NOLA Chain of events link from Times Picayune 9-7-05

[Dick Pache]

http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp ... tml#077859

[soonertwister]

I truly do wonder if in fact NOLA authorities appropriately conveyed the gravity of the situation to state and federal officials, when they failed to alert their own people in the vicinity of breaches of the collapses for hours. All day Monday and Tuesday, the city continually conveyed the idea that the breaches were minor and being taken care of to the media.

They didn't publicly admit to the media that the city was going to completely flood until Wednesday morning, when efforts to close just one of several breaches was abandoned, along the 17th street canal.

Nobody was get much information regarding this situation in the media all along. And it's likely that the federal authorities weren't having much luck in communicating with the city in any case, given the deep crisis and turmoil that was apparent at that time.

I still think back to Monday night, with Shepard Smith reporting from the French Quarter with crowds of drunk people all around, all partying and oblivious to the inevitable, which was well on its way to conclusion.

This catastrophe reads like a novel, it's so surreal.

[artist]

bet it's going to have many movies and novels based on it, unfortunately. One thing that I thought was interesting was when Chernoff (sp?)stated that what officials in LA. was telling them was they had things under control at that time.

[LAwxrgal]

Dang it does read like the script of a bad disaster movie, and certainly one will be made within the next few years. There will definitely be novels and all kinds of derivative works.

Scene 1: The French Quarter -- Revelers drink to the coming storm.
Scene 2: The storm arrives, blowing winds and water throughout the city.
Scene 3: Everything and everyone is covered in a toxic soup.
Scene 4: Officials play the blame game.

Now I know I'm being simplistic and I know the order isn't exact but you get the picture.

What a lot of people can't believe is that this isn't a bad disaster movie. It's real life. This did happen in 2005, the so-called "information age." That's what's so startling. And what's even more startling is as bad as Katrina was, what if she'd have made landfall as a 175 mph superstorm? I shudder to think about it.

[LAwxrgal]

Also something else I found interesting. I've often wondered exactly when the levee breeches occurred, and was under the impression, as were the emergency management officials and the people who wrote the Wikipedia article on Katrina, that the breeches were a separate event, apart from the storm.

The writer believes that the levee breeches occurred during the storm's height while emergency management officials believed the breeches were a separate event from the flooding going on in NOLA east and St. Bernard Parish.

Seems like to me there was some miscommunication going on between officials. How could they not have known that a storm as strong as Katrina, even though it passed slightly east of the city itself, was capable of breeching levees?

As I've said earlier, there is enough blame to go around, and we must try to make sure that a catastrophe of this magnitude never happens in this country again.