3/15/07: Katrina

March 15, 2007

It’s hard to argue that Hurricane Katrina was not the worst natural disaster in the history of the country; but can we also argue that it may have been the worst humanitarian disaster as well?
There were projections for a week that said it would head towards the Gulf Coast, they were ignored. There was a personal call from the director of the National Hurricane Service to the Mayor of New Orleans, partially shrugged off. There were even mandatory evacuations for much of the area, and much of it was ignored.
But, before all of this, there were levees. Levees that were built to withstand a category three hurricane, not the full category five chance. In 1927, a hurricane ripped through the city destroying much it, not from wind, but from the water that surrounds eighty percent of the city. The Mississippi River is to the east, Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Lake Pontchatrain to the north.
Obviously, building the city in a place surrounded by this much water is a chance, but the economic opportunity is endless. With the money opportunities comes jobs as well. That also means different economic classes, the wealthy owners and poor workers. And, in the 1920’s in the south, that meant rich whites and poor blacks. During the 1927 storm it was discovered that the wealthy homes in the city would be flooded if some of the levees were not blown up. So, the same army engineers who built them blew them up. This is well documented and very much a fact.
This saved the wealthy homes, but destroyed the poor ones. The overflow of water from the rich homes came right into the lower income communities. The outcome of the hurricane in 2005 has some awfully close coincidences.
From these coincidences some conclusions were made that someone with the power made the call to do the same again in 2005. Several people in the lower communities of New Orleans said that they heard loud explosions before the wall of water entered the neighborhood. Some say they felt an echo after the boom and thought the “world was ending.” There are some assumptions that the levees had cracks in them and then were blown.
Spike Lee’s 2006 documentary “When the Levees Broke,” brought these private feelings public. On August 29, 2006, one year after the storm hit and the debut night of Lee’s film, Bill O’Reilly discussed this conspiracy on his show. Earl Ofari Hutchinson, introduced on the show as an emerging black GOP analyst, joined in on the denouncing of not really the thought that this could take place, but more on the character of Spike Lee.
Hutchinson said that Lee had previously said, "It's not too far-fetched to think that look, we've got a bunch of poor black people here, we've got to save these other neighborhoods, what we got to do, dump this in this ward. Boom. I believe it." O’Reilly downplayed this theory calling those who believe this as “nut cases.” They both said Lee had no proof or facts, when all reality is there are past incidents of this and they themselves have no facts in front of them displaying that. The overall issue here is, FOX News figured that if they got a fellow African American to talk bad about Spike Lee, it would defend their point and people would agree, whether they even looked at Hutchinson’s credibility.
The USA Today released an article from NewsMax.com well after it was published; in fact it was on NewsMax only a month and 12 days after the storm. The story proclaimed Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan stating that the New Orleans levees had in fact been blown up. Farrakhan told his followers that the levees may have been deliberately blown up to kill the city’s black population.
From a press conference in Charlotte, North Carolina on September 12, 2005 Farrakhan detailed his conspiracy theory. "I heard from a very reliable source who saw a 25 foot deep crater under the levee breach," Farrakhan explained. "It may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry."
Farrakhan didn't say who he thought was behind the plot to blow up New Orleans' levees. The Muslim minister also blasted both FEMA and the Red Cross, saying their response to Katrina victims after the levees were blown up was inadequate.
A year later in the neutral USA Today, ex-FEMA leader and FEMA leader at the time of the hurricane, Michael Brown, later admitted in front of Congress, that if the levees had been an act of terrorism; than the United States government would have acted much quicker. So maybe the theory of this being purposely blown up is false or it maybe true, being that if it was a terrorist the American government can’t find them.
In an article from the LA Weekly titled, “Baghdad on the Bayou” which was released on September 9, 2005; told of a story of an older man fleeing from the flood. The man lived in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans for 55 years. He said that after the storm they blew up the levees. When asked who they were, he simply replied the money people, the big money people. Again, he was asked why? He shrugged in disbelief but answered, “They had to get the poor people out to make space. They have been coming into our neighborhoods before looking at are area. Now they got their space.”
"We survived the storm," Robert went on. "We survived the wind and the rain. After the storm passed, the water started rising, and all you heard was 'Boom!' “The explosions, he said, were the levees blowing.” Ask any of these people. The hurricane wasn't that bad, but the opportunity came up."
In conclusion, this seems like something that can never be solved. If a high official someday comes out and admits to all of this and has all the documents, he will be shunned and then denounced as some freak. I can conclude that since this has happened in the past, and given the property value, this is not so far fetched.
Whatever the case, the poor people of New Orleans have all suffered. They not only lost their city, but they found out they were just not important or any value to the federal government. In a day and age when we can drop food and supplies in Sri Lanka two days after a tsunami, but can not do the same within our own country is insane. The defense that the slow response had was they simply could not get in the city, well how did we all watch on television live from the city, the horrid treatment of “Americans.”