ruveyn wrote:
Katrina was worse.
1. It was a Cat. 4 hurricane and Sandy was Cat 1.
2. N.O. is essentially a third world enclave. The locals were not intellectually or economically prepared to deal with it.
Compare the earthquake casualties of the U.S and Haiti. When a Richter 6 earthquake hits the U.S. a few hundred (at most) die. When it hits Haiti it is thousands and tens of thousands. The locals in Haiti are just not well organized.
ruveyn
1. Katrina missed us, it crossed the mouth of the Mississippi, from southwest to northwest, it quickly dropped to a 1.
2. The damage from a hurricane comes from the right front, where wind blows water into the shore. That hit the Mississippi Coast, and drove a flood surge eleven miles inland. It did flow into the lake above us, sea level rose ten foot.
No problem, our levees are designed to withstand seventeen foot.
The problem was not from the people who stayed behind, it was because the Corp of Engineers, The Levee Board, State, and the local Water and Sewer, National Engineering Companies, and Contractors, all took payoffs and built way below specs.
It was not local black crackheads.
After all of these people signed off on a large project, the levee along the lake, some doubting citizen went out with a pole, and discovered that the top of the levee was not the seventeen foot it was supposed to be, it was thirteen foot above sea level.
It seems National Government, Corp of Engineers, did not know the differance between thirteen and seventeen. We do, so who is uneducated.
The job was done and paid for, and they had to go back and raise miles another four foot.
A drainage canal that ran into the city, the New Orleans Jefferson Parish line, the 17th Street Canal, was leveed, and six foot deep, draining into a six foot lake. To offset the loss of having to cover the Fraud of the first job, another contract was done, to get paid to improve drainage in the 17th Street Canal, which is several miles long into the city, and got dredged another nine foot, of good clay, making it fourteen foot deep, and it still drained into a six foot deep lake. The would have gone deeper, but they hit peat.
The spoils from this job were deposited on the thirteen foot levee.
The 17th Street Canal is leveed, to withstand a seventeen foot storm surge.
It was built sometime back, another Corp of Engineers job, they do them all. The specs called for a solid wall of 40' sheet pilings. So it should have been 23' below the bottom of the canal.
At ten foot the water pressure flowed through the peat, under the levee, lifted it, it cracked, and opened like double doors.
The sheet pilings were found to be twenty foot, although they had been inspected by the Corp of Engineers, The State Levee Board, The Water and Sewer Board, and the Contractor, and the hired Independant Inspector.
The area, The Lakefront, is one of the best neighborhoods, with the lake along the north side, the Yacht Harbor, Southern Yacht Club, the oldest in the country, and City Park, which is about three or four times Central Park in New York. It is filled with 300 year old oaks, that were planted, formal gardens, lagoons with very old Koi, and the better neighborhood continues, stately three story homes. and prices most cannot afford.
Closer to downtown is the more affordable housing, and those were the people who could walk out to the higher land along the river, while the Lakefront was cut off by ten foot of water.
That is where people died, almost all of the deaths were of thirst and heat, in the second floor or attic of a house worth a quarter million up. Most were white women, widows, over seventy. They waited for rescue, that never came.
Meanwhile the Coast Guard with manned machine guns were turning back boats that came to rescue friends and family under threat of death, and they blocked the whole Lakefront.
Four fifths of the earth is water, and in south Lousiana it shows, we have lots of boats, we have disasters, and we turn out to save our own.
This is the first time anyone stopped us. 1570 died, almost all would have lived.
People tried to come in by the Interstate, towing boats, they were turned back by National Guard, with M-16s and fixed bayonets.
Then all the records of Levee Building were sealed for fifty years by a Federal Judge, because it might embarass some very import people.
So a series of Frauds, lead to a coverup, and then a coverup of a coverup.
We thought we had the best levees money could buy, trusted them, and found out we have the best Corp of Engineers that money can buy. Everyone else too, but they are the lead agency. They are part of The Government of The United States.
We do know hurricanes, coming from the south, both banks of the Mississippi Levee are between us and the storm surge. They hold back 90 foot, for months. In the French Quarter you can watch ships on the river, that are eighty foot above street level go by.
The storm we fear, comes from Key West, and heads right up the mouth of the river, pushing a storm surge along the Mississippi Coast, that could build to twenty five foot, with a Cat 3. It will run right over the levees, flood everything to Baton Rouge, with twenty foot waves on top and hundred mile an hour winds.
Katrina was not much, it passed a hundred miles away, heading northeast, we were on the backside, the leading edge hit Mississippi, the wind moving in a circle over land soon slows, and our back left quarter blew down some weak trees, some shingles off of roofs, it was minor damage.
All of the damage came from levees failing at ten foot rise in sea level. They cost billions, and we were told they were as strong as the river levees.
Storms blow through in a day. then they are gone. Top winds in New Orleans were about 60 mph. For once living in a hole pays off, it blows above us.
Almost all damage was from the flood, and it was caused by Contractor Fraud, that involved the Government of the United States. It is why they run for office. The Corp of Engineers is not taking bribes that Congress does not get a cut.
People died to coverup their crime, and Felony Fraud that leads to 1570 deaths is a crime.
Then we are discounted as black looters.
New Orleans was several hundred years old before the United States existed, after the French Revolution, the surviving Royals came here. We built a house for Napoleon when he had that British problem. We are known as the Most European City in America. People still speak French at table.
We have old Universities, Museums, and have hosted many great painters, writers, and have a deep and rich culture.
So some east coast Eurostanis put out a press release that it was all our fault for being dumb Blacks.
Andy Jackson might have shown up with forty men, but it was the people of New Orleans that turned the British advance into a rout. We were fighting for France. Also the Free People of Color joined in, New Orleans had a lot.
The Americans came and murdered them, and sold their children into slavery.
They also murdered the Native Americans who we had traded with for hundreds of years, and like most people, had some very well respected families of wealth and knowledge.
Most of our problems come from Eurostani trash with guns, and their East Coast Government. Nothing changes. Lying, stealing, murder, for money.
Now you are robbing each other, we will still be here when you make life unlivable, as there is nothing left to steal, and you know no other way. We have been rich several times, we did not steal it. We will do it again.
The reason we have so many blacks is they came here to get away from you. We do not have a color line, we blend over the spectrum.
All the looting was done when there was no one but First Responders from America in town, they looted every house. We are still missing 300 Police who left town in a stolen Cadillac with a trunk load of wet money and gold.
That, the United States Government ignors.
You are another Rome, who has made a wasteland of paradise.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls,
08 Nov 2012, 2:29 pm
i really don't think it's productive in any way to compare tragedies - why do it? 
