Hurricane Katrina – New Orleans
"Cradled in a wide southern meander of the Mississippi River just north of the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans is surrounded by Lake Pontchartrain to the north, Lake Borgne to the east, and lakes Cataouatche and Salvador to the south. This ring of freshwater is also surrounded by hundreds of square miles of wetlands and the Gulf of Mexico. To make matters worse, most of the city is below sea level."
"New Orleans was fast becoming the most important port in the nation—feeding commodities up the Mississippi to all of the Midwest and serving as an important base for the burgeoning oil and gas industry."
"Today New Orleans rests within a bowl formed by 16 ft (4.9 m) tall levees, locks, floodgates, and seawalls, the edge of the bowl extending for hundreds of miles. It is bisected from west to east by the Mississippi River, which is also contained within massive engineered embankments. Water flows through and all around the city while its residents go about their daily routines. A system of levees forming a ring around the northern half of the city to protect it from surging waters in Lake Pontchartrain is set to be completed within the next decade. Construction of a similar system around the southern half of the city will probably take several years longer than that."
"Are the protective barriers high enough?"
Navigated from: http://www.marine.unc.edu/C_CATS/adcirc/adcirc.htm
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有时人算还是不如天算.
但, 有时人算还不一定是一点价值都没有的.
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill的ADCIRC模式之前已经估计到这场灾难的严重性, 但有关当局却迟迟不作出决策来减低损失.
不过有些人就是这样的, 不听, 不听, 不听劝告. 就等到事情真的发生了才说: "Opps… sorry!"