Four days after a federal judge in New Orleans determined our Army Corps of Engineers’ actions “resulted in a catastrophic loss of human life and property in unprecedented proportions,” a New York Times article continues to use harmful Katrina shorthand.
That is, a reporter for the newspaper with the third highest circulation in the country said Katrina “wrought sudden devastation” in 2005 to the New Orleans region.
After all the folks there and displaced have endured, the evacuation, the loss, the relocation……it is simply cruel to say Katrina, a natural event was the cause.
Saying Katrina wrought devastation to New Orleans is like saying traffic wrought devastation to the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis.
Both Katrina and the traffic revealed structural flaws. Both exposed blatant civil engineering mistakes.
And according to federal Judge Stanwood Duval, those mistakes throughout New Orleans were primarily man-made, and were committed by our Army Corps.
Thanks for pushing for a halt to the use of the term “Katrina flood” as the disaster’s name. But,you didn’t go far enough. The federal government caused the horror. You must give people a replacement term. You have my permission to use my term, which is “The Federal Flood”. I have and always will refer to the flooding as the “Federal Flood”. I hope everyone else will too.