Once again: Katrina was NOT a Cat 5 (for New Orleans)
March 2, 2006 by Laura | Trackback URI
Kevin at Wizbang gives us Rewriting Katrina History - AP Style. I don’t think this drum can be beat loudly enough. The media - just as they are pushing lies about the nonexistent Iraq civil war- continues to lie about Katrina. All to get a man who will never run for office again. Pathetic. And they wonder why they are now more despised than lawyers.
Some basic facts about Katrina that are seriously under-reported outside of the blogosphere:
1. Katrina brushed against, and did not directly hit, New Orleans. Conditions in New Orleans were Category 1, maybe 2. She pounded the heck out of Mississippi because that was the direct hit - and the east side - of the Category 5 strength area of the storm, not the outlying and western edges.
2. There were a lot of trees down, and plenty of wind damage. Nothing we could not have recovered from in several weeks. Until the levees broke. (Not overtopped. Broke.) Recovery is slowed because the sheer volume of debris is overwhelming and finding people to do it and money to pay for it is a problem. Six months later, we can’t even get our priorities sorted out, much less get anything meaningful done.
3. Why did the levees break? The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did a crappy job of building them. The Corps was aided and abetted by our own corrupt political patronage system. The Orleans Levee Board is a joke. While we were in Texas after the storm, I took the time to read the minutes - all of them - from the 2005 Orleans Levee District (known colloquially as the Levee Board). Here’s a summary, but the really short version is that they did everything BUT their job, including bus stops, marinas, commercial real estate, airports, and worried about their PR problems. Quell surprise.
4. Why was the storm, even as it was, still more damaging than expected? One reason is the phenomenal amount of coastal erosion. (Graphic below.)
The bottom line is that New Orleans is much closer to the coastline than it used to be. According to Ivan von Herde, Ph.D., “One mile of healthy wetlands can reduce storm surges by up to one foot, and surface friction reduces wind energy.” Weaker storms will continue to hit us harder than equivalent storms did decades ago.
All of these problems - slow debris removal, local government problems, Corps of Engineers design and implementation problems, local corruption and patronage, loss of coastline - have little or nothing to do with George Bush.
MSM: Get over it. Or as the expression goes, “move on.”
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