everything you "know" about NO is wrong

[Hamlette]

http://biguenet.page.nytimes.com/?8dpc

"By the next morning, floodwater was pouring into the city from breaches in defective levees, inundating 80 percent of New Orleans. When the water finally found its level, in some places more than 10 feet deep, an area seven times the size of Manhattan had been destroyed. By the end of that first week, roughly 1,300 New Orleanians had drowned or died of dehydration and exposure. Katrina wasn’t what killed all those people and devastated a celebrated city; it was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. As the Corps itself admits in its own draft final report on the disaster, “foundation failures occurred prior to water levels reaching the design levels of protection, causing breaching and subsequent massive flooding and extensive losses.”

Another misconception that has persisted is the notion that many who died in the Lower Ninth Ward were stranded there because they had no means of transportation with which to evacuate. In fact, one of the most striking features I noted when I first toured the staggering devastation of that neighborhood after the flooding was how many cars and trucks had been submerged there. From the obituaries the Times-Picayune has published over the last year, it is clear that many New Orleanians who died had chosen to stay because, having survived previous hurricanes, they believed the Corps of Engineers’ assurances that the levees could protect them against a Category 3 hurricane. Though some people who died did not have transportation, many had cars and trucks available to them.

As survivors gathered in the Superdome and the Convention Center waiting for days for the Bush administration to send federal assistance to the area, the media offered sensationalized accounts of chaotic conditions there, with murders and rapes reportedly widespread. In fact, only one violent death, a suicide, was ever confirmed to have occurred in those facilities during that terrible first week after the levees collapsed. According to those who were there, despite utterly wretched circumstances — thousands of people with no working toilets, in excruciating heat — people comported themselves with patience, with generosity toward those with even less, and with as much dignity as they could manage. After the flooding, New Orleanians were roundly criticized by Congressional leaders for choosing to live in an area below sea level. In fact, only parts of New Orleans are below sea level. My house, for example, is a foot above sea level, and it still received four feet of floodwater. We were hardly as foolish as Americans living in earthquake zones like San Francisco and Anchorage are. After all, we had assurances from the Corps of Engineers that we would be safe in a hurricane of Katrina’s strength. If we were foolish, it was in believing our government.

So there’s a great deal about what happened in New Orleans that is widely misunderstood. On the other hand, what you think you know about FEMA is probably right. A few months ago at a neighborhood property owners association meeting, called to discuss the future of our area, a doctor who lives near me described how he had used his small fishing boat to rescue those stranded during the flooding. One evening, he found a group of people huddled on a rooftop, and he started ferrying them to dry ground. On the way back for a second load, he passed a boat with men wearing FEMA T-shirts. He shouted for them to follow him to pick up the remaining family members. The men refused, explaining that it was after 5 p.m. and they weren’t authorized for overtime.

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I have a particular hatred for the Army Corps of Engineers for destroying MY hometown in 1964 so this just confirms my experience. Wish this could get more play.