Wired, Blumenthal: They Knew What to Expect

According to a disturbing Wired/Reuters report, virtually everything that happened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck was predicted by experts and in computer models, so emergency management specialists wonder why authorities were so unprepared. "The scenario of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was well anticipated, predicted and drilled around," said Clare Rubin, an emergency management consultant who teaches at the Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at George Washington University.

On Thursday, President Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." But LSU engineer Joseph Suhayda and others have warned for years that defenses could fail. In 2002, the New Orleans Times Picayune published a five-part series on "The Big One," which predicted that 200,000 people or more would be unwilling or unable to heed evacuation orders and thousands would die, that people would be housed in the Superdome, that aid workers would find it difficult to gain access to the city as roads became impassable, as well as many other consequences that actually unfolded after Katrina hit.

And according to former Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal, "in early 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent since 2001 - including an 80 percent cut in funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain."