Levees Strength Questionable

Imagine that, after all this time, the strength of the levees (the weak levees is what really caused the destruction in New Orleans) is still in question.

Swamp: I just watched Homeland Security Sec. Michael Chertoff's brief press conference at Andrews Air Force base just before he got on a plane to head to the Gulf Coast region to check in on preparations for Hurricane Gustav.

The secretary, a very nice man, said the levees are stronger than they were before Hurricane Katrina. Chertoff should doublecheck that information.

The reporting I've read indicates that the levees are not generally and absolutely stronger. True, some levees have been strengthened and rebuilt after they failed.

But there've been questions about the rebuilding efforts that reconstructed levees that failed after Katrina.

There's also been seepage under a few of the levees that has confounded the Army Corps of Engineers.

Some Lack Money to Evacuate New Orleans

Update: 90% evacuated. Wow.

Update 8-29: Bush urges evacuation. He and Cheney pass on convention.

  

Lack of money shouldn't prevent evacuation. This is what Obama means when he criticizes Bush for the "ownership society," as in you're on your own. Too poor. Too bad.
McCain uses it as a campaign stop. A recount of McCain's Katrina history.

CNN: "You gotta make as much money as you can, because when we shut down -- and we're gonna shut down -- that's it for a long while," the 26-year-old said, exhaling, a dribble of sweat rolling into his mouth.

"The thing is," he continued, "most people don't have cars to leave, don't have money for gas. Pay for a hotel for that long? I mean, you have to do whatever you have to do, and I guess I'm gonna stay and work."

Though Maspero wasn't doing half the business it usually does, customers were still coming in for $2 clam buckets. A few packs of tourists, identifiable by their slightly off-kilter walk and gigantic hot pink test tubes of booze, ambled down St. Louis Street, peeking into bars and asking, "You still open?"

Most were, up until the hour that Mayor Ray Nagin told the public to run for their lives.

"It's the storm of the century," he said.

What really happened in New Orleans.