After Gustav New Orleans remains 'Extremely Vulnerable'

NVDL: I don't believe people appreciate the scope of damage Gustav has done,or the implications. There are the implications to the local cities and towns, the wetlands - and massive infrastructure damage to electric grids over a wide area. 20% of US oil production wiped out for a month. That's massive.

Time: "I hope nobody gets a false sense of security." The barrier islands that once protected New Orleans have eroded, and most of the city's nearby marshes are gone. Every hour, Louisiana loses more than a football field's worth of the wetlands that once provided natural hurricane protection.

The lesson of Gustav, in other words, is that the lessons of Katrina still apply. "Coastal restoration is one of those things politicians say, like 'I owe it all to my lovely wife,'" says Tulane law professor Oliver Houck, who has been warning about land losses for decades.

"Meanwhile, we keep building up the coast, no matter how many times we get hit in the chin. At some point the American public is going to stop paying for chin surgery."

clipped from www.time.com Gustav pushed water over the Industrial Canal flood wall, but the levees withstood the surge. The evacuation of 2 million residents was less a triumph of coordination than a reaction to disaster; nothing says "Get out of Dodge" like the fresh memory of a city under water. It's even more jarring to watch Army Corps of Engineers officials hailing their hurricane defenses just three years after their tragic errors and warped priorities drowned New Orleans. The sad truth is that the Big Easy--while slightly less vulnerable than it was before Katrina--is still extremely vulnerable. And eventually the region will face the Big One, a storm far larger than Gustav or Katrina.