NEW ORLEANS -- It's righteously hot at the beginning of June, a time for this area to take an involuntary intake of breath, if not a full-on gasp, before getting on with finding some shade. June 1 is the official start of the hurricane season. No whistles blow, no bands play, but the news media are full of stories about the onset of "that time of year." I've just finished taking a ride on a stretch of road that brings back memories of a previous hurricane season: the so-called "twin spans" of I-10 across Lake Pontchartrain, which were shattered and scattered like the toys of an angry child during the storm surge of Hurricane Katrina, are still, just now, undergoing the finishing touches of rebuilding.Everything new is suddenly old again.
This is a notable start of hurricane season for another reason. June 1 was the Corps of Engineers' self-imposed deadline for the completion, in name if not in fact, of their renamed Hurricane Risk Reduction System (the previous name, the Hurricane Protection System, was too ironic for the Corps, given the ghastly failures of that system during Katrina). Parts of the system are yet to be completed, or started, but the Corps is proud to say, in press release and soundbite alike, that "New Orleans has never been safer." Coming from an agency which, according to two independent forensic investigative reports (ILIT from UC Berkeley and Team Louisiana from LSU), bore primary responsibility for the death and devastation in 2005 that nearly drowned this metropolitan area, that's mild reassurance indeed. The conclusions of those two reports share an interesting distinction: both were never publicly rebutted in detail and both were widely ignored by the national news media.
Read the rest of this circus of stoopid HERE.
And so it goes.
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