Tuesday, September 02, 2008

A close call

Water pushed up the MRGO (Mississippi River Gulf Outlet) and sloshed over the flood walls of the Industrial Canal, even though Gustav missed well to the west and was a Category 2 storm. It's clear that the residents of New Orleans made the right choice to leave. If Gustav had come up the Mississippi River rather than miss to the west, or if it had stayed a Cat 3 rather than weaken as it approached the coast, New Orleans would have been right back underwater again...

Note that these particular weaknesses in the New Orleans storm defense were caused by the federal government and its MRGO project, and should be fixed by them as well. But thus far the Corpse of Engineers is arguing over how to close off the MRGO canal so it no longer funnels storm water into New Orleans, rather than simply doing it. So it goes...

-- Badtux the Dry Penguin

1 comment:

  1. It is too easy for anyone to forget how good a " non-disaster "
    really is .
    It is too easy to only concentrate on the ' news ' and not see the non-news .
    Personally , Katrina upset me considerably and I live in California , I had never cried over the news before or since .
    I am thrilled that they averted a big one .
    I don't need more evidence that we have become a third world country .
    I know already and it left a bad taste in my mouth .
    Let there be more non-news and lets all be thankfull for it .
    w3ski

    ReplyDelete

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