Paul at Wizbang has a detailed post about some interesting revelations relating to the levee breaches in New Orleans last Fall (with lots of pictures).

Bottom line, according to Paul:

New Orleans was doomed with or without Katrina, we just didn’t know it.

He says, “A good high tide puts more water in the canal than this. As the video shows, the water was barely higher than normal levels. The walls could have failed on a decent high tide.”

So what does this mean?

That levee was doomed. If it had failed without notice, the death toll would have been measured in tens of thousands. There would be no evacuation, no preparation, no Feds at all. (such that they were anyway) no Coast Guard in choppers etc. Tens of thousands of people would have been dead in hours and tens of thousands more would have died on 120 degree rooftops waiting for rescue. It would have been unimaginable. - More unimaginable.

“Luckily” -and I groan when I say that- Katrina allowed the city to be evacuated.

Read the rest…

1. […] Via Texas Rainmaker comes an interesting post on Wizbang. He maintains that the levees that failed were going to fail anyways (we know they were structurally corrupt and eroding) and that the fact that they failed during a hurricane when there was the chance people had evacuated rather than failing during any old high tide was a lifesaver. […]

   Pingback by Katrina saved lives? « Tai-Chi Policy — 10:05 am
   

2. I hope both you and Paul at Wizbang will include your blog information in the Hurrican Digital Memory Bank http://hurricanearchive.org/about or email info@hurricanearchive.org for more info.

   “Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank contributes to the ongoing effort by historians and archivists to preserve the record of these storms by collecting first-hand accounts, on-scene images, blog postings, and podcasts. We hope to foster some positive legacies by allowing the people affected by these storms to tell their stories in their own words, which as part of the historical record will remain accessible to a wide audience for generations to come.”

   Comment by nita rene — 7:20 pm
   

3. Makes sense, actually.

   Comment by benning — 6:56 pm
   

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