New Orleans vs. Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans and everyone was asking the same question, what went wrong? There was a wide range of things that went wrong during and after Hurricane Katrina but for my purposes I am going to focus on one particular aspect of New Orleans and go into some detail about that aspect. I will be focusing on the levees and what went wrong with them and how it should have been handled.

The levees may arguably be what we have heard the most about on the news in terms of the main thing that went wrong. You were constantly hearing the levees broke and the water came rushing into the city. The levees were put in place to protect New Orleans from flooding because New Orleans is a city very prone to floods considering it is below sea level. So then next question is why did the levees break? Weren't they built to withstand exactly what had happened? Well some people down in New Orleans knew that those levees wouldn't be able to hold against a really strong hurricane such as Hurricane Katrina. One of the accounts from City Adrift: New Orleans Before and After Katrina give a very interesting story. Chapter one starts off by talking about "The Storm" which you assume is Hurricane Katrina until you get about 5 paragraphs into the reading. At this point it is said "The year is 1965. The storm was Hurricane Betsy." The levees were overtopped and breached during that storm as well causing countless amounts of damages and taking many lives. From this reading we get a look into the past in particular an event that was very similar to Hurricane Katrina but that happened 40 years ago. This just shows you how vulnerably New Orleans is and that it has been through a lot of hurricanes in its past and I am sure that Katrina won't be the last.

The article They Saw it Coming by Mark Fischetti has some interesting facts about what people in New Orleans were trying to do to help better prepare the city's levee system against something like Hurricane Katrina. "By the late 1990's, scientists at Louisiana State University and the University of New Orleans had perfected computer models showing exactly how a sea surge would overwhelm the levee system, and had recommended a set of solutions. The Army Corps of Engineers, which built the levees, had proposed different projects." But the government was not listening to what the people in New Orleans were saying about the levees not being good enough. A disaster is what it took to get there attention.

When the levees broke they caused problems that no one had taken the time to think about. For instance from The Frontline documentary The Storm the Army said they lost 15 high water trucks with communications supplies when the levees broke. Also 500 school buses were flooded, these are the vehicles that are used for evacuation purposes. In the video they said that the National Guard spent 24 hours trying to save themselves before they were able to send people out and help the public. That may not seem like a long time but 24 hours during a disaster is a very crucial amount of time that can not afford to be lost. So if you don't have enough vehicles to evacuate people of course it is going to take more time and more trips to evacuate everyone. That is just leaving people in harms way for a longer amount of time which is going to lead to casualties.

There are plenty of cases and studies that were done over time to show that these levees were not prepared to handle a hurricane of category 3 or more. But because the government was not making New Orleans and its safety a top priority nothing got done in terms of upgraded or fixing the levee system that was in place. Scientists were offering many different solutions if only someone was willing to implement them. In the article I mentioned earlier, They Saw It Coming(http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/opinion/02fischetti.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1), they listed some of the alternative ideas that were being proposed but none of them were ever put into effect as we all know.

As you can see the levees breaking obviously caused more water to rush into the city and spread quickly but what you might not have known was how much information they had about the levees and that they were something that needed to be fixed. The levee break also affected the rescue time because it was "unexpected" and the National Guard was dealing with saving their stuff first. What happened in New Orleans was terrible and will never be forgotten, let us just hope that we can learn from all the suffering that they went through and that we can better protect New Orleans and all other vulnerable cities.

New Orleans is like every other city in the United States....except its not

New Orleans is arguably the most unique city in the United States mostly because of its history. Historically they are unique people because of all the races that have inhabited the area. From the Europeans (French and Spanish), to the African Americans brought over during slavery, to the Caribbeans that come from the South. Over the years these races as well as their individual cultures have all melted together and created the culture in New Orleans.
I personally had no idea how rich New Orleans' history was. The movie we watched really gave me some insight into what has happened in the city of New Orleans over the years. They had the first free blacks, they had to buy their freedom but at least they had the option. The rest of the world had not even considered such a thought. The freed blacks ended up living pretty good lives and were free to have any job that they were able to perform. They created the first black newspaper The Tribune (L'Union.). Once the paper was in circulation they were able to spread the word of equality and basically started the Civil Rights movement. Few people outside of New Orleans know that fact. This led to the first desegregated school in New Orleans. As you can see historically New Orleans is very rich thus making it very unique.
Geographically New Orleans is unique because a lot of it is below sea level. The highest points are the banks of the river. Then they have a bay and the ocean basically surrounding them. Normally this would be a prime area for a city because you can have a port for sea travel and a river to transport goods throughout the whole country. Geography has also been a reason why New Orleans has a history of lower levels of racial violence. "Professor John Adams of the University of Minnesota has observed that two conditions commonly presage racial violence: the expectation of a better life that is routinely frustrated, and ghettos so big that blacks see only blacks, where resentment feeds incessantly upon itself." New Orleans didn't satisfy either because their ghettos "remained small and fragmented."
In the "Great Deluge" Douglas Brinkley talks about Katrina and some signs that led up to a disaster. "After [Hurricane] Betsy [in 1965] these levees were designed for a Category 3," Sheriff Jeff Hingle of Plaquemines Parish. He said that when Katrina was on its way. He knew the levees weren't going to be able to hold the water. He was urging people to evacuate.
It's sad what Katrina did to New Orleans but from what I have learned about the culture and people I don't expect anything less than a full recovery, but it is going to take some time.

Blackberrry Update

So as you guys know i was having some serious problems with my blackberry a couple of weeks ago and it was driving me crazy. well i couldn't take it anymore and Sprint was not helping me out at all. i called them they told me that there was nothing they could do but that i should go to a repair store and leave it with them and they might be able to fix it. i went to Kings Plaza mall in brooklyn because they have a Sprint repair store there and it's only like 15 mins from my house. i made an appointment online and i figured i would just go there and be maybe 20 mins and they would either be able to help me or not, but of course it wasn't that easy. i get there and they tell me to leave my phone and come back in an HOUR AND A HALF!! i was like fine ill just walk around the mall with my friends (that god someone came with me) and kill some time. i went to a few stores ate some food then went back to the Sprint store at the time they had said for me to return. i got there and they made me wait for another 30 mins so by this point i'm already pissed off. FINALLY they call my name and i ask they guy so what did you guys do? he goes we did a hard reset. i was like are you serious??? i told him i could have done that at home and these were his words exactly "Yea, you could have." that was it for me, i was like well thanks for nothing because the hard reset did NOT fix my problems. so i went home and canceled my contract with Sprint, yes i have to pay a $200 early cancellation fee but that is how pissed off i am with them. needless to say i got a new blackberry with verizon and i am very happy with it :). it is actually the new curve (Blackberry 8530) and instead of the trackball it has a sensor pad that i actually really like. if anyone is thinking about getting this model or upgrading to a blackberry i would suggest this one, it comes with a ton of memory and feels awesome when you are using it. here is a youtube review from crackberry about the model:
Thanks to everyone who tried to help me with the problems i was having with the old one it was much appreciated.