So how did the destruction of New Orleans happen?

[MOBIUS]

Yes I know, there was this big storm...

What I am getting at is what was the chain of events that got us to where we are now?

I'll start - there was this big storm...

Last year.

Now after the near miss from cat 4 hurricane Ivan last year the nice men who look after the levees thought it would be a good idea to upgrade them from cat 3 protection.

But, the men in the big city far away wouldn't let them because they needed all the money they could find saving a country a very long way away from evil.

To do this they needed lots and lots of brave men who are supposed to look after their own country but are sometimes needed to go to far off places...

Now New Orleans was a very big port in all the land and that pesky Mississippi river had to be controlled from flooding and changing its route, so after the floods of 1927 the well meaning inhabitants encased it in levees but without thinking about the ecology of the Louisiana wetlands they made no provision for the river to feed the delta with fresh water and sediment and those lovely wetlands that would have helped absorb the force of Katrina have been rapidly eroding ever since...

There was this big storm...

Now New Orleans is underwater, the entire population displaced and anarchy is on the streets...

So, who is to blame for the destruction of New Orleans, because from where I am the causes appear to be almost entirely man made...

Discuss.

[C0ckney]

so in summary, it's all bush's fault

[Velociryx]

I liked your first answer better.

Big storm.

Big waves.

New Orleans = at or below sea level to begin with and built on the Bayou.

Result = Big Big Bad.
(and throwing more money at it would not, I don't believe, have made much difference)



-=Vel=-

[Kuciwalker]

So how is Candle'Bre coming, Vel?

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by C0ckney
so in summary, it's all bush's fault

Only partly.

[Velociryx]

Hiyas Walker!

It's going really well! Our paid Code Master started on August 1st, and per the latest report, should have our first breakthrough this weekend/next week sometime....I'm counting down the hours!

And in the meantime, I've been writing like a Demon (rather like the one pictured in my Avatar, actually) in preparation!

-=Vel=-

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Velociryx
I liked your first answer better.

Big storm.

Big waves.

New Orleans = at or below sea level to begin with and built on the Bayou.

Result = Big Big Bad.
(and throwing more money at it would not, I don't believe, have made much difference)



-=Vel=-

As I've pointed out in another thread:

FEMA has been predicting this -- big storm + infrastructure failure -- since at least 2001 (that is, for the whole of the Bush administration).

Every year since then, the Administration has given the agencies responsible for flood control in NO (Army Corps of Engineers and others) far less money than they have asked for (on average, 44% less) to deal with the problem.

In 2004, in particular, the Army Corps of Engineers asked for funding to deal with the reinforcement of the Lake Ponchatrain levees; the administration gave them a mere 20% of what they asked for.

Meanwhile, the Administration continues to crow about cutting taxes, and has no trouble borrowing money to finance its Iraq quagmire.

So, yeah, throwing money at the problem might not have fixed it -- but don't you wish we had at least tried?

[Sprayber]

Re: So how did the destruction of New Orleans happen?

Originally posted by MOBIUS
Yes I know, there was this big storm...

What I am getting at is what was the chain of events that got us to where we are now?

Us? We? As if your apart of it all in some way.

[DanS]

The destruction of New Orleans has many fathers going back many decades.

[General Ludd]

Re: Re: So how did the destruction of New Orleans happen?

Originally posted by Sprayber


Us? We? As if your apart of it all in some way.

Zoinks! he's a furriner!

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by DanS
The destruction of New Orleans has many fathers going back many decades.

[chequita guevara]

There's already a thread for this.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=138089

[Sprayber]

Re: Re: Re: So how did the destruction of New Orleans happen?

Originally posted by General Ludd



Zoinks! he's a furriner!

Just a troll

[DanS]

Indeed, we should probably ask to which destruction of New Orleans that MOBIUS refers? As I understand, it's had several.

[Velociryx]

Lossa people will prolly disagree with me here, but you asked my opinion, so I'll give it.

As I see it, it's like this:

At the present time, and given technologies available today, the following things are true:

* We cannot, for all our cleverness, make an entire city safe enough to protect it from a massive earthquake. Buildings on springs, all the latest doo dads combined...it's still not enough. Pipes will break, lines will rupture, roads and bridges will collapse, AND some of our spiffy buildings on springs will still fall (or could). There's no building technology on the planet that I'm aware of that can stand up to a max-the-Richter-scale-out quake. Not even Bucky Fuller's Geodesic Domes can do that on account of the foundation likely being damaged.

* Likewise, when you've got a city as big as New Orleans, *at or below sea level*, sitting on what amounts to a gigantic swamp....there's nothing our current technology can do. Sure, we could *maybe* have strengthened the levys to withstand a cat 4 storm, but a cat 5? Unlikely.

And when you're at or below sea level, you're at or below sea level. When that 30 foot swell hits, you're toast, and all the bells and whistles our technology has to offer won't amount to much in terms of stopping it.

Short of draining the bayou, tearing down new orleans, dumping a few gazillion gazillion tons of topsoil down and rebuilding the city on a hill, I'm not sure we coulda made it better.

-=Vel=-