It seems like only three years ago that I sent out a similar Report while we all watched Katrina-- what some people in New Orleans call "The Thing" (Rose 2005, etc.) For some of you I guess it's been a while and you might think that I only communicate during hurricanes or maybe I was dead. "Hell, I even thought I was dead till I found out it was just that I was in Nebraska" (Eastwood. 1992) Well in fact it's been New Orleans not Nebraska and no I'm not dead-- that was somebody else who was shot and killed at 1009 St. Anthony Street during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (City Business. August 22, 206)
Despite living in Louisiana for most of the last 10 years, Katrina was my first evacuation and Gustav only the second. This most recent time was by air-- Southwest Airlines-- from New Orleans' Louis Armstrong International Airport aka Moisant Field (MSY). In fact I had Labor Day plans with my family anyway, so in some ways this is "working out quite well for me" (Bush. 5 Sept 2005). Having done the best I could to protect my property and get out of harm's way I can't imagine a better place to be than with Family.
Unfortunately as of Wednesday New Orleans remains largely without power except for at the Superdome, in the French Quarter, and a few spots Uptown (based on the reports I've been receiving from the "holdouts" who stayed behind.) Oh well, at least folks can still go for a round at Johnny White's and then down the street for dinner at Bacco's. As for myself, I continue to ride it all out on the West Coast as I did for Hurricane Rita in late September 2005. It's disappointing that after three years of preparation about the only thing we've gotten better at is leaving town en masse; just like after Katrina, the word we are getting is "We are still assessing things"-- bringing to mind the tales of senseless red-tape and clipboard jockeying that became so infamous during that debacle.
Gustav was a rather "average" Cat 2/Cat 3 Hurricane, despite Mayor C. Ray Nagin's initially calling it "The Storm of the Century" and later downgrading it to "maybe the mother-in-law or the ugly sister of all storms" (AP, 2 Sept. 2008); the man does have a way with words. The storm skirted New Orleans on its way along the Highway 90 coast, home to communities such as Houma (pronounced Home-a)/ Terrebonne (Tare-a-bone) Parish, Lafourche (La-foosh) where Port Fourchon ("Foosh-on") is located, and of course through my old stomping grounds-- Morgan City (if you need help with that one then you need to either start going to classes or drink more spiced rum.) We in Louisiana always get a kick out of the funny linguistic concoctions that the television talking heads come up with to describe our homes.
Just as amusing this time around was the ever-creative coverage and descriptions by major networks of the Levee Overlapping and Oversquirting televised throughout the day (it's usually called Overtopping by most levee experts-- see Moss and Eller. 2006) And then there were "professional opinions"-- one reporter's comment that what New Orleans really needs is "Levees hundreds of feet" in height. I don't have the heart to tell him that in Katrina 80% of Downtown New Orleans was inundated by a storm surge that hardly reached 10 feet-- well below the tops of the concrete floodwalls built to contain it. I guess that's why he's doing television and gets to be The Fool in the Rain (as in "I'm.... standing.... out here... in the.... rain and... .blowing winds..... (unintelligible wind noise)..." What a bunch of yahoos-- perhaps they ought to just stick with covering the drunks riding it out in the French Quarter; at least that's amusing in "proper" ways and doesn't leave 2 million South Louisiana citizens-- not to mention the rest of America-- watching from afar with more questions and confusion than reliable information.
This "Cat 2/ Cat 3 Level" hurricane served to be a mild test for the New Orleans Hurricane Protection Systems. Even the much- ballyhooed gates and pumping systems installed at the mouth of the three New Orleans drainage outfall canals where they empty into Lake Pontchartrain were pressed into service for at least an entire hour. For those of you have followed this issue, that last sentence is indeed mild sarcasm.
But Make No Mistake; this is no way for us to go boldly into the future-- the floodwalls we watched Overtopping/ Overlapping/ Oversquirting on television are "vintage" and received some additional improvements after Katrina, but we have a long way to go. Improvements are planned for the purpose of closing off the Industrial Canal with surge protection gates during storms, but the project is still in the planning phase (anybody sensing a theme here?).
If we are to have a useful discussion about the future of New Orleans-- and the future of American Civil Engineering Infrastructure as a whole for that matter-- it cannot be through discombobulated sound bytes. It was disappointing, to say the least that despite three years since Katrina we still are presenting a partial and mis-informed picture to the American Public. As Col. Bedey, head of the US Army Corps of Engineers Hurricane Protection Project for New Orleans, himself told me this year "Don't believe everything." (Rosenberg. 2008)
Nonetheless, the footage we all saw the other day of water lapping, squirting, overtopping the floodwalls along the Industrial Canal deserves some explanation. The Inner Harbor Navigation Canal (IHNC, aka Industrial Canal) is part of the MRGO/ GIWW/ IHNC system-- an artificial waterway which began construction in the 1920's and has been continuously modified ever since-- both by natural and human influence. Before the canal neighborhoods existed on the site and and to the west existed swamp and wetland; even today one can still see a few remaining cypress tree stumps and knees in the adjacent Bayou Bienvenue. It is the loss of this natural storm buffer and the artificial channelization of water that brings these waters to our front door step in such great magnitude-- the root cause of the Oversquirting, as it were. Yes, we humans bring much of this upon ourselves.
Meanwhile, the future of New Orleans and Coastal Louisiana communities dims at the prospect of having to vacate for up to a week even for such a moderate storm. I re-iterate the call of experts such as Paul Kemp, oceanographer for the Audobon Society, who believes that New Orleans needs to be protected to a no-evacuate level of reliability. We need safe shelters, but we shouldn't have to leave our communities in order to find them; there is plenty of high ground right at home and I can assure you that We Have the Technology. This is what it will take in order for New Orleans and Coastal America to prosper for another 300 years.
DR
References
AP. Sept 2, 2008 "Gustav only sideswipes New Orleans as levees hold" by Robert Tanner and Vicki Smith
Bush, B. 5 Sept. 2005. Quotation from Marketplace, see
City Business, 22 Aug. 2006 "Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home to display Katrina flag memorial. Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home and Cemetaries is putting up a display of 1,464 white flags to mark the number of lives lost in Louisiana as a result of Hurricane Katrina."
Eastwood. 1992. "Unforgiven" Little Bill explaining his absence to English Bob.
Moss R. and Eller M. 2006. "Estimating the Probability of Failure and Associated Risk of the California Bay Delta Levee System"
Rose. C. 2005, etc.
Rosenberg, D. 2008. Personal Communication at meeting of University of New Orleans Chapter of the Society of Military Engineers,.
and just in case you missed it the first time around:
When the Levee Breaks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7geGvdb5RYU
