Greenland Ice Sheet alone would raise world sea levels 27 ft./ 9m.
Which puts most of Florida and New Orleans under water.
Walk in peace.
Addendum to above: They city of New Orleans is testing it's high volume pumps as we speak. Too bad they can't test the 'Category 3 rated' levees as well. And remember, the levees are rated by the people who built them, and who have built them since the 1920's. The US Army Corp of Engineers.
The same people who told you that the levees would hold when Katrina came ashore.
I don't know if you have been paying attention to the hurricane watch, but NOAA is saying that Hurricane Gustav will strengthen to a Cat 4, sweep through the Gulf of Mexico, and push a ten foot storm surge up the Mississippi.
New Orleans is already evacuating thousands of people.
If the city gets hit again, all hat reconstruction money will have been wasted. And the insurance companies WILL NOT pay out this time.
Which will mean even more financial hits on the mortgage companies and the FDIC.
Can anyone here say 'economic collapse'?
I knew you could.
Walk in peace.
Well, it's not like you weren't warned about this possibility.
Now we just have to wait and see how bad the damage will be. To the city of new Orleans and the surrounding towns and parishes, not to mention the extensive oil platform and shipping terminal network that was *this close* to getting back up to standard after Katrina.
And Hurricane Hanna is waiting in the wings, with another tropical Storm following her... the hits just keep on coming.
If enough of the oil infrastructure gets hit or 'wind pretzeled' (as they put it on 'The Oil Drum'), oil prices, and all products reliant on oil will again sky rocket.
And winter is coming. Could be a very hard time in the US Northeast.
Best of luck, though.
You are gonna need it.
Walk in peace.