A home near the 17th Street Canal breach site has floated off its foundation. Note dead magnolia tree at left. Photo/Steve Nelson

In the days and weeks after the levees broke in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, many members of Congress blamed the flood victims for their predicament. One Congressman proposed punishment for those who did not evacuate.

This behavior sprung from the wrong-headed belief that the victims knew this sort of flooding disaster could happen and thus were undeserving of help.

MYTH BUSTER #7 – Even the most insistent appeals from public officials to south Louisiana residents to evacuate did not warn that the levees could break.

This fact was reiterated at the Society of Professional Journalists’ recent annual convention in New Orleans. Author and award-winning reporter Mark Schleifstein and I spoke to 40 plus media representatives about the catastrophic failure of the Army Corps of Engineers’ levee system in 2005.

During his talk, Mr. Schleifstein referenced a 5-part series he wrote in 2002 called “Washing Away.” The series, based on modeling projections by the LSU Hurricane Center, predicted massive flooding of New Orleans in a direct hit from a powerful hurricane.

“But what we didn’t know,” Schleifstein said, “was that the levees could actually breach and fail. We knew the levees could get over-topped by storm surge, but we never imagined what we saw during Katrina.”

Click here for the full Huffington Post article.