When the Levees Break

So today my group took an extended lunch break and went on a tour of the levees which are located adjacent to the 9th Ward.  The 9th Ward was one of the areas that received some of the most coverage during Katrina because it was one of the hardest places hit and it is one of the poorest locations.  First our site supervisor, Travis, took us to Mr. Go which is a manmade resevoir that was intended to protect the St. Bernard's Parish from flooding.  Instead it was easily breached and then it acted as a barrier that kept the water in and caused a lot of chaos days after the hurricane was over.  We ate lunch overlooking Mr. Go but just on the other side the community was completely destroyed, only concrete slabs remained where houses used to be.  After eating lunch we drove down the street into the 9th Ward and took a look at the levees.  This was my second levee experience but it was still amazing to me how small these levees were. How could anyone in their right mind believe that these would actually prevent flooding? Even more shocking was the fact that instead of making improvements to the levees, whoever fixed them repaired them in the exact same way they were originally.  No improvements were made to the levees despite the fact that they virtually did nothing the first time.  For anyone interested in the Katrina catastrophe, seeing the levees in real life is a moving experience.  You hear about these things on the news but to see how small they are makes you wonder who thought that they were a good idea in the first place.  The point is that there is still much to be done and despite a decline in news coverage the problems in New Orleans have not gone away.