It appears the New Orleans flooding was more of a man-made disaster than a natural one.Three breaches in New Orleans floodwalls turned Hurricane Katrina from a run of the mill storm into the worst natural disaster in US history. It was the flooding -- a day after the storm left the Gulf Coast -- that caused most of the death and destruction and trapped tens of thousands of people in New Orleans for days before help arrived.
Investigaors have spent eight weeks trying to figure out why those levees and floodwalls failed. The more they look, the more it looks like they were poorly designed.
It appears the floodwalls could not stand up to a Category 3 hurricane. And their design didn't even meet the Army Corps of Engineers own standards.
Investigators also believe a canal -- hardly ever used -- focused the force of the storm in such a way as to cause one of the three levee failures.
More than 1,000 people died Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. (WashPost)
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