On incompetence and disasters...

[Nev]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_London

I'd never heard of this. In 1666, a fire burned down pretty much all of London. Shortly after it began, the Lord Mayor was informed about it, and refused to do anything about it, declaring that "a woman might piss it out", obviously not believing that it was capable of becoming a large-scale tragedy.

Sound familiar to anyone?

[SineSwiper]

Well, when you build entire cities out of wood, yeah, shit like this happens.

[Nev]

It wasn't the circumstances of the fire itself I was trying to point out, just the similarity between tremendous damage and loss of life and an apathetic, incompetent government in charge of the situation. (Not meant to include Ray Nagin or New Orleans city government.)

[SineSwiper]

Really, New Orleans was doomed from its inception. From the first year that the city was built, they have been trying to prevent the city from flooding for centuries. And it has flooded numberous times. While NO's flood is tragic, it is by all accounts not unique or unpredictable.

PBS's Now had a great episode on why this diaster happened. NO has lost about 80% of its swampland because of the levies that keep the Mississippi from depositing its silt. The Mississippi River MADE the swampland from the silt that it grabs from all along its path, and it needs to continue to flow to the swampland to ensure that it continues to exist. And the swampland is a required buffer to prevent any high-class hurricanes from damaging the city itself.

A plan was put in place to filter the water that the Mississippi carries underground, so that it would still get deposited to the swampland. It was working, though it required a lot of funding to get those other pipelines built. However, the Bush administration cut funding by 90% to that plan. It's not to say that it would have been built in time prevent Katrina, but three years worth of growth on the swampland may have helped out a little. However, the flood that has happened now will cause the administration to reconsider that plan.