Posted on 09/18/2005 10:16:23 AM PDT by wagglebee
That was the upshot of H. G. Wells' short story "The Country of the Blind": sighted man stumbles into a land of blind people, can't deal with the blind-oriented culture, is derided as insane (crazy guy thinks singing angels are small winged feathered animals that fly, what is he nuts?), his alleged insanity is attributed to these two small damp round things on the front of his head, and he manages to escape before being persuaded to have these round things surgically removed.
I'm an engineer in a different discipline, but here is my take on the concept:
The design for the levee will take into account the compaction issue with respect to the required strength of the levee - which was designed to withstand Cat 3 hurricanes (including their attendant water pressures from storm surge). That means that, once compaction is reached and the levee is full strength, the levee will have been over-engineered, and hence stronger than designed.
Remember that the upgrade would have affected the strength of the levee respective to other sections of the structure. As long as the levee was designed correctly, incorporating the correct strength as built (not as strengthened by compaction), and was built to the design, there is no negligence.
The levee break came on the heels of a cat 4 hurricane. The break itself may have been caused by debris - I have seen reports that a barge may have gotten loose and slammed that part of the levee. The truth should become known at some point, but as yet have not been revealed (to my knowledge).
The higher than expected water pressure, combined with (speculatively) debris damage apparently affected the "weak link" section of the levee - even though the levee as built may have met the specifications.
Negligence in this case would mean the levee was built substandard with respect to its specifications. There have been assertions of this, but no evidence presented - only rampant conspiracy mongering.
To which 'reasonable' blacks in New Orleans is he talking? I thought everyone had been evacuated. If there are any holdouts among the black community who chose NOT to be evacuated even when apprised of the dangers of staying, I wouldn't consider them reasonable.
The columnist is simply putting this crackpot theory in 'reasonable peoples' mouths so that he can give it wider play. Elite blacks are scared to death that this stronghold of racial politics is being torn asunder, and that some black people might just start seeing that 'whitey' doesn't hate them after all , thus diluting the power the elite blacks have among liberal whites.
Breaking one levee can allow water from Lake Ponchartrain or Mississippi River to be released and relieve the pressure on other levees. However, it would not have been performed on the east side of the 17th Street Canal obviously which resulted in all of N.O. flooding. One would look at the east side of Intracoastal Canal to flood lower 9th ward which is close to area that flooded during Betsy.
BTW the ones who told me that people did this very thing during Betsy did not live in the 9th Ward. It was told by those who lived in N.O. and were spared by the flooding. They viewed it as a leg amputation to save the patient. It was not the claim of those who flooded but the claim by those who were spared the flooding. I was told this so much growing up that I actually accepted it as fact until much later.
Yup.
Unfortunately, all true.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.