It was a bad hurricane. A horrible and lethal hurricane.
But it was the failure of the levees that caused most of the death and destruction, levees that didn’t magically materialize and blow into town, but levees that – according to a slew of experts along with the informed and unstoppable activists at Levees.org led by Sandy Rosenthal – failed in fifty places due to a combination of poor design, poor construction, too low a safety factor, and levees that simply weren’t high enough.
Gaye Tuchman: Look behind language that attributes calamity to weather
One step closer to presenting our case
![Corner Warrington and Mirabeau Cropped](https://levees.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Corner-Warrington-and-Mirabeau-THEN-1-300x190.jpg)
Corner of Warrington and Mirabeau in Gentilly area of New Orleans near ground zero of London Avenue Canal east side breach. Note the floodwater pushed a home (painted yellow) into the middle of the street. Photo/Steve Nelson 10-20-05
In preparation for the DC review, we are carefully citing all statements with footnotes. During this time, we have decided to share the closing concluding paragraph with our supporters…..
After the Levee Breach, She Never Spoke Again
The letter below is printed with permission from the writer, Carol Wilkinson who contacted us recently to thank us for our new “Fact Box” that we cycle on our new website.
Carol’s mother lived in the Lakeview neighborhood badly affected by the breach of the 17th Street Canal. I was struck by the final sentence of her note:
So much of the country has suffered devastation by disasters and know how it feels to lose not only a home, but family, neighborhoods and life as we knew it. I wonder how much worse they would feel if they lost their homes by an error from the government they trusted and it could have been prevented.
My mother lived in Lakeview 50 years. She had some dementia. After the levee breach, she never spoke again.