I was watching TV late Monday night, maybe 1 or 2 am, and they were interviewing a woman live from a hospital someplace in NO. She said the waters were rising and the word they had was that the levee had breached by Lake Ponchartrain. It was well known that if that levee breached it would be a matter of hours before nearly the entire city would be underwater. The time to order and begin the evacuation, send the buses and the security people and so forth, was certainly at hand then if not earlier. Yet the feds didn't seem to realize that this was more than a local problem until sometime yesterday. I don't understand that. The Miss. situation was apparent pretty much as soon as the storm had driven through mid-morning Monday. Yet they still don't seem to be getting much federal help. It will come in droves now, but now is too late for many.
I posted a couple of articles over at My House earlier ... it was perfectly well known, in detail, that this was a likely scenario. The NO Times-Picayune ran a lengthy piece three years ago about how 100-200K poor people would be trapped in NO while the bowl filled and thousands died. The detail in that article, read today, is eerie. I heard the levee breach scenario discussed endlessly on Sunday on CNN, before the storm hit. Why were people running around on Tuesday and Wednesday trying to figure out where to find buses? Yes, I know it was a challenge, but I think some serious planning and logistics improvements are going to be a big subject in the coming weeks.
I fear there may be at 10,000 dead bodies under that water, maybe more. |
