The water line is visible on this Lakeview neighborhood home in New Orleans
“No hurricane….no damage,” he said.
Hecker wrote to the flood victim because she had expressed surprise that the Times (in a recent article) attributed the horrific flooding on August 29, 2005 to a storm.
She had included in her letter that she had “lost a lifetime of priceless, irreplaceable art, family heirlooms, (her) health, financial and emotional stability.”
Here is Hecker’s exact reply:
I am sympathetic to your view that many bad decisions led to the damage after Hurricane Katrina. As I hope you are aware, The Times published many article on the subject after the storm and has continued to report from the city. But had there been no Hurricane Katrina, engineerrng and other decisions would not have caused the damage. So I think we are correct in attributing the cause to Katrina.
Don Hecker, Senior Editor, New York Times
Levees.org maintains that this defense is only superficially correct. To say a storm devastated New Orleans disregards what really happened on August 29, 2005 when a major American city went underwater and over 1,600 people died.
Please sign our petition to the New York Times.
Urge the paper to be more specific on what really caused the devastating flooding.
http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1625/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2959
Regardless of WHICH hurricane hit New Orleans, the levees were destined to fail, due to the faulty engineering of the Army Corps of Engineers. In addition, Katrina only hit New Orleans with the force of a Category 1-2. Beyond any doubt, those levees should have withstood Katrina, rather than collapsing. I lived less than one mile from the London Avenue Canal, and had nine feet of water in my home. I, too, lost everything, and the idea that a storm is to blame is infuriating, as it denigrates my losses down to an act of nature, therefore unpreventable, when in fact, it should have been preventable.
Dear Lynn, we agree. And blaming the New Orleans Flood on Katrina also diminishes what happened in Mississippi. They were truly hit by a hurricane.
@LeveesOrg Thanks for pointing that out-I honestly meant to make that point, as well as the damage suffered in Alabama. For that matter, the damage in Slidell, which also came as a result as Katrina, rather than ACOE.
@LynnCowlesWartberg Your comment was excellent.
I made the decision to move back to New Orleans in March of 2005. We got moved in by late May. The apartment had NEVER flooded. We moved to our house on the West Bank and finished moving in mid August.
Kids in school. Life is moving. then Katrina. Our house was protected by the armored levees on the Mississippi River. The rest of New Orleans was not so lucky.
Katrina devestated my childhood home. And my brother’s home.
I blame the corps of engineers for the flood. It was just a matter of time. The levee on the17th St canal was showing problems with bizare leakage pre storm.
The levee bomb was going to go off, the only question was what would be the factor of what storm would expose the flaws.
[…] Click here for Mr. Hecker’s letter to the flood victim. https://levees.org010/12/21/sign-petition-to-new-york-times/ […]