[General] New Orleans again

Why you should always check first. I swear that this is my last post on the issue (unless something really ludicrous happens).

The Dom Post has a sideboard on the front page of its World section today. The sideboard is titled: Who’s To Blame? It is a series of questions and answers:

Could the disaster have been avoided?

No. Category 4 storms carrying 230kmh winds are acts of God. New Orleans would have been very badly damaged regardless of human intervention.

Blame: No one.

<>Would better flood defences have made a difference?

Maybe. The governments of George W Bush and Bill Clinton, with the backing of Congress, have been cutting flood defence funds for years. More money might have saved New Orleans, though the tidal surge which breached defences might have breached higher barriers.

<>It goes on but I’m not typing out the whole thing. It’s really these two pieces that I would have to disagree with anyway.

The disaster was not just the hurricane it was the complete destruction of the wetlands in order to get the oil (which is now all busted up, how ironic). It was the construction and terrible up-keep of the levies around New Orleans. Read the Wikipedia entry (good god is there nothing that can’t be found on Wikipedia).

Dom Post please read stuff before putting it in your paper please. The storm was no ones fault but the fact that the storm caused so much devastation is. So “Could the disaster have been avoided? YES

Graham Reid has a nice piece over at the Public Address. Although given this:

In this city of cemeteries dating back centuries the graves are constructed above the ground, because flooding lifts buried bodies. God knows what is coming up out of the ground right now.

I wonder if the death toll will become over inflated.

Also the paper had a photo of National Guardsmen in the French Quarter. They were wearing berets. Ho ho ho

And finally (because I have to go) the US government has a site that tells you how to spot misinformation. WHAT THE…?