You are right. Obviously the two areas are not really comparable. My point was that the media generally portrays Katrina as having scored a direct hit on NO. Had it done so, we might have had tens of thousands of dead, and perhaps less forceful criticism of the administration for its response. Who knows?
The old-fashioned earth levees all held, I believe. The levees that failed were the new, modern concrete ones. They failed well before reaching the stress they were supposed to be built to withstand.
This implies that somebody screwed up, either on design, construction or maintenance, and is therefore responsible for the disaster. Had the levees not failed, the damage would have been minimal.
Oddly, I’ve seen very little in the media on this subject, except in the weeks immediately after the storm. I suspect the reason is that the media doesn’t want to divert attention away from “Bush’s failure” during the response to the actual cause. The way it has been played, the implication is that the administration knew in advance exactly what would happen, and chose to let it continue in order to kill as many black people as possible.
Or possibly there’s just been an effective cover-up.
BTW, I like your ideas. Would require extensive changes in liability and insurance law. For instance, Katrina could have swerved at the last moment and missed NO, or the levees might have held. Then your car dealers would be up a creek.
Dramatic action such as you propose is generally only justified by hindsight. This is much like 9/11, where the very actions that could have prevented it would never have been considered justified or legal until after it had occurred.
“Oddly, I’ve seen very little in the media on this subject, except in the weeks immediately after the storm.”
Corps chief admits to ‘design failure’
Thursday, April 06, 2006
http://www.nola.com/frontpage/t-p/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1144306231230500.xml