Quote:
Originally Posted by ProfCrash
New Orleans is below sea level. The entire city is a flood zone
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True enough but some spots are higher (or less low) than others. People hear that "80% of the city flooded during Katrina." This is true as far as it goes but the parts that flooded were, mostly, the newer parts of the city and a goodly proportion of that was New Orleans East, which I don't really consider the city. The French Quarter didn't flood, the Marigny Triangle and most of the Marigny Rectangle didn't flood, most of Uptown (the sliver by the river) didn't flood, Esplanade Ridge, Gentilly Ridge, and Gentilly Terrace didn't entirely flood.
Katrina was a levee issue, not a storm issue. It was a quick moving Cat 3 at landfall, though it had only declined from a 5 shortly before, and it actually veered slightly, hitting just east of the city, not a direct hit or just to the west, which would have been worse. The levees were supposed to hold through that.
For example, my closest cousin lived (and lives again, though the new house is a story up) in Lakeview by one of the canal wall breaches. She and her family evacuated to Baton Rouge. Her neighbor did not evacuate because his tropical birds would not be welcome in a shelter. The storm had newly passed by that Monday morning and the streets were, as of yet, unflooded. The power was out, he went to his car to listen to the radio news and see what was going on. After a few minutes, he noticed insulation blowing up against his windshield. When he got out, he was ankle deep in water. Remember, it was no longer raining. He barely got to his garage in time to get his inflatable boat before there was a tsunami of water. He ended up on the balcony of a 2-story house streets away, where he was rescued. His birds drowned in their cages.
I had evacuated from my Marigny Triangle apartment to a cousin's house in Baton Rouge. The building there did not flood. I remember listening to the news fairly early that morning and feeling a sense of relief, then came the reports of encroaching water even though the storm had passed. It took awhile before they reported where it was coming from (the breaches). I saw my cousin's house or the roof thereof on the news.
/I can not tell you how close I came to screaming curses at work almost two years after the storm when they finally admitted that Katrina had not just diminished to a 4 and veered but actually diminished to a 3. There is no rage like Irish/French Creole/German rage, especially when one finds out that the levees did not do what they were supposed to do, especially with what has come out about negligence with respect to their construction and upkeep.