Just another hurricane

So – the saga of the levee failures continues.

Among other problems, they say, the dredging sharply reduced the distance water had to travel to reach the canal wall, left the canal too deep for sheet pilings that were suppose to cut off seepage, may have removed some layers of clay that sealed the canal bottom, and reduced support for the wall on the New Orleans side.

Investigators think that the storm surge pushed into the canal from Katrina seeped through porous soils under the floodwall, causing the earth to shift and taking the wall with it.

The upshot of all this levee “stuff”, of course, is that it shouldn’t have mattered one whit whether Nagin had implemented the buses or Blanco had called for help sooner. If the levee construction hadn’t been fatally flawed, everybody would have gone home the next day and started cleaning up.

Unlike elsewhere, what happened to New Orleans was not a “natural disaster”. Katrina should have been just another hurricane.

All this yammer about whether or not to rebuild New Orleans - that the city is sinking - that everybody should have known better - is smoke and mirrors, people! NOLA shouldn't be having to justify its existence to people who could care less.

Dammit!

Polimom said this @ 9:13 AM