It's obvious there were failures in New Orleans - not only Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco. Both of these politicians should have nightmares about their decisions for years to come. But the buck doesn't stop there at the local level, it never really does does it?
We can go back to this:
Budget Cuts
Quote:
The June 8, 2004 article......
For the first time in 37 years, federal budget cuts have all but stopped major work on the New Orleans area's east bank hurricane levees, a complex network of concrete walls, metal gates and giant earthen berms that won't be finished for at least another decade.
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We can also take another infamous hurricane in Galveston, Tx (105 years ago today i believe). An island yes, but also well below sea level.
105 years ago
Quote:
To prevent future storms from causing destruction like that of the 1900 hurricane, many improvements to the island were made. The first three miles (4.8 km) of the 17-foot-high (5.2 m) Galveston Seawall were built beginning in 1902 under the direction of Henry Martyn Robert. An all-weather bridge was constructed to the mainland to replace the ones destroyed in the storm.
The most dramatic effort to protect the city was its raising. Dredged sand was used to raise the city of Galveston by as much as 17 feet (5.2 m) above its previous elevation. Over 2,100 buildings were raised in the process, including the 3,000-ton St. Patrick's Church. The seawall and raising of the island were jointly named a National Historical Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2001.
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(perhaps when New Orleans is rebuilt they can take a good look at Galveston)
They weren't even close to being as technologically empowered as today's generation is. But they learned something.
The lesson they learned went unnoticed by the powers-that-be.
National Geographic, Oct. 2004 ed
Purely a fictional description of disaster but quite chilling when read in hindsight.
Louisiana Coastal Area - Hearing - 7.15.05
But the answer was no.
All the funding in the world can't help New Orleans now but perhaps it will give food for thought for the next president.
and last but not least (a few pages down from the same National Geographic Article)
Quote:
The oil industry has been good to Louisiana, providing low taxes and high-paying jobs. But such largesse hasn't come without a cost, largely exacted from coastal wetlands. The most startling impact has only recently come to light—the effect of oil and gas withdrawal on subsidence rates. For decades geologists believed that the petroleum deposits were too deep and the geology of the coast too complex for drilling to have any impact on the surface. But two years ago former petroleum geologist Bob
Morton, now with the U.S. Geological Survey, noticed that the highest rates of wetland loss occurred during or just after the period of peak oil and gas production in the 1970s and early 1980s. After much study, Morton concluded that the removal of millions of barrels of oil, trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, and tens of millions of barrels of saline formation water lying with the petroleum deposits caused a drop in subsurface pressure—a theory known as regional depressurization. That led nearby underground faults to slip and the land above them to slump.
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More here to think about.
So you see, there's so many more to blame here than just a mayor and a governor. It goes so much deeper than that. Perhaps after the bodies are counted and buried, the displaced have found some sense of normalcy wherever they decide to call home and way before the city of New Orleans begins to plan for it's future, the blaming will stop and something will be done before the next hurricane strikes.