We’re rolling new maps for our Self-Guided Levee Breach Disaster Bike Tour.
There’s an interactive detailed Google Map!
Click on the icons, and see a detailed story about each site.
And there’s also a downloadable printable PDF map!
The self-guided tour allows anyone, at any time, an opportunity to view two major breach sites and the adjacent neighborhoods nearly destroyed by the worst civil engineering disaster in US history. The tour follows marked bike routes.
Der Untergang der Titanic
April 15 is the 110th anniversary of the Titanic disaster.
Fifteen hundred plus souls were lost on that day due primarily to human arrogance.
The captain was attempting to complete the maiden journey in record time, despite reports of icebergs. And there were too few lifeboats.
One hundred and ten years later, we still talk about the disaster that changed maritime laws as we know them. No longer are ships allowed to turn off their radios. No longer are ships required to provide lifeboats only for the wealthy. No longer does breaking speed records matter more than lives.
After the levee failures in New Orleans in 2005, Congress attached levee safety legislation to the Water Resources Development Act. Called in short, the National Levee Safety Act of 2007, the legislation ordered the Secretary of the Army to administer reforms and new programs including the creation of a:
1. national data base of federal and non-federal levees,
2. first-ever nationwide levee safety program,
3. levee safety inspection tool using global positioning technology,
4. sixteen member levee safety committee, and
5. program to inform the public of the risks of living near levees.
These new initiatives were to be completed from 2008 through 2013. Section 9006 of the legislation authorized the appropriation to the Secretary of $20 million for each year.
