FredCDobbs

[coolrob1955]

Dear Mr. Fred

 

Thank you for asking.

Yes I did survive Hurricane Katrina (although even the survivors have had their lives drastically changed by this event in lots of ways).

I live on the Metairie side of the 17th Street canal, in a second floor apartment so my personal losses were minimal. There was several feet of water in the street and most of the homes in the area were flooded. On the east side of the canal which is New Orleans proper - it was the east side levee that broke - this was the worst affected area (the canal is on the border of Orleans and Jefferson parishes) I was one of the luckier ones.

 

In my opinion, for what its worth, the fact of the levee breaking was not entirely the reason for the flooding, the water level had already topped the levee. However had the levee not collapsed and the pumping station had been functioning they would have pumped out the water in a couple of days instead of weeks.

 

New Orleans cannot be reasonably protected from events like this, and we who live here damn well know it despite assurances from the Mayor, the Governor, the President, or anybody else. The levees can never be high enough.

Anyone who has visited New Orleans will notice that it is entirely surrounded by water, the Mississippi river, Lake Pontchatrain, the Gulf of Mexico, and the rest is SWAMP. New Orleans is built on drained swampland and drained swampland sinks and continues to sink. If you dig a hole around here it will fill with water, nobody has a basement.

 

Despite hurricane Katrina and the damage and loss of life, New Orleans was very lucky this time. Hurricane Katrina was a near MISS. The Louisiana/Mississippi border region and the Mississippi Gulf coast took the full force of the hurricane. Should New Orleans be hit directly by a category 5 hurricane, what you saw from hurricane Katrine will be child's play. New Orleans is a bigger disaster waiting to happen. Unfortunately, unlike Amsterdam or Venice, we have not learned to peacefully coexist with our water, we try to contain it, and there are times when it wont be contained.

 

Thank for listening to me rave, I'll bet you're sorry you asked.

 

Regards

[FredCDobbs]

Thanks for the information.

 

I lived there in the '60s.

 

Here is a map of the 1849 flood:

 

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/new_orleans_1849.jpg

[coolrob1955]

Dear Fred

 

Thanks for the map. I live in the area called 'CYPRESS SWAMP' on the map.

 

Anybody else reading this may wonder what this all has to do with classic movies. Stick around, I'm sure some movie production company somewhere is working on it.

 

Regards

[FredCDobbs]

"Anybody else reading this may wonder what this all has to do with classic movies."

 

Well... uhh... I used to go to the Royal Art theater in the French Quarter in the early '60s, where I saw a lot of foreign films, mainly Italian films. I saw "La Dolce Vita" there and "La Strada." I lived in an apartment on Bourbon St. I was a cool dude in those days.

[FredCDobbs]

I think I heard somewhere that there was an Imax camera crew there filming the flood, so maybe they'll have a documentary finished about it later.

[MattHelm]

I had a home that had to be condemned from hurricane Jeanne in 2004. I had to evacuate twice that year. In between the hurricanes that I had to evacuate my home, I had to leave the place I had sought refuge, at my brother's house, because hurricane Ivan was in its path. In 2005 when Wilma hit, I had to move again.