The Truth About Katrina, As We Wait For Gustav

Three years ago, I sat stunned and nauseated in Dallas and watched my city flood. There are a lot of myths about Katrina, largely created by the media which hypes everything beyond recognition, and aided and abetted by politicians on both sides of the aisle and at all levels of government for their own benefit. Here are a few facts that most people don’t understand:

• Katrina was not a Category 5 hurricane when it made landfall either in the New Orleans area or the Mississippi coast.  This is a “nuanced” detail because the storm surge didn’t just go away when the winds weakened, but it’s still worth mentioning.  It matters a great deal.
• Katrina did not hit New Orleans.  She hit St. Bernard Parish, which is near New Orleans to the east.  New Orleans endured Category 1 or 2 storm conditions.  Then she hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
• Some levees were overtopped, particularly in St. Bernard.  But the really big problems we had with levees breaking were not because those levees were overtopped and scoured away by flood water before breaking.  They broke because the Corps of Engineers did a crappy job designing and building them.
• The Corps of Engineers and Congress have done everything possible to cover that up.
• Most of New Orleans evacuated.
• There wasn’t much looting.
• Most of the reporting about looting, rapes, and murders was just wrong - partly because local officials were hysterical, and some were showing off for national media, getting their 15 minutes.
• The federal government illegally took guns from citizens who were entitled to have them.
• The rescue efforts by the federal government - especially the Coast Guard - should go down in history as one of the most amazing, successful efforts that’s ever been accomplished.
• Ray Nagin DID repeatedly tell people to get out of town in every way he could.  He wasn’t the incompetent villain then that people make him out to be.  (But since the storm he has become a corrupt disgrace.)
• Aaron Broussard personally caused nearly $5 billion dollars worth of avoidable damage in Jefferson Parish.
• New Orleans never got - and was never promised - $110 billion to rebuild.
• The money we did get was limited and regulated to death because of our reputation for corruption.  Which I’m not exactly complaining about because we earned our reputation, but you also can’t expect the same results Mississippi got - and they got a lot more money than we did, compared to the relative damage suffered - under those conditions.
• Most of the rebuilding so far has been done by individuals using their private insurance, and by churches and organizations that came to help.  The vast majority of us have not relied on government handouts.
• Blanco was and is a joke; deserving of no responsibility greater than teaching second grade.  Her “Road Home” program - complete with forms printed on oiled, waxed paper that must be completed with a ball point pen - made a bad situation worse.
• New Orleans is not in a bowl below sea level.  The truth about our geography is just not that simple.
• A good deal of why we are so vulnerable right now is because we’re losing over a football field of coastline an hour.  That is not our fault, and it IS preventable but it will make things uncomfortable for the rest of the country for us to fix it, which is why nothing has been done in the decades we’ve known about this problem.

My plans were to create a lengthy post, chock full o’ links and supporting details for all this, but thanks to Gustav I’m occupied in other areas.  As I’ve written before, plans change.  Not only are half my clients calling me, desperate for their websites to be updated and bulletin boards installed for emergency communication, but I have my own plans to make both to stay if possible, and if necessary to evacuate.  But all those facts are documented in my Katrina archives and in many other places on the web.  The bottom line is that most of what you “know” about Katrina is wrong.  If you never read another thing on Katrina, make sure you read this post at Wizbang:
The Katrina Video Congress Didn’t Want You To See

It’s the equivalent of taking the red pill.  And again - since we get this a lot - have a preemptive Gustav shush before you even start to say that New Orleans should just be abandoned.