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August 30th, 2008 by Leo Brown Leo BrownLeo Brown

The Ghost of Katrina

As the Republican National Convention opens in Minneapolis-St. Paul near the northern reaches of the Mississippi River, it is the third anniversary of the flooding of New Orleans from hurricane Katrina at the Mississippi’s southern end.

Measured by lives lost and dollar cost, this was one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. Those loses were foreseeable and in large part preventable. This was not a local disaster, it was a national disaster. It revealed our overconfidence in our nation’s institutions and our social fabric. Those institutions and the frayed fabric of society were found inadequate to the task of preventing and recovering from those catastrophic losses.

Tropical Storm Gustav, now strengthening in the Gulf as the GOP prepares to party, is a reminder how little things have really changed in three years.

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This entry was posted Saturday, August 30th, 2008 at 7:29 am and is filed under This Blog. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “The Ghost of Katrina”

  1. Richard Warnick Says:
    August 30th, 2008 at 10:21 am

    Katrina really showed how unprepared the Bush administration was to protect Americans on our own soil. After all their scary rhetoric about terrorism, they could not help New Orleans cope with a disaster that everyone saw coming and everyone saw happening, on live TV. That was the end of Bush’s credibility.

    The good news is that the new FEMA director, David Paulison, seems to have his act together. FEMA is already on the scene. Evacuations are proceeding with few hitches, aided by the fact that NOLA has only 72 percent of its pre-Katrina population. The residents who didn’t evacuate last time know it wasn’t a smart decision (although James Carville says he’s staying).

    But the TV coverage of the GOP convention will have an on-screen Gustav bug showing the latest radar images, and the talking heads won’t be able to mention this hurricane without referencing the last one.

  2. Leo Brown Says:
    August 30th, 2008 at 10:08 pm

    Richard,

    Yes, things are improved, but the levees are still fragile. A direct hit by a big enough storm would flood the city again. New Orleans will probably dodge another bullet, but it will be a matter of luck.

  3. Leo Brown Says:
    September 6th, 2008 at 5:22 am

    Recommended reading here.

    An Army Corps of Engineers-sponsored study of the reasons for failures of the levee system during Hurricane Katrina should include stronger warnings about the risk of living behind New Orleans’ substandard levee system and of building a still-risky replacement, according to an independent panel of engineers.

    The engineers said the task force “correctly points out that design for a 100-year storm is fraught with risk and is not necessarily the correct de facto standard” for protecting the area, but said the report should recommend that Congress should be asked to authorize and appropriate money to protect levees and floodwalls from catastrophic failure “caused by inevitable overtopping.”

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