Katrina and NOLA

[JBC]

Admittedly, I live on the Mississippi coast and may be bias on this topic.

Why does NOLA get so much press coverage concerning Katrina, when in actuality it was the levees and not the hurricane that flooded the city. We evacuated the coast early Sunday morning driving up to stay with relatives. Needless to say, we were glued to TWC late that afternoon throughout the next day. Cantore was in Gulfport and Morrow was on the northshore above NOLA reporting. Morrow was reporting only light weather conditions from the storm. Cantore, on the other hand, was in real danger that night, even losing TWC weather van. The next morning there were several reports on TWC saying that NOLA dodged a bullet by being on the west side of the hurricane, escaping the worse. One or two days later the levees broke and flooding began. So, it was the levees being breech and not necessarily Katrina that caused the NOLA catastrophe. 

The flooding in NOLA was a major disaster event, but should it be blame completely on Katrina. If the levees did their jobs, NOLA would have been a non-factor in Katrina's history. 

Sorry for the rant.

[phw115wvwx]

The simple answer is the death toll.  So many more people died in New Orleans compared to Mississippi.  Katrina did cause the storm surge though, but the levees couldn't withstand the surge from a once powerful Category 5 hurricane.  The massive size it became helped to even increase the amount of surge that went ashore.  The levees were only built to withstand the surge that came from normal Category 3 hurricanes.  New Orleans did dodge the worst of it in terms of winds, but the fact that it's below sea level certainly made it much worse when the levees failed.  Let it be known that the NHC forecast for Katrina 3 days out was virtually perfect in terms of landfall location, a fact very few people realized until after the storm.  A lot of people sadly didn't heed the warnings and weren't prepared, and so many more people were killed in New Orleans compared to Mississippi as a result.   It's hard to believe it's already been 5 years!  I'm glad you were able to survive the tragedy.

[TWCToday]

Media loves disaster and sorrow. Those people with destroyed houses weren't as interesting as rioting, looting, people acting like animals and chopper shots of a city underwater. Throw in a few shots of signs saying "Help Us", twist it so that its the governments complete fault and you got a primetime event

Not saying there weren't people in desperate need but the media was and still is selective about what they want to cover for this event.

[Pop Light Brown]

You also have to realize that New Orleans has much more importance to the country than the Mississippi Gulf Coast in terms of culture, food, sights and so forth.