Time article foreshadowed NOLA disaster
Time magazine, July 10, 2000:
The Pulse Of America
The Big Easy On the Brink
If it doesn't act fast, the city could become the next Atlantis
By ADAM COHEN
If a flood of Biblical proportions were to lay waste to New Orleans, Joe Suhayda has a good idea how it would happen. A Category 5 hurricane would come barreling out of the Gulf of Mexico. It would cause Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans, to overflow, pouring down millions of gallons of water on the city. Then things would really get ugly. Evacuation routes would be blocked. Buildings would collapse. Chemicals and hazardous waste would dissolve, turning the floodwaters into a lethal soup. In the end, what was left of the city might not be worth saving.
posted by xoff @ 3:58 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Here's a thought:
It's pretty obvious that the Department of Homeland Security did not have a plan to respond to the flooding of New Orleans. Wouldn't that then mean that they hadn't actually considered the consequences of a terrorist attack on New Orleans' levees, or even such an attack itself? And, if that's the case, for how many other terrorism/disaster scenarios is DHS woefully unprepared for?
It is also pretty obvious that city and state preparedness was non-existent. Their evacuation plans included bussing people out of the poorest areas – how did that work out for them?
Louisiana emergency government officials should have been among the first responders. That was a dismal failure too.
Post a Comment
<< Home