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After the pass of Hurricane Katrina, Category 5 Hurricane at 165 mph winds and gusts of up to 190mph hit New Orleans and the surrounding area, much damage was done by water. We can see that New Orleans is 80% underwater, but it is impossible that any kind of hurricane can do such damage. The surge was of about 30 feet in height. Rain was dropping at a rate of 3 inches per hour. Hurricane force winds and rain lasted about 12 hours on the city.

First we need to discuss the geography of the city. New Orleans is a dried up lake which is about 20~40 feet below sea level making it extremely prone to floods. On one side you have the Mississippi river and on the other side you have a lake. Now surrounding the city and both bodies of water is a system of dikes. These dikes were 40 years outdated and engineers have been wanting to fix, improve or replace them for over 40 years but the goverment never listened.

As the intense rains grew over time and the water in both bodies of water increased in volume, speed and debris, the old dikes could no longer hold the inmense amounts of force causing them to collapse.

Now a lot of people saw that it was the Hurricane's fault that the dikes failed. To see if this statement is true we need to look at another densely populated area that is under sea level. This such place is Holland. Holland used to be 50% underwater 1000 years ago, but now it has vastly increased it's land mass by a complex system of dikes. The North sea is known for the most instense waves, sea storms and currents in the whole world. A low pressure in the atmosphere could easily create sea conditions as those that were present during Hurricane Katrina when it hit New Orleans.
But, how many times has Holland been flooded due to dike failure? None.

Holland has been known for having the best Civil Engineers, Mechanical Engineers specialized in fluids and meteorologists. Holland has recently constructed a new system of dikes around Amsterdam in 2003 that can hold out a moderate tsunami.
Now the success of Dutch dikes comes from the goverment's interest for the safety of both it's economy and the safety of it's people. A dike failure like the one in New orleans would not only flood 50% of the whole of Holland, it would also affect the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and northern Germany.

Returning to the New Orleans dikes, engineers have been pressuring the goverment to fix, rebuild or replace the dikes for concerns of such disaster like those that happened last week. The goverment, saying it was too expensive declined the multi-million dollar projects because they thought it would punch the economy. Now they have a multi-billion dollar project to build new dikes and remove all the water out of the city. Then they have to fix and rebuild the city.

This also comes to another conclusion, the responsible party for the disaster in New Orleans isn't Hurricanr Katrina, but the ignorant goverment that didn't improve the dikes, that is struggling to evacuate people, that is starting to quit on rescue missions because they can't do it completely, the ones that lament the disaster the most, and most of all, the ones who won't blame it on themselves as being the direct reason of why the disaster went to such extended lenghts. Hurrican Katrina was only a spark needed for a waiting dissaster.

Remember, it's the authority you guys voted for... Well if you live in America and you actually did anyways.

It's the people who inhabited new orleans fault, they should have seen this coming, they drained swamps that were already there and it's below sea level

Hmm... Interesting... I thought it was Seventy Percent under water. Anyways, a lot of people knew the Hurricane was comming, though some of them couldn't really afford it, they should of really tried to moce out of there.

I hate to be rasict on this, but, well about Ninty percent of the people I saw on the news that were there we... A uh... Non-White group, this is evil to say. But it is true. I do not hate them, I am not rasict, I am just stating what I saw.

Yet the place is mainly flooded, people keep trying to steal, you have to feel sorry for the cops, because they might be killed by some people that are stealing, because the cops are despretaly trying to stop the stealing. Also, I heard on the news, that some of the people fired at the National Guard when the National Guard was trying to help them, very scary indeed.

Resque missions have not stopped, and as of right now the super dome and other important places have been evac-ed. This is a multi-layered problem.

The State didn't have an effective 'Worst case senario' plan set up and also the state didn't federalize the troops quick enough. Also our government didn't move in quick enough and respond fast enough....

You can't exactly place the blame on one single person or goverment. Katrina was a Category 5 when it hit. It's only the third or fourth Category 5 storm to have ever hit the Continental US. The whole of New Orleans slopes downward after Lake Pontra...I can't spell it correctly, you can't exactly correct New Orleans after everything in was built on top of it.

Holland had flooding long before the 21st Century. Its dikes took years to build. They had to slowly lift the land up while creating the barriers. Sea Level is rising. Venace, Italy gets flooded almost daily. They have to use planks of wood to get around, because when it floods, the sewage leaks out, similar to what's happening right now :\

It doesn't matter if they were poor or not, they could have still moved out. They now have nothing and now they have to leave.

What's really disturbing is the President reacted too slow in this situation.

Canada offered help, and the President should have accepted instantly. But instead it was a while before the "OK" was given(days).

America's pride and greed will consume them someday.

Shut up dk :\

Ever since I learned New Orleans was below sea level I've always known that eventually it would flood, especially since I've also heard that it's been gradually losing land anyway.


Anyway I wasn't surprised New Orleans was flooded, and I don't really care.

Agreed... I believe I posted that ealier, that even though they were poor, they still needed to try to leave.


Unagreed, if we take the money right off, other countries will think we are really desperate, and that won't make us look to good, we have to take time, so they think that we are not so desperate.

So you'd rather have pride than the lives of ....thousands, a lotta people, I'm sorry I can't count.

If we show no pride, other countires will not help us as much, in turn can kill us in the long run. Plus, a lot of these people in the New Orleans (Not all) have already commited crimes punishable by death.

And, like DeathKnight and I stated ealier, they should of left, even if they were poor, the consequences are worse for staying, resulting in many deaths. They only reason I can think of not leaving, is that a Family, or a friend with no family, has a medical condition, and cannot travel out. That is the only reason why I see not to leave. Most of them should of left.

Not one single person, an entire states founders and engineers.

The disaster that is New Orleans was caused by a lack of foresight. How?

A. THEY BUILT THE CITY UNDER SEA LEVEL?!

B. They cleared all the wetlands around New Orleans. The wetlands could have absorbed/stopped some water, perhaps enough to stop the water from topping the levees.

C. Since they cleared the wetlands, they should have raised the levees. But they didnt.

You said almost the exact same thing as me and it is nothing but flaming truth.

I don't know if they could of really done anything about building it under sea level. If I'm not mistaken, New Orleans was built many years before they had the technology to tell that they were under sea level...but I suppose they could of used common sense :\

New Orleans had a warning... They had some time to react, but not much was done, as you can see, two things should of been done:

I. Evacuation of all the civilians
II. Put some Levies to keep the destruction at a significint lower rate.

There was a manditory evacuation warning I think 2 or 1 days before the hurricane struck. Forecasters said that people would be able to return 2-3 days after the hurricane, not 2-3 months. Most of the people were too poor to evacuate, there was no way for them to get out. I doubt many of them had cars.

I highly doubt they could of even put in levees. Levees take several days to build, if you use sand bags and take months to build concrete ones. They should of however, after finding out that they were underwater, built the levees higher.

*RexyRex is ignoring posts.
BeeR, there we plans for the reconstruction (or whatever the hell they planned to do to them) of those levees, but thats all there was. Plans. They didn't do anything. I think they might listen a little more closely after the hell New Orleans is going through has become another peice of history.

Anyways, don't tell us we just turned a deaf ear.

Even if they were too poor to evacuate, they should of went, run or anything, being too poor is not worth losing your life, I am sure that there would be some people nice enough to get you lifts out of the city.


I wasn't really talking about right before it, I meant that it should of been done when way before the Hurricane, always take precautions, it is very important, especially if the place is hit by Hurricanes.

Ya, I guess it takes a complete tragedy to change anything, like 9/11. Sad

I guess so...

the natives thought the hurricane would die before it reached them but they were wrong they just thought that there would be a power outage for a few days and they were like...oh katrina? eh hey! nice sweater...

lol they didnt know what was coming so cut them some slack

It was all a lack of preperation (as many many people have said) but many countires after the fact offered help (not money but supplies and man power) for nothing in return, only to save lives. The conditions that the shelters had for those who were left were terrible. They had a lack of food and water and nothing to keep them cool. They started evacing out of there and shipped them to another place where there wasn't even a spot to go to the bathroom. They didn't let them call near by relatives to get them and now they are all being shipped to texas. Bascially the lack of preperation and reponse was absolutly terrible, I bet at the next election the issue of preparation for natural disasters will be a fairly large topic.

It feels different when your below sea level, and if you're far enough below oxygen becomes toxic.