Tag Archives: new orleans
The Urban Legends of Katrina
There is a persistent popular urban legend that prior to Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers had wanted to build peripheral barriers around the city of New Orleans, but local agencies blocked the corps and forced it to build what it considered ‘inferior flood protection.’ This misinformation, promulgated by senior corps officials, and printed in […]
Despite thumbs down from academic review board, levee breach sites may get historic designation
Updated July 1, 2014. A professional academic board in Louisiana recently voted against placing the sites of two catastrophic levee breaches in New Orleans during Katrina on the National Register of Historic Places. Two-thirds of the 9-member board voted down the flood protection group Levees.org’s quest to list the breach of the 17th Street Canal […]
Stopping Katrina Myths From Becoming Household Knowledge
On Halloween Day, six years ago, I realized I had to do something about the myths that were taking root and quickly becoming established fact about the New Orleans flooding during Katrina. Nine weeks after the levee failures and deadly flooding, I applied my skills (and my 15-year old son Stanford applied his) to respond […]
