Better Late Than Never?

We got screwed by the Army Corps of Engineers. Somebody...lots of somebodies!...were asleep at the wheel while the canal systems of New Orleans got built. The end result: 80% of New Orleans was destroyed.

The Corps is, no doubt, under lots of scrutiny these days and that may explain their more forthright attitude in repairing what they screwed up in the first place. Still, when it was reported a couple of weeks ago that the newly installed pumps on the London Avenue canal shook uncontrollably during a test run and needed to be shut down before they ripped themselves apart, it makes you wonder whether scrutiny is simply insufficient.

Now we get the glass half full news, "Floodgate pumps still vibrating, but some are usable." Luckily, it looks as if we might escape this year's hurricane season without a single significant threat to the central and western gulf states. We've still got two and a half months left in the season, but at least for the moment the storms currently on the horizon seem too distant to raise alarm.

12 September 2006; 0 comments