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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.
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.
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It's a cycle...
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...
Observations on New Orleans