'Back Door' Flooding Of New Orleans: An Unnatural Disaster

"New Orleans has not had river water in its streets for more than a century. But the river is not the only threat to the cityâ€"and this was already well known even before Hurricane Katrina made it painfully clear at the end of August.

...Experts on hurricanes and on New Orleans say that no one should have been surprised by the impact of Katrina on the city... Computer models constructed by workers at the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center predicted that a storm of Katrina's strength would produce "back door" flooding from Lake Pontchartrain and the canals. In 2002 a prescient series of articles by John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein, published in The New Orleans Times-Picayune, brought the results of those simulations to public attention.

...Given the century-long history of "back door" flooding in New Orleans, the Corps of Engineers and other flood-control agencies may well be criticized for devoting too much energy to the Mississippi River while neglecting the hurricane hazard. But in fact the river remains the greatest force of nature in the region. Before Katrina, the worst disaster in Louisianaâ€"and one of the worst in the nation's historyâ€"was the Mississippi flood of 1927, in which nearly a million people were forced from their homes. In that case the city of New Orleans was sparedâ€"but only by dynamiting a levee downstream, wiping out much of Plaquemines Parish."