Unhappy Anniversary

Still Disconnected



From Campaign for America's Future. Via Phydeaux Speaks.

See also: When the Saints Go Marching In.
As Bill notes below, today marks two years since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and caused extraordinary damage, including the failed levees that devastated NOLA. Last Thursday, the amazing Greg Palast wrote a piece for BuzzFlash in which Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, charges that federal government helicopters "flew over the 17th Street Canal and took video of the breech" in the levees at 2pm Monday afternoon—but withheld the crucial information from the state Emergency Operations Center.

Question: "So the White House wouldn't tell you the levees had breeched?"

Dr. Van Heerden: "They didn't tell anybody."

Question: "And you're at the Emergency Center."

Dr. Van Heerden: "I mean nobody knew. The Corps of Engineers knew. FEMA knew. None of us knew."

…And what was the effect of the White House's self-serving delay?

I spoke with van Heerden in his university office. The computer model of the hurricane flashed quietly as I waited for him to answer. Then he said, "Fifteen hundred people drowned. That's the bottom line."

Following is a clip from Palast's special report: Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans.


[Palast link via Jess Wundrun.]