thisland

Note in the post below that I did not call what happened and is happening in New Orleans a natural disaster. It is anything but.

My sister-in-law just went to check out her house yesterday. It is an early last century shot-gun shack in a 'transitional' neighborhood, a few blocks off the French Quarter. She was relieved to see that the house was intact. The roof was on. The boards were still up and only a few windows were broken. Even her double-decker-london-bus-come guesthouse was in fine shape. I asked her how the city looked. She said, remarkably the areas that she was in were relatively unscathed, just like a minor league storm.

So, she and her friend picked up her car, saved a few cats, said hi to the National Guard and headed to Nashville to camp out for a few days. Luckily she could evacuate and has a family net to help her.

But her early reports only confirm what I have suspected all along. This is not from Katrina. The New Orleans disaster was completely manmade:

1. The wetlands have been drained for development. The wetlands are essentially mother natures sponge. So, once there gone, the floods come and they've got no where to go.
2. NOLA is under sea level. The levees keep the water out.
   
3. The NOLA city government, the LA state govt, LSU, Tulane experts and just about everyone under the sun has been begging, pleading and harassing the federal government to help them shore up the levees. They did not. Instead they focused their dollars on a war about oil and revenge on foreign shores.
   
4. LSU experts predicted that even a minor storm could put pressure on the levees and cause this type of situation. The army corp and other feds "snickered in the back" when the report was made. (see ABC nightly news a week ago)
   
5. Mayor Nagin evacuated the city and called for help to the Feds. Please note it is called the FEDERAL Emergency Management Association, not New Orleans EMA.
   
6. FEMA said they would come. A few did and were at the Dome. They then left when the few National Guard sent went to TX.
   
7. Every day the people who could not get out were told the 'cavalry was coming'.
   
8. Instead, trucks of water and assistance from other states and countries was turned away.
9. People who were told to go to the dome to be safe, were left completely vulnerable. They starved, drowned, and died. Looting, rapes, murders occurred in the lawless insanity.
   
10. The cavalry arrived - but too late.
    
11. Now the National Guard is not allowing the press to film the bodies being drudged out of the flood waters.

Nothing about this disaster was natural. Katrina was minor player. The Federal Government is whose to blame.