All this hurricane talk has me all fired up again.

[Scott]

You know, every time this crap is brought up I get quite annoyed. I am talking about how the lazy, corrupt, and incompetent city, county, and state leadership in New Orleans and Louisiana was given a free pass and the blame was laid 100% on the President during Katrina. Are you kidding me with this bullshit??

I just read this article and it sort of stirred everything back up for me, so I thought I would start a discussion on the topic because in my opinion the blame belonged at home, not in Washington.

[NooDle]

Well, AFAIK they *did* take all the nessacery precautions this time, and 90+% of people have been evacuated.

So why are you fired up again?

[D-Fence]

Well, I still wonder they talk about "how great they evacuate" (which is really good work) but somehow ignore they didn't seem to have worked enough on the dams in those 3 years...at least that is what German TV mentioned.

[Seasonone]

People need a scapegoat, it's just best to laugh it off and ignore their mindless dribble.

[jeffy777]

Originally Posted by NooDle

Well, AFAIK they *did* take all the nessacery precautions this time, and 90+% of people have been evacuated.

Yeah, New Orleans looked like a ghost town on the news yesterday, except for the police cars and news crews.

[watto]

I'm perplexed by what I read in this morning's news paper... They're still in the process of building/re-building the dams and levies, three years after the event. And hardly any of them are up to 1 in 100 year standards... I just find that flabergasting, what have they been doing??

[jetsetter]

To protect the city from the large storm would take billions of dollars and 20 years worth of work. Its only been a few years and people (other than the government including the New York Times) have been complaining about the price.

[tmbrudy]

Everyone here in Louisiana is still freaked about hurricanes, this is the first storm that people have had time to think about that has come through, other than Rita after Katrina there hasn't been any. Even here, many miles inland in Lafayette it was pretty much ghost town. It sucks that something going wrong is what wakes people up to disasters. I was living in Miami when hurricane Andrew came through, that flattened entire blocks with just the force of the wind. Now in Florida they have very strict building codes to never let that happen again, but that took some years to implement and all it took was some building codes, not evaluating lots of plans and getting money, lots of money, spent. They have plans in place as to what they are going to do, but you cant build these things overnight, and this hurricane taught everyone a lot. So far things have gone decent, but as with Katrina the day after was when the levees broke.

[Censport]

Originally Posted by watto

I'm perplexed by what I read in this morning's news paper... They're still in the process of building/re-building the dams and levies, three years after the event. And hardly any of them are up to 1 in 100 year standards... I just find that flabergasting, what have they been doing??

It used to be (pre-Katrina) that all the levee maintenance money was diverted to pet projects, now it is actually being used for the intended purpose, but there is a lot of catching up to do. The levees were rebuilt, and almost all of them held 100% this time. There is more work to be done, but it takes time and money. If only the entire nation could stop spending money on pet projects and vote-buying entitlement programs, and maintain what it has already built, fiascos like the damage from Katrina and the Minnesota bridge collapse wouldn't happen.

Personally, I think Gov. Jindal has been doing a great job, and even Mayor Nagin is doing better (no pictures of flooded school buses this time). Former governor Blanco, frankly, was a usless, clueless idiot.