Prayers for New Orleans
As one who has studied the hydrologic environment surrounding the lower Mississippi River Basin at great length, I can only offer my prayers for those still present in New Orleans this horrific night. May God be with you.
In the near future, I pray the federal government sees the wisdom in abandonding the Old River works and letting the Atchafalaya do what nature intended. To do anything else simply prolongs a bad situation and makes it worse. In the meantime, I fear this is going to be an unprecedented evening in the annals of tropical cyclones, and may actually rewrite the map of the southern United States.
EDIT: I've copied and pasted an excerpt from an excellent John McPhee book that explains much of what we are witnessing in the lower Mississippi region right now. I highly suggest you read this to get a feeling of the ovewhelming odds facing New Orleans at this time.
2 Comments:
Dan, I thought you'd find this interesting. It's from Sunday's Reuters online:
On Saturday, Chertoff [Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff] defended the U.S. government's response to the storm, saying that planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.
Chertoff said government officials did not expect both a powerful hurricane and a breach of levees that would flood the city of New Orleans.
"That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners and maybe anybody's foresight," Chertoff said. He called the disaster "breathtaking in its surprise."
But engineers said the levees preventing this below-sea-level city from being turned into a swamp were built to withstand only Category 3 hurricanes. Officials have warned for years that a Category 4 could cause the levees to fail.
Chertoff is full of crap. I expected it, and it was no surprise to me, even days before Katrina hit. In fact, this exact scenario has been forecast numerous times over the years.
Yup. Chertoff is full of crap... just like many other politicians regarding this disaster.
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