On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, notably the low-income Lower Ninth Ward, killing almost 1,400 people. Levees and floodwalls primarily built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to hold back the storm surge. Scientists and engineers across Louisiana had predicted in 2001 that storm surge would swell and overwhelm the city's inadequate defenses and recommended improvements that governments took almost no action to implement. Media showed survivors stranded on overpasses and crowded into the Superdome under putrid conditions. Louisiana later issued a Coastal Master Plan that included upgraded defenses around the city and has been updated since.
The levees and floodwalls, primarily built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, failed to hold back the hurricane's storm surge of seawater. Just a few days after the storm raged, President George W. Bush said, I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees, as media outlets showed survivors stranded on highway overpasses or stuffed into the city's Superdome in putrid conditions.
But in 2001, just four years before the hurricane, scientists and engineers across Louisiana had predicted exactly what would unfold. They had shown how storm surge would swell and overwhelm the city's inadequate defenses. I was with these scientists at the time and explained their predictions in a Scientific American article, but governments took almost no action on the improvements the scientists recommended. In true American fashion, the U.S. ignored a solvable problem until disaster struck.
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