Misconceptions distort view of Katrina
FOR THE FIRST few weeks after the storm, there seemed to be only one conclusion to draw: New Orleans, situated near the Gulf Coast in a hollow of land between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, had represented man's peculiar desire to corral the forces of nature. Hurricane Katrina was nature's answer that she will not be tamed.
As an editorial writer for The Times-Picayune, my first composition post-Katrina blasted Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert for suggesting that New Orleans ought not be rebuilt. But despite my righteous anger, I'll confess: I was more upset by when Hastert spoke than by what he said.
Many New Orleanians were still stranded on their rooftops and were trying frantically to get the attention of US Coast Guard helicopter pilots. Tens of thousands of people were still trapped inside the fetid confines of the Louisiana Superdome. And in the nearby Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, people were dying -- those who couldn't stand the heat or couldn't survive without their prescriptions. Their bodies lay festering as the living waited for transportation.
At a time when all Americans should have been focused on the physical and emotional needs of the hurricane's victims, it was appalling that the highest-ranking officer in the House of Representatives was, in effect, criticizing the victims for living where they did. ``How dare they?" I wrote in that editorial, referring not only to Hastert, but to everybody who thought like him and had been heartless enough to voice such an opinion. But as a homeowner who knew even without seeing it that my home had been destroyed, I feared that maybe they had a point. Hadn't Hurricane Katrina proved the folly of New Orleans?
No. What it proved was the shocking incompetence of the US Army Corps of Engineers, which admitted in a June 1 report that the flood protection system it had built around the New Orleans area was ``a system in name only." Here's a brief summary of the 6,615-page report the corps released that day: New Orleanians were lied to.
We were told we would be protected if a hurricane hit us. Hurricane Katrina missed New Orleans, and even so, people here drowned in their homes. That's not Mayor Ray Nagin's fault. That's not Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's fault. Armchair executives around the country tried to make Hurricane Katrina a story about our leaders' failure to get every living soul out of the city in advance of the storm. But if the Corps of Engineers had not done such shoddy work, who knows if anybody would have died?
Hurricane Katrina is not the story of Nagin failing to commandeer a few dozen school buses to ride people out of town. It's the story of people who went to school, were awarded degrees in engineering, and then embarrassed themselves on the job. Katrina is also a story that highlights the insanity of our bring-home-the-bacon method of funding the nation's public works projects. Our senators and representatives are not rewarded for supporting projects that will keep the greatest number of Americans safe. Instead, they win accolades for projects that will bring the most money to their districts and states.
Consider Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who fought for and won a $223 million allocation for a bridge that would spare 50 Alaskans the indignity of riding a ferry. He looked foolish when he threatened on the Senate floor to resign if his colleagues killed his pet project and used the money to benefit New Orleanians. But what does he care how he looks to the rest of America? Though hardly anybody lives in Alaska, Stevens is as committed to bringing money there as his colleagues are to bringing money to their states.
The Corps of Engineers is correct to point out that money for projects such as New Orleans' hurricane protection system should not be doled out in dribs and drabs and should not be subject to the whims of politicians, as such projects often are. Even so, one of the first rules of engineering is what you build must last. People died in New Orleans because what the corps built fell apart.
One shouldn't have to be from New Orleans to find that alarming. Whether the project is a levee, a dam, a highway bridge, or a tunnel, we should all be able to trust that what our engineers put together won't fall apart and kill us. We should be able to feel as confident as people in the Netherlands must feel. Sixty percent of the Dutch live below sea level, but officials there have made flood protection the national priority. They don't spare any expense to keep their people safe. America is a richer nation. So why do we?
Jarvis DeBerry is an editorial writer and columnist for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. 
