akaihyo: (Default)
akaihyo ([personal profile] akaihyo) wrote2005-09-02 03:17 pm

Observations

Thoughts on the mess that is New Orleans, or the swamp that formerly was New Orleans:

1) This is just proof of what was known, Louisiana was a third world country with New Orleans as its capital city. Incompetence and corruption insured that this entirely predictable garden-variety disaster became a complete and utter disaster. Yes, the Federal government could have acted with a bit more vigor but they were unprepared, but their lack of preparation pales into insignificance before the lack of foresight shown by the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans.

2) Yes, the Federal government could have spend more money towards flood prevention and shoring up the dikes around New Orleans, yes, 'Homeland Security' and the War in Iraq probably drew away funds from this project. But so could the State of Louisiana, in fact, it was far more their responsibility to do so. In either case, this problems has been know for more than thirty years and only in the last decade has anything been done about it (and in my, admittedly slim, research, all this has been done by the Federal Government only).

3) It is a sad, sorry state of affairs and it is only going to get worse before it gets better.

*Edit: Here is a link to a Scientific American article from Oct 2001 Drowning New Orleans which provides a lot of background data on the problems and some of the ideas bandied about to solve it.*

*Further Edit: What I really want to say that it is more important to solve the problems now, laying blame can be done after the current problems are solved. Arguing over who did what wrong can wait.

[identity profile] forvrin.livejournal.com 2005-09-02 08:51 pm (UTC)(link)
This just about sums up my feelin's on the whole affair.

[identity profile] akaihyo.livejournal.com 2005-09-03 01:09 pm (UTC)(link)
That seems to support my views rather nicely.

It's a cycle...

[identity profile] laughingfang.livejournal.com 2005-09-03 01:01 am (UTC)(link)
There's also been a 30 year lull in Atlantic/Gulf of Mexico hurricane frequency. Of course, this lull led to complacency and greater building of homes on hurricane-threatened areas.

Just look at what happened when Andrew hit Florida many years ago; I remember my dad an I riding thru Miami heading to Key West about a year later, and the orange groves were still barren.

Now it seems, Andrew was just a preview. And Hugo. And Ivan. Nature's cycle is coming back up, and everyone was too complacent to see it coming. My dad remembers going thru 2 hurricanes during his childhood in Florida, and remembers hurricanes being more frequent during the 1950's-60's; Now we're seeing the frequency of Atlantic hurricanes going up, increasing the chance a big hurricane will hit a large populated area....and it just did.

Re: It's a cycle...

[identity profile] akaihyo.livejournal.com 2005-09-03 01:12 pm (UTC)(link)
And this is why I am never going to live on a flood plane, because sooner or later, they flood. People should know better and prepare for the worse when it is possible to do so. New Orleans, as in the city and state governments, seemed to have no preparations in place at all for dealing with this kind situation. They should have.

Observations on New Orleans

[identity profile] doji-kumoko.livejournal.com 2005-09-06 02:27 pm (UTC)(link)
I can't help thinking of all those buses from all those schools, which were not going to be transporting kids and why they were not used to evacuate as many people as possible....It's one of the first things I thought of when I heard how many people could not get out of the city.