I’m sure most people don’t understand that New Orleans was extremely lucky with Katrina. By turning to the east before it came ashore the main damage from storm surges was to the Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Biloxi area. Not to diminish the damage in NO but had the storm been 50 miles to the west, there would be no NO today. Waveland was basically wiped of the map near the water as was much of Bay St. Louis. But the residents put their heads down and went to work re-building for the next one to tear it up again. The devistation in NJ and NY will be a VERY long time getting fixed and we pray for those folks with colder weather on the approach. But, the race must go on right Bloomy? Idiot!
Helping keep mankind warm for 65 years.
I agree with you but for a different reason. In my post up above, I mentioned the levee failures that occurred which were not related to any ‘overtopping mechanism’ but had more to do with poor design and inadequate soil strength. The higher water levels accompanying the storm surge made it more likely the failure would occur during a hurricane but theoretically, it could have happened anytime since the margin of safety in the levee design was so low (essentially one). What Katrina did was put everyone on high alert so folks had already taken shelter, moved out, higher ground etc. If that failure had of occurred in the middle of the night when nobody was on high alert, chances are that from a human life perspective, the disaster could have been much worse. Katrina might have saved more lives than it cost.