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New Orleans: How?
Thursday, September 01, 2005 How could this be? There's a good, short history of New Orleans on Wikipedia: "Until the early 20th century, construction was largely limited to the slightly higher ground along old natural river levees and bayous, since much of the rest of the land was swampy and subject to frequent flooding. This gave the 19th century city the shape of a crescent along a bend of the Mississippi, the origin of the nickname The Crescent City. In the 1910s engineer and inventor A. Baldwin Wood enacted his ambitious plan to drain the city, including large pumps of his own design which are still used. All rain water must be pumped up to the canals which drain into Lake Pontchartrain. Wood's pumps and drainage allowed the city to expand greatly in area. However, pumping of groundwater from underneath the city has resulted in subsidence. This has greatly increased the flood risk, should the levees be breached or precipitation be in excess of pumping capacity, as would later happen in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. A major hurricane could create a lake in the central city as much as 9 m (30 ft) deep, which could take months to pump dry." When I lived in Louisiana, I recall seeing a PBS special on Louisiana Public broadcasting that explained how these pumps worked, and how they could be overwhelmed by a direct hit from a strong hurricane. I remember comments of an expert who said that thousands could die from such a storm. I was stunned. Here's an excerpt of the broadcast in 2002, The City in a Bowl: "DANIEL ZWERDLING: Maestri says, imagine what happens if a hurricane like Andrew comes raging up from the Gulf: WALTER MAESTRI: The hurricane is spinning counter-clockwise. It's been pushing in front of it water from the Gulf of Mexico for days. It's now got a wall of water in front of it some 30, 40 feet high. As it approaches the levies of the-- the-- that surround the city, it tops those levees. As the storm continues to pass over. Now Lake Ponchetrain, that water from Lake Ponchartrain is now pushed on to that - those population which has been fleeing from the western side and everybody's caught in the middle. The bowl now completely fills. And we've now got the entire community underwater some 20, 30 feet underwater. Everything is lost." If you want to know more about how the storm surge worked, here's a good graphic Sadly, now we see. Perhaps most sobering, the pictures we see reveal how this catastrophe has fallen hardest on the least fortunate among us: the poor, the elderly, the sick. posted by Ed Morrison | |
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