Katrina second anniversary brings attack on ACOE incompetence; was 1993 an omen?
Posted on August 10, 2007 in Environment, Weather by DM
During the floods here in 1993, there was speculation that the Army Corps of Engineers had purposely allowed the temporary levee at Sixth Avenue to fail, flooding the surrounding working-class neighborhood around North High School and Birdland Park because it would prevent extensive damage in the downtown area. (I’m pretty sure companies like Wells Fargo Home Mortgage - then Norwest Mortgage - and developments like RiverPoint would argue as to what one would then define as “extensive damage,” given what ultimately happened to their properties, but that is beside the point.)
My home, just a few blocks from the failed Sixth Avenue levee, was completely underwater for a week following the breach. We lost everything we owned, and we had to gut our home down to the bare studs and rebuild from the inside out.
Still, I never put much stock in the rumors about the ACOE flooding us on purpose - it was tempting to blame them, just for the sake of blaming someone, but I was frankly more comfortable just calling it a freak of nature and perhaps the result of a “wait and see” attitude toward water level control at Saylorville that backfired. Nothing as sinister, nothing so personal as the intentional destruction of my home, really made sense. It was too painful, frankly, to even contemplate.
Today, almost 15 years later, I’m about 200 words in to Time magazine’s cover story on the 2-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and the direct assult on the ACOE’s incompetence there has got me wondering all over again if we lost everything so Downtown Des Moines didn’t get it worse. This archive piece from the New York Times isn’t helping matters - it’s telling me that the ACOE did indeed employ this strategy in 1993, albeit after the July disaster here. Not so far-fetched, though, to think that the August decision in Missouri wasn’t at least considered a month earlier here in Des Moines.
(Hat tip to Craig at Metro Blogging New Orleans for the Time link.)
subscribe to my RSS feed!
Comments
One Comment to “Katrina second anniversary brings attack on ACOE incompetence; was 1993 an omen?”
Leave a Comment
-
Get Updates!
-- OR --
-
[...] that day, we’ve certainly had our share of ups, downs, sweet milestones and even natural disasters. I think what the last 16 years has taught me more than anything is that you don’t really [...]