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

[primary-suspect.livejournal.com]

Interesting read, thanks. So many levees...

Didn't they learn from StarTrek that you have to have primary and secondary backup levees just in case? ;-)

[c9.livejournal.com]

Oh please, the backups always fail in every episode! They only resolve the problem by reconfiguring the deflector frequencies. I may call the Governor or Louisiana with that idea.

[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.

[thespos]

What I don't get about all this is that I was reading that someone drove their Chevy to the levee, and the levee was dry.

And there were some good ol' boys drinking whiskey and rye...

No seriously.

What I don't get is how they could have let things go on for as long as they have without making serious improvements to the system. It is not as if they had no idea this could happen. The loss now is unimaginable.

[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]

Exactly that. We have the technology now to work with nature rather than against it. 100 years ago, it made sense to build cities the way we do... now, it doesn't even really make sense to build cities any more!

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

The transporter would have made evacuation a heck of a lot simpler. Then again, people would still be looting WalMarts by beaming everything out...

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

A bit of both :-)

[primary-suspect.livejournal.com]

Does it rhyme with "crack"? ;-)

[cap-hill-latte.livejournal.com]

It will be interesting to see how many other 100 year old engineering projects fail in the next few years. e.g. the viaduct that runs along the waterfront in downtown Seattle is expected to fall down...soon. The fact that it's built on sawdust (seriously) and being eaten by zebra muscles (or something similar) isn't helping the fact that it was built poorly in the first place.