Well in the week I’ve been away lot’s has happened and the big news has been hurricane Katrina. I’ve not been exploring the blogosphere lately or reading much on the net, but here’s a story from yesterday’s Los Angeles Times on the warnings about the the disaster that was waiting to happen in NOLA and how the politicans and others ignored the warnings. (A similar story on unheeded warningsis on the NPR website.)
The LA Times story highlights the five-part special report by the New Orleans Times-Picayne newspaper titled “Washing Away,” which was published June 23-27, 2002. The first story in the series was on how the levee system which was NOLA’s best protection from flooding might turn against the city…prescient to say the least.
In September of 2002 National Public Radio’s Daniel Zwerdling did a two-part series on the hurricane risk in NOLA.
Here’s an excerpt for the LA Times story describing Zwerdling’s 2002 report:
“…Zwerdling accompanied scientist Joe Suhayda, a researcher from Louisiana State University, as he used an extending measuring rod to determine how high hurricane-driven flood waters might rise in the French Quarter if a levee gave way. Here’s an excerpt from the transcript of what followed:
Suhayda: It’s well above the second floor there and it’s just about to the rooftop.
Zwerdling: Do you expect this kind of hurricane and this kind of flooding to hit New Orleans in our lifetime?
Suhayda: Well, I would say the probability is yes….
Zwerdling: So, basically, the part of New Orleans that most Americans and most people around the world think of as New Orleans would disappear underwater.
Suhayda: It would. That’s right.
The NPR report went on to note that none of Suhayda’s views were even remotely controversial in the scientific or engineering communities. This was not global warming — or even second-hand smoke. And, as Zwerdling went on to explain with great clarity, there was similar agreement that the steps taken by the federal and state government in earlier years to protect the city from smaller storms and to ensure that the Mississippi River would remain open to commerce had dramatically increased the danger from the inevitable larger storm. It was, in other words, the same conclusion the Times-Picayune’s reporters reached.”
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