Why was New Orleans built that way?

[c9]

A quick history of New Orleans, which helps explain to a certain extent the curious design. (sorry for the wide image)


(Thanks CNN!)

Comments

[cap-hill-latte.livejournal.com]

I was listening to an levee expert on NPR last night who was saying that the levees had been built to only fail in the event of a "storm of the century" while other levees are typically built to only fail in the event of a "storm of the millenium" or "storm of the past 10 00 years". So, basically, the levees were almost guarenteed to fail within 100 years of being built.

[cap-hill-latte.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Given how picky I've been about other people's logic lately I didn't explain that as well as I would have liked. Here's a second attempt:

The levees in NO were built to withstand a storm of power less than "x". Most levees in first world nations are built to withstand storms of power up to "y" or even "z".

Storms of power "x" happen every 100 years or so.

Storms of power "y" happen every 1 000 years or so.

Storms of power "z" happen every 10 000 years or so.

So, basically, they built the levees knowing that there was a near 100% chance they would fail within 100 years.*

*Caveat: my statistical logic might not be exactly correct on that one. It's been a while since I spent time in Singer hall.

[c9.livejournal.com]

I read something similar, describing that the levees were somewhat recently rebuilt / improved to contain a Cat3 hurricane. "Why not Cat5?" everyone screams today, and the answer of course is money. It would cost billions of dollars to build out to that extent, and the design work apparently isn't even complete -- had they committed to Cat5 containment, they still would have been at about the same status as last week.

[primary-suspect.livejournal.com]

I bet they are glad they saved all that money now... ;-)

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

Saved? They didn't save it. They spent it on something else. Four letters.

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

A bit of both :-)

[primary-suspect.livejournal.com]

Does it rhyme with "crack"? ;-)