It’s long been feared that the City of New Orleans would take a direct hit from a hurricane. What made it such a danger was not the prospect of hurricane force winds directly hitting a densely populated region — that is disastrous in and of itself — but that’s not what made the New Orleans’ scenario so frightening.
No, the unthinkable component was the risk of the levees breaking. In the last few days we’ve seen the results of the levee breaches. The consequences were widely known and inevitable — if the levee at Lake Pontchartrain was breached, the city would fill with water until it was level with the lake. The pumps would be overwhelmed and break. The city would drown.
The disaster would be overwhelming, the devastation complete, the human suffering incomprehensible. These facts were all well established when the levees broke on Monday.
Last weekend, the world watched Hurricane Katrina make a beeline for New Orleans. Classified as Category 5, the hurricane’s consequences were almost unimaginable. New Orlean’s Mayor Ray Nagin made the unprecedented move of calling for a mandatory evacuation of the city. Many of us went to bed Sunday night with prayers on our lips.
The world awoke Monday morning to seemingly good news. Katrina had suddenly lost some power in the night, lessening to a strong Category 4. Better, the eye had veered slightly east. The devastation to the city and the entire Gulf Coast region was terrible, but the unthinkable had been avoided. The eye had missed. The levees had not been breached.
The media everywhere bore the same message — New Orleans had dodged a bullet.
The only problem was that was not true. Unbeknownst to many, the Industrial Canal Levee was breached during the storm Monday morning. True, this wasn’t as serious as a breach at the lake, but it wasn’t good.
Citizens who remained in the city, those too sick or too poor to evacuate, were just starting to breathe a sigh of relief and count their blessings when the water started to rise.
In some places the water rose so quickly, the people barely made it into their attics. Many rushed from the wall of water in their underwear or without shoes. On almost any television news channel, you could find someone bemoaning how “everybody knows” you should take an axe to the attic, never mentioning that the people left behind thought the worst was over. They were off guard when the wall of water hit.
By Monday night the situation was grave. Two confirmed levee breaches and not enough help. The people inside the city knew all of this. As the water continued to rise, local authorities knew, but many in the outside world did not learn of it until a woman named Karen Troyer Caraway called CNN.
Ms. Caraway is the Vice President of Tulane University Hospital. She called CNN to report that the worst had happened, the levee at 17th Street Canal was breached. She clearly and calmly conveyed this news to the world — that the water was rising an inch every five minutes. The hospital had moved the ER to the second floor. There were whitecaps on Canal Street. The state police knew. CNN confirmed the story with local authorities.
So this was it. The people were trapped, the water was rising, it would only get worse as the flood rose to the level of Lake Pontchartrain. The only hope of averting complete disaster would be to plug the breaches before the pumps became overwhelmed and stopped working.
Once that happened, there would be no way to get rid of the water. The infrastructure would fail, the city would drown. In such a situation, it was imperative that every resource in the nation be called to help. Every bus, every boat, every helicopter would be needed to evacuate the city. The entire population would need water, food, shelter. If ever there was a time for unity, generosity, and leadership, this was that time.
That time did not come. The world awoke on Tuesday to headlines still proclaiming the good news, the near miss. The cable news spoke of the breaches and the helicopter that was dropping sandbags in the attempt to plug the breach at Lake Pontchartrain. All day we saw footage of local rescue workers doing their best, plucking survivors off of the roofs one by one. All day we saw footage of the water rising.
But there were no calls for national unity, no experts explaining the state of things, no marshaling of buses and boats and helicopters. Our national leaders were absent. Our national pastimes went on. The experts who were on the news did not speak of the levee, the pumps, the flood, the emergency. They spoke of the revenue, the casinos, the oil, the markets.
The public did not learn that the levee breach meant New Orleans would drown, but we learned that our gas prices would go up. We did not learn that the breaches guaranteed a catastrophic death toll, but we heard that losing the casino tax revenue would be devastating.
The people who remained in the city were referred to as looters more often than victims. Instead of pondering why there was no emergency evacuation for those without means, the anchors pontificated about why people would be so foolish and stubborn as to stay.
And as the day lengthened and the light faded from the sky, the killing blow was dealt. The helicopter that had been dropping the sandbags was not dropping the sandbags. It never had been. The pumps failed. The infrastructure failed. New Orleans could not sustain life.
Slowly on that Tuesday night, the news started reporting what it all meant. They started bringing in experts to explain the ramifications. The world on Wednesday awoke to the bad news — New Orleans was doomed. It was so unexpected, they said, no one could have predicted it.
Now, the news anchors and newspaper articles routinely say the levees were breached on Tuesday or discovered on Tuesday or confirmed on Tuesday. This seems so reasonable then that we would hear on Wednesday morning and act on Wednesday afternoon.
No need to explain why the President was golfing on Tuesday, playing guitar with country singers on a Tuesday while New Orleans died. Which would be fine if not for the inconvenient fact that the levees were breached on Monday, discovered on Monday, and confirmed on Monday. Monday was the day the levees broke.
(cross-posted from Unbossed)
