Monday, January 28, 2008

Facts On Hurricane Katrina


I visit several news forums and I get all PO'ed at people in other parts of the US making un-factual statements about the storm and what it did to my area and what is actually going on. So I posted a link on a forum with the real facts of what happened and who was responsible for what. The biggest thing that bothers me is about the levees that failed. The US Corps of Engineers was/is responsible for the levees. They were building them, designed, them, maintained them like other areas in the US. Louisiana, New Orleans, the people of the Lower 9th had nothing to do with its failure. The Corps states in their reports they had a design failure. That means they designed the levee and it could not hold water. They failed to properly design a levee system to protect the City of New Orleans. Their job was mandated by the US Congress and funded by the US Congress. They are now redoing the levee system that failed by another mandate of Congress. It is a Federal project like TVA, Hover Dam, and the many other flood control projects mandated by Congress. Another is the number of people who actually left town. A substantial majority of the people left less than 1% stayed for whatever reason they did. The people left town and many more in outlying areas went to higher ground. If you read some forums you would think the people of New Orleans stayed in a flooded city. Not true, only a small portion of those affected stayed behind. I think the figure was well over one million people left the area yet less than 20 thousand got caught in the flood. Some out of state people think everyone in the city stayed behind. The facts show the majority were old people who did not want to leave. Poor people with no idea what was going on, and some just plain dumb people. We have those in every city in the country. I doubt any major city can move everyone out in 36 hours. The problem was those people were left stranded for days in places with no food, water, or medical attention. Here is the link to what I posted so you can get the facts and not rely on people with no connection to the storm telling you what happened. http://www.topix.net/city/new-orleans-la/2008/01/facts-on-hurricane-katrina