[sefarkas]

I am so tired of reading posts by folks who have no clue about life in New Orleans, but never cease to offer advice.

Aren't you reading what the investigation is saying? The flood walls (not earthen levees) were incorrectly designed and incorrectly constructed. The failure was going to happen sooner or later. The flood wall failed well after the hurricane and storm surge passed. We've had plenty of storms and winds in New Orleans -- no more or less than the folks in CA have earthquakes and fires. The flood wall failure unfortunately happened in the aftermath of the hurricane with all of the folks in the neighborhood nearest the failure forced/ordered out in the mandatory evacuation. The folks who would have been first responders and interested in preserving their property were not there when the city needed them the most. As you should know, failures such as this are not instantaneous and if the neighbors were there, action would have been taken to limit the failure. Sandbagging and diking with all of the available debris would have limited the damage to a much smaller length of flood wall, rather than the 500 foot breach that was allowed to form because there were no first-responders in the neighborhood to act.

People are safer to shelter in-place rather than drive into horrible traffic. Evacuation is simply an invitation to the looters to ransack your house.

[TheLion]

"I am so tired of reading posts by folks who have no clue about life in New Orleans, but never cease to offer advice."

Well, not to burst your bubble, but we do have a clue. You just helped to make my origional point.

[Paleo Conservative]

People are safer to shelter in-place rather than drive into horrible traffic. Evacuation is simply an invitation to the looters to ransack your house

Not if a Cat 5 hurricane (which Katrina was before landfall) hits New Orleans directly or slightly to the west. The Red Cross refuses to set up shelters in New Orleans for any hurricane above Cat 2. The storm surge of Katrina was measured at about 30 feet while it was over the Gulf of Mexico. Considering parts of New Orleans are 12 feet below sea level, they could easily have been 40 under water regardless if the levees stayed intact. The people left behind in New Orleans were lucky Katrina followed a path a little bit to the east of its predicted path.

[ClaireSolt]

Well everyone else is appalled and getting very tired of being held up for money with no thanks.

[CharlesWayneCT]

I will disagree about this. It was extremely FORTUNATE that the wall collapsed after a Hurricane, when everybody was evacuated.

There was no way to sand-bag a 200-foot wall collapse. If this wall had simply fallen down in the middle of a normal night, you would have had thousands of people drowned before most people had any idea what was happening. And tens of thousands of people stuck on their roofs. And people electrocuted by live power in the water. And fires from gas mains.

The reason the corp was able to stop the leak much easier the 2nd time was that it was no longer a "wall", but was a fat levy, which is easier to put back together.