I think people knew that a disaster was coming, they just didn’t care enough to do anything about it. Every politician that denies climate change knows exactly what the reality is, they’re just not interested in doing anything to avert to impending catastrophe
Bludworth : You have to realize is that we're just a mouse that a cat has by the tail, every single move we make from the mundane to the monumental, the red light that we stop at or run, the people we have sex with or want with us, the airplanes that we ride or walk out of, it's all part of Death's sadistic design. Leading to the grave.
Many people don’t realize that Katrina wasn’t even a direct hit to New Orleans it hit Mississippi the hardest, but New Orleans got so much flooding, and few evacuated.
In terms of wind and the center it wasn’t a directly hit but Katrina was the worst case scenario path in terms of surge for New Orleans. It making landfall just south and east of New Orleans put the right front quadrant in the position to not only push surge up the Mississippi, MRGO, Lake Borgne and the Intracoastal Waterway(The Funnel/Industrial Canal) but the northerly winds on the west side of the eye pushed surge from Lake Pontchartrain into the levees
@@matthewbelczyk5264 I never knew this to I read the op’s and your comment. I was way to young to understand and only recently became interested in weather lol
@@EvilNeuro Biloxi/Gulfport and the town just west of there practically got flattened. It’s frustrating that no attention was given to MS. My uncle lived an hour inland, and they were right in the path. People kept asking why all the trees were leaning, and we got damage all the way up to north MS.
This episode would have aired between October of 2004 to July of 2005, because Hurricane Ivan hit on September of 2004 and Katrina hit on late August of 2005.
I remember watching this exact episode only 3 or 4 days before Katrina hit. Idk if it was a rerun or the original airing, but I remember thinking about it the whole time Katrina was building up because she had just passed Florida when I saw it.
I was stationed at the Navy Reserve HQ in NOLA in 2000. Each year the entire command was given a Hurricane preparation brief. The worst case scenario was presented as a hurricane landing just EAST of NOLA (not the direct hit everyone worries about) with the counterclockwise winds pushing Lake Pontchartrain into the city, which is exactly what happened.
@@tinkandtory not particularly, they both lay on a coastal plain, the difference is the overall geography of the state, one laying at the foothills of the appalachians causing a higher elevation further inland preventing the hurricane from travelling further compared to the overall topographic flatness of Louisiana.
Real Life Lore has a good video on this, and how up until the last century, New Orleans was actually the BEST place to build a city. It sits at the mouth of the Mississippi River, which made it a vital center for trade and commerce for much of the United States. The advent of rail, highways, and then air travel reduced its influence in the modern era.
@@softpiglet I went to NOLA in 2004 and stood on the levee separating the river from the below-sea level Black neighborhoods, and thought, these folks be dead meat someday
@@softpiglet why not build a city literally anywhere else along the river? like, based purely on what you mentioned that still leaves plenty of room not to be cucked by nature and live in a soon-to-be lake
@@KoloXD bc a city that sits at the mouth of the river controls all the trade that flows into and out of it. the mouth that new orleans sits on (mississippi), was vital to basically half of the country at that time.
I'm not a civil engineer or anything, but the first time I drove uphill out of a New Orleans neighborhood to the ocean, I got chills. Not only did it seem like a terrible idea, but it felt like stepping into an impossible M. C. Escher lithograph.
"I'm an idiot. Anyway" Reminds me of "Oh no! Anyway" haha no big deal, water mostly all looks the same and it's hard to tell what shape it is the bigger it gets.
A National Geographic documentary predicted this way back in the 90's. Not that one needs a documentary to understand that what is below the waterline will become under the waterline with sufficient actions by nature.
The problems with New Orleans has not been a secret. And 22' storm surges are definitely possible. I am wondering why the State and Local Governments weren't better prepared.
@@joepromedio The city of New Orleans tried for almost 20 years to get "permission" to rebuild their levees, but the enviro-whack jobs kept filing lawsuits to prevent them from doing so. PBS is nothing more than another leftist outfit, lovingly named "Politcal Bullsh!te System.
It wasn't only PBS that made this prediction. My friend who lived in New Orleans told me about this whole scenario several years before Hurricane Katrina. As far as I can tell, this possibility was common knowledge in New Orleans prior to Katrina, at least among people who were paying attention.
@@tehpurplepills I believe that the levee system has been improved since Katrina, so the people in charge of the levees have probably learned a lesson. As for the general population of New Orleans, I'm not sure what lesson they should learn, unless it's to evacuate next time. I don't think we can expect that the entire population of the city will abandon New Orleans and move elsewhere.
@@tehpurplepillstf you mean? Is a literal citys worth of folks supposed to just uo and leave? To where? I guess the lesson is to not have been born there
@@leaffinite2001oh yeah life is a videogame and lets you hand pick your parents and where to grow up in lmao The only way to not be born there is to move elsewhere.
@@LorikQuinnI think they were being facetious. Sorta like that joke from The Emperor’s New Groove (bear with me) where Yzma says to a peasant, something along the lines of, ‘you should’ve thought about that before being born poor!’
Ehhh, the Dutch handle it pretty well, and there entire country lives under sea level. Then again they’ve had similar catastrophes just not after the 20th century, something about listening and funding the engineers who design, build, and maintain the levees and systems that protect them.
Well, next to the sea actually. But they are inbetween the sea and a lake and there is a river flowing through the city what is in a hole. Only thing missing is elevated channels connecting the river and the lake.
@@gameguy8101 "Weather manipulation has been a thing since the 70's. The technology absolutely exists for this to have been orchestrated. Remember how weird the path of the hurricane was?" Please don't copy me
I think it was intentionally ignored. I went to New Orleans and everybody I would talk to agreed that in some ways it did more good then bad. It stimulated the economy and helped bring more attention to the city.
Whoever decided to build a city in a swamp below sea level in an area where hurricanes happen regularly between a lake and the largest river in the country was a freaking GENIUS
It was because of it's location that it was the most important city in the south of the US for more then 100 years. People don't seem to realise just how important the city was. To give you some perspective, during the confederacy, New Orleans was the largest city, with a population of 168.000. The second largest confederate city was Charleston, population 40.000.
Also back during those times there was a lot more land between the city and the ocean. Damming up the river and global warming eroded most of the sandbar away on top of the city sinking
The state knew this. They had Dutch Engineers propose a way to fix the lock and levee infrastructure but Louisiana said it was way too expensive and nothing like that would ever happen. I guess it’s cheaper and easier to blame Bush for it.
I ended up here cause apparently this was broadcasted in The Netherlands. And yes the one tax I love to pay are our watertaxes, meant to upkeep the watermanagement system in the area I live
Yes and no. Hurricanes arnt on rails and if someone thinks they are, they are an idiot. When they come, you get out of the way or risk death(depending on its strength)
@@jessiejanson1528 I believe what OP is saying is that Ivan was a component to the tragedy that was Katrina. Because they evacuated "unnecessarily" with Ivan, people were resistant to evacuating Katrina. Which was clearly a mistake.
@@shawnhughes4192 lack of resources and proper education and an overreliance on shit like prayer is why people stay. To an educated person with money Ivan is a warning to prepare.
@@theewildrose okay im sorry but what are you talking about dude you try leaving your life and all your money twice. These people did that and lost tons of stuff they didnt want to leave again
This aired on January 25, 2005... 7 months later, the worst case scenario did in fact happen. I remember reading about New Orleans' vulnerability to floods when I was in 4th grade (2002-2003) and remember being surprised that people would effectively live in a bowl submerged in water. Comment posted September 13, 2023 11:55 pm
slaymaster999 I had known about the danger back then...I lived in Alabama, and that had to be the only time I prayed for a hurricane to turn TOWARDS where I lived. Bad as it was for places like Mobile and Pensacola, I knew we in Alabama and the Panhandle could handle it better than NOLA. (As for why I wanted the storm to come towards us...east...rather than to turn west, the eastern side of the hurricane is the nastier one. For the western side to graze NOLA would be a lot less severe than getting grazed by the east side at the same distance.)
Same, maybe it is the way they explain concepts, maybe it a feeling like the experts are just good people without any hyped up ulterior agenda but it is comforting.
Because it is publicly funded, not like sensationalized overly dramatized shows on Discovery, History or Nat Geo by the establishment. "PBS is supported by viewers like you" Is what they used to say towards the beginning of every show. I am 37, my childhood was spent watching lots of PBS. I watched everything from Sesame Street and Bob Ross to documentaries.
@@BFKAnthony817 I didn't realise it was publicly funded. I guess the what the 'P' part is in the name. So PBS is similarly funded to the BBC in the UK, some advertising revenue with some government money to prop up producers of content?
There was a weather channel special on hurricanes that I believe was produced around 1992 that predicted that New Orleans would be devastated by a direct hit due to significant parts of the city being under water. I think New Orleans's vulnerability was understood decades before Katrina hit.
@@noobFPV I'm guessing you don't read a dictionary because the meaning of prediction based on the Cambridge dictionary is "a statement about what you think will happen in the future." Please don't act so smart on the internet.
The flooding of New Orleans had been predicted decades before this. It was a common item to include in discussions of the consequences of hurricanes or flooding in general, and it was well publicized on the news in Louisiana. I lived in Baton Rouge (~70 miles inland) when Hurricane Katrina hit, and honestly, I was stunned at the number of people who claimed that they had been totally surprised and never knew this could happen. How can you live below sea level in the middle of a swamp (it's obvious, if you've never been to New Orleans) and not realize that flooding might be a major issue. I feel for the people who died, especially the ones who couldn't do anything to help themselves, but man, there were a lot of people who should have known better and wound up in a bad spot.
I dont know why people go straight passed this well known fact, and jump STRAIGHT to full on weather manipulation to purposely move the storm to hit there.
You‘re spot on with that but I think in the end of the day it’s the responsibility of the city and state to make sure everyone knows that and to have proper evacuation and emergency protocols. even for their own self-preservation…
people don't just know things, and obviously real estate agents aren't going to be the ones educating people on why the house they're selling might be a bad idea to move into.
We learned about the inevitable flooding of New Orleans during my undergraduate geology degree. It wasn't just PBS that was talking about this in the late 90s and early 2000s.
@Trigger Man do you know how large those levy’s already are, it’s the same thing in florida with lake Okeechobee. Largest lake and it looks like an ocean. They built a levy but it’s gonna overflow someday. You underestimate the power of turbulent water
On a lighter note, if y’all ever have the chance to take a trip to New Orleans, do it. Probably the most culturally unique city in the US. Especially when it’s not under 25 feet of water.
It's significant to know that when they're talking about how high the water would be in their theoretical nightmare situation, 22 feet above water in the French Quarter -- in a city that is basically entirely below sea level, the French Quarter aka the richest area is the highest. So if they're sitting below 22 feet of water, the rest of the city is completely screwed.
The senario pointed out is the absolute worst case. Katrina was terrible, but not a direct hit from a category 5. Ida would have been similar to Katrina if it wasn't for the billions spent on improving levees after Katrina.
@@tylersmith4265 Exactly. I am from New Orleans myself. If they didn't invest $14 billion into the levee system, IDA very well may have even been worse than Katrina. When it comes to these storms like, yes category matters but what matters even more than that is circumstances. Like, what time of year is it? How high is the water going to be throughout the storm? How long will it last? Where exactly does it hit? That's why they're all so different. But thank God they reinforced the levee systems in between these two major storms. Not even during Katrina did the power system suffer a catastrophic failure like it did during Ida. So my guess is their next step once the dust settles will be to reinforce that, next. Meanwhile people in the most affected parishes I suspect will either relocate to other parts of the city within the levee system OR move altogether.
@@doctorlarry2273 It would truly be a nightmare scenario if the water ever got that high in the Quarter. I dunno how they arrived at that figure, but I think what they're trying to say is that if the worst possible scenario ever happened where every possible thing that could go wrong DID go wrong (like, levees broke and the pumps all were not working, etc.) that that might happen. That's the only thing I could figure. All I am saying is that if the Quarter is flooded and underneath water, the rest of the city is at the bottom of a lake now basically.
I agree. There's a fine line between being educated and outright prediction. If I explain to you how supernovae work, and in millions of years the Earth is swallowed by the sun...does that mean I predicted humanity's end? No...it means I explained how a supernova works...and one just so happened to end us all based on humanity's understanding of how such an inevitable event carries out. I wouldn't call that a prediction, I would call that common sense and being educated on the topic.
Well New Orleans has put billions of dollars into levees since Katrina and what made Katrina so devastating was the levees breaking. So unless the levees were to break again a storm as fatal as Katrina is unlikely
The repair cost of Katrina would have been billions dog Ponchartrain flooded into new Orleans And thats before the golf of mexico came to join the party And no we havent learned As much as 9/11 was a inside job no a t of god can change, them blowing the levies to lake ponchartrain was some bullshit Not gonna say katrina woulnd have, but the ocean levis should have gone first if thats the case The demo in this video just shows water cresting the ponch levy first Not breaking ether Well in what world dose the reinforced canall fail before the miles of ocean barriors?
@John Doe you’re in denial bro. I work with a Louisiana guy and he says the same thing Louisiana is always getting hit by hurricanes the gulf is ruthless
I remember watching this episode when it aired. so when Katrina happened and everyone in tv was saying no one saw this coming, all I could think about was this episode. Never could find this episode after Katrina till now
"When the storm surge overwhelms the levees ... New Orleans will become Lake New Orleans." And when the Army Corps of Engineers pump the water out, New Orleans becomes the Poison Pit of Death! It happened to a degree with Katrina...
I disagree. The people refused to pay for it. No one elects someone that will raise taxes. Regulations and safety infrastructure take blood to become a reality these days, and the voters will never blame themselves. A similar thing is happening in California. Towns refused to raise taxes specifically for additional firefighters, and are now mad and seeking to sue the same underfunded firefighters that risked their lives for not saving their houses. It’s easier to blame a faceless organization than it is to blame yourself.
@@canada_rye Right. They sure didn't care on 9/11. Probably was an inside job anyway from inside the CIA. Still waiting when the truth comes out on that day. If it will ever happen.
Ben R. Seriously... Katrina was the emergency band aid to all the momentum the “truth er” movement had, don’t forget widows marched on Washington over 9// and no one remembers that...
This was recorded just a few months before Katrina. Ivan happened in 2004. They talk about it as " past hurracane season"...so this probably went on air in the early or late summer of 2005.
We were there as well staying on the high-school football field in Jefferson Parish about 200yds from the river. We worked with the food trucks from MT & stayed with the Pennsylvania National Guard... truly devastating on a different level when you are literally in the direct middle of hell. Videos like this & every major storm there since has a completely different significance from the impact to your perspective. The anger never goes away either however... 😔🤨
Saw a documentary about it and you are so on point sir. Theft everywhere, riots for food and water, lots of fires at stores and houses, water everywhere and helicopters rescuing the wounded and isolated Scary
The weather channel predicted it too. There is an episode of It could happen tomorrow about a cat 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans that didn't air because of Katrina.
bradhig Someday we will be watching a documentary where someone tries to take credit for predicting California breaking off from the mainland. Like we all didn’t basically predict it.
Went to NO once, stood on a levy and looked down at the city and couldn’t believe how foolish it seemed. Why would so many people choose to live below the water?
@@speralta8243 “blizzard zones” what the hell is that? Lol! You can literally just go inside your house or car if it’s a blizzard. Not deadly at all with the right clothing.
@@stevegoldstein3402 No, but it can cause damage. What if you're blocked and snowed in and can't get food? It's happened. You can split hairs all you like, I made my point.
Imagine seeing this, seeing Katrina and still living in New Orleans. Maybe it happens once every 20 years, but if you move, your kids won’t have to make the wrong decision. If you don’t move, your kids bond with a city that’s a trap.
I honestly hate how badly built everything is in New Orleans, the city of balconies lol Last year the hard rock hotel collapsed and they had to leave 2 cadavers in the rubble for MONTHS. My condolences to the families, I can't imagine hundreds of people walking past where your love ones passed away and are left unceremoniously unburied.
Well Us small towns have porches And porches usuly dont extend past your house, just add to the geometry and space Our condos might have balconys, if they arnt duplexes Cuz its a porch on a duplex
@@cadMeFromLife one cadaver was left "half" exposed and all the city did was put a tarp over it. (the image is online- just look up Hard rock hotel New Orleans cadaver)Which, mind you, blew away from the wind within a couple of days... exposing him yet again. I've never seen such disrespect for someone who works for the benefit of the city, only to be left rotting away in a cold dark place.
New Orleans didn't get the devastating winds of Katrina. Got a category 1. The failure of the levees after the hurrican caused the damage in New Orleans.
Upcame Hill true the winds were cat 1 but the storm surge was cat 4-5 which is why the levies failed and cause Katrina was a pretty massive hurricane size wise
Connor Mcgregor is gay We’re seeing a similar situation in North Carolina right now with the aftermath of Florence. Hit the state as a Cat 2/1 but was ginormous in size and brought tens of feet of flooding
@@zippity010 You don't have to compare to Hurricane Katrina When that bitch smacked New Orleans within 5 hours my apartment was submerged in 25' of water
My 4th grade teacher predicted that mess back in 94. I remember her explaining sea level to us and how New Orleans was below it. I grew up in Florida, so obviously hurricanes come up in the conversation. I remember her telling us that if a powerful enough hurricane were to hit NOLA head on, it would be a disaster.
Randy Newman wrote a song about this, "Louisiana 1927", about a similar disaster that affected the state. Aaron Neville famously covered it during a Hurricane Katrina benefit concert in 2005. The federal government has known about the precarious position of New Orleans for over a century. It is no mistake that these disasters of neglect happen, and continue to happen.
Ida just hit Louisiana a few weeks ago and I’ll admit that’s the strongest hurricane I’ve witnessed. Katrina had more water, but Ida’s winds were much more destructive. Thibodaux was sad to see, because I attended college there until recently. So much is just gone now
Fun fact: The name Orleans derives from the emperor Aurelian, who ended the Crisis of the Third Century and was granted the title "Restorer of the World" by the Senate after reconquering Rome's lost territories. He was then murdered by his corrupt secretary.
Its more that his corrupt secretary was worried he'd be executed by Aurelian for being corrupt, so he convinced the senior command of the army that Aurelian was going to unjustly execute them, and the senior command killed Aurelian believing that they had saved themselves. When they found out what happened they were extremely angry and murdered the secretary as well.
Yea but the storm in the video prediction is bigger than Katrina was. Mass evacuations helped and the water “only” rose to 19.9 feet in some places. If A bigger surge than Katrina happened than the casualty rate would have/will be much higher, if New Orleans fills to flat capacity and like they said in the video will never be drainable or habitable again. And it will most likely happen sooner than Most people think due to drastic weather changes
It is possible that tens of thousands would have died from the storm surge in New Orleans had Katrina hit it directly as a high cat 4 or cat 5. Instead, Katrina weakened slightly and veered to the east, putting New Orleans on the weaker, western half of the storm. Caused by the failure of the levees, the flooding started after the storm had mostly passed through. The water rose much more slowly than it would have had the levees been over-topped and/or destroyed in the middle of the storm.
Every state should invest in finding weak spots in their state, such as for weather, a Terror attack, evacuations, or road congession. Would be ready for almost every sutuation and best way to go about it effeciently and safley.
Well they do but idiots don’t listen and approve the funding. Like covid got plenty of warnings but no one listened and the idiots call it a conspiracy. Louisiana is a conservative state and everyone voted against the bonds for protection.
That bowl thing is also what happed to some towns in Japan when they were hit with the tsunami. The tsunami waves topped their storm walls and towns just filled up. Many times, when the waves receded, the water was just trapped.
I swear, the old Establishers of towns and such never played with a bowl in some water. Sure, you can float the bowl, and even push down a bit, so the water is right at the edge, but the moment it crests, it's filled and sinking to the bottom
@@schwig44 people hundreds of years ago probably didn't even realize the town was below sea level. Any walls that were built were probably built within the last 100 years as they've started to notice sea levels rising and so on
@@AwesomeSauce7176 People hundreds of years ago drained a coastal swamp to build it. They probably didn’t know it would sink further, but they knew from the beginning that they were going to be somewhere below sea level.
@@AwesomeSauce7176 In the US South at least, many of the native tribes actually never built permanent settlements on the coastal floodplains and the deltas for the thousands of years they inhabited the region. They knew from oral history passed down from generations of experience that those lands were unstable. They also noticed signs from nature such as animals like migratory birds freaking out and instictually heading higher upland and inland since they can sense incoming hurricanes and landslide shifting (relief topography).
My hurricane Katrina rescue kitty died early this year, she was almost 18 years old. I always thought about the other rescues from Katrina, its crazy knowing it was so long ago now.
There weren't any better locations to guard the entry to the Mississippi River. The one thing they might have done differently is restrict New Orleans to just a fortress, and have the port be further inland. But the earliest settlers would of course want to be near the fort for protection, and the governments of the time either didn't know better or didn't care. But that's all water -under- over the bridge now.
The strategic importance of having a city at the mouth of the mississippi was more important for people back then than the long-term implications centuries later.
Prescient. Thing is, Katrina also wasn't a direct hit on the city. It actually veered east also, just much closer to the city than Ivan. As the winds of the hurricane blow counterclockwise, it pushed Lake Ponchartrain into the city from the north, much as this video explained. But it actually could have been even worse if the hurricane had made a direct hit.
Katrina also weakened quickly at the last minute from a Cat 5 to a strong 3 at landfall. If a 4 or 5 came ashore directly near New Orleans it could be Katrina all over again.
1:01 I love how the hurricane has a human name so when it says "We are temporarily closed due to ivan", it sounds like there's just some poor guy named ivan who somehow fucked everything up
I guess all them animals you wanted to have it with since you are a furry after all got swept away when Katrina came. Shame Katrina missed the furries though we don’t need misanthropes in this world!
Literally everyone in the Gulf predicted it; Ray Nagin and city council had so mismanaged the money they were given that it was inevitable. I was living in Mobile at the time and everyone knew it was bound to happen.
This was not ray nagin’s fault. This was a issue that the city new was coming decades before it happened. If you lived in the city at the time you would remember we did not take Katrina seriously until last minute (when bob breck announced it on the news) similar to the recent hurricane that hit. So while every one else in the gulf predicted it, in New Orleans it was just another storm.
@@Twinnzel The FEDERAL level, including studies done in the fifties AND the Army Corps. of Engineers knew it. This was a Federal decision to do nothing. It's on the Feds, no some local city council.
For Christ sake! You have to walk UP a flight of stairs to get to the Mississippi River. Hours of binge drinking didn't stop me from instantly recognizing that was a horrible idea.
So was building a city in a desert, building one in tornado alley, building a city in the tundra, building on a mountainside with mudslides, or in a forest prone to fire or an earthquake zone.
@@speralta8243 Bad, and illogical / intellectually dishonest argument I live in a hurricane-prone area(1) and are close to the sea(2), but we're mostly fine because we're not under sea level (I'm about 50 decimetres from sea level at the moment) and we have some islands / a sweeping coast protecting us from the worst of storm surges. The Dutch live below sea level(1) but they're mostly fine because they're not in a place with significant tectonic activity or hurricane risk. New Orleans is not only below sea level(1), it is also sandwiched by bodies of water that are above the city itself (2), right next to the sea (3), and is in a hurricane-prone area (4). It's just a disaster waiting to happen. I imagine there might be ways around this, of course.
@@takumiyamamiya8877 Thank you for sharing your opinion. I live there. I live it. Say what you will, add whatever arguments, I don't care. I'm not here to prove or disprove anything. Good bye.
@@speralta8243 You may live there, but it helps no-one and most especially not you for you to bury your head in the sand, go "IT'S FINE! IT'S FINE! (insert whataboutism here)", and pretend that the issue doesn't exist or that it's not that big of an issue- the flood risks of New Orleans are a known issue. If you truly care about the place you live in, you would look into the geographic or ecological issues it faces and try to see what you can do to mitigate them. There's very little that can be done with New Orleans' elevation problems outside of levelling the areas currently under sea level, filling them up with soil, and then building new districts on top of them. But you CAN mitigate storm surges, for example, by encouraging marshland/mangrove growth expansion to act as natural storm barriers. It's what spared us, in my locality, from the worst of the storm surges when Hurricane Haiyan (Yolanda) hit. And we were EXACTLY in the eye of that supertyphoon.
@@takumiyamamiya8877 Actually, we don’t have tectonic activity and hurricanes at all. Though, in the province Groningen, they dig for natural gas which results in the ground sinking causing ‘earthquakes’ these are rather small on the Richter scale and the area is mostly sparsely populated. We do not get hurricanes and we don’t have to worry about ‘storm surge’(for now at least) But we do deal with windstorms, these are known to cause damage to roofs, slowing traffic eg. bu that’s really it.
Roy Nagin (seen here) was part of the tragedy. He rejected Amtrak’s offer to send a relief train into the city over the trestle from the west. Most New Orleanians don’t need cars because of our terrific streetcar system. Buses were unavailable -their drivers were saving their families. The second part of this horror was the failure NOT of the levees but of the New Orleans Levee Board. The three canals, Orleans, 17th Street and London Avenue, all had pumping stations to suck waters out of the city into Lake Pontchartrain. The failure here has been hidden: the New Orleans Levee Board failed to approve the requests by the U.S. Corps of Engineers for locks.
Look all politicians care about people Who else is gonna pay there taxes and spend money on there businesses? Cuz the politicians dodge tax and do each other favors rather then charge
The more you think about it the more new orleans becomes like a soft drink. Pleasing because of the unique taste, but long term? It's eventually bad for your health.
It's just that they neglected infrastructure for decades. If they had listened to the engineers Katrina would not have happened. New Orleans is better now but still not completely safe. So far no one is willing to put up the money to make it fully safe.
I remember seeing this only a year or so before Katrina and thinking that maybe I just imagined the show in my mind(?) because it seemed too much of a coincidence.
To think that this aired months before Katrina, and also to think that two of the people interviewed here, Mr. Maestri and Dr. Van Heerden were sacked for calling the state and federal governments out for their inaction after the storm ended.
That's not how that works. The N. East side of a hurricane is the strongest, and they rotate counterclockwise(east->west). Katrina went to the east of N. Orleans and pushed all of the surge west into Orleans. That literally piled water up on the levees until they were breached. There was no "bottom blowout" or an explosion. It's simple physics. However, as is seen on dam breaks, once the water flows over the top(or through) erosion increases exponentially. This makes things like levees and dams "U-out" as the water flows through. That can make it seem like the bottom failed, but that's simply not what happened.
“On August 29, 2005, flood walls and levees catastrophically failed throughout the metro area. Some collapsed well below design thresholds (17th Street and London Canals). Others collapsed after a brief period of overtopping (Industrial Canal) caused scouring or erosion of the earthen levee walls. “ Soooo both happened
apparently "the experts" knew too. as well, bush cancelled some hundreds of millions in funding to the army corps of engineers (bad ass btw) to reinforce the levees. coinkseedinksee
@@murb2586 Wrong. The New Orleans Levee Board denied the funding to the US Army Corps of Engineers for the floodgates they wanted to build to control the open mouths of the canals which drained into Lake Pontchartrain. 20 feet of water surged into the lake through the Pass of the Rigolets and rushed into the city in hours.
@@annbush1826 @Ann Bush www.govexec.com/defense/2005/09/ex-army-corps-officials-say-budget-cuts-imperiled-flood-mitigation-efforts/20033/ "Mike Parker, the former head of the Army Corps of Engineers, was forced to resign in 2002 over budget disagreements with the White House. He clashed with Mitch Daniels, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, which sets the administration's annual budget goals." thanks for the extra info
Why not both? Maybe the AI became too powerful, and RUclips couldn't control it. So instead they demonetize random channels to appease their great machine God.
Humanity has a really bad habit of placing major cities near the coastline. It made sense back in the day, and even sort of now with ports and trade, but those areas are gonna be in big trouble over the next 150 years. As an individual I say run for the hills, build on high and dry land
One issue exacerbating this in the US: The federal government subsidizes flood insurance nationwide and refuses to adjust rates based on global warming/rising sea levels. If they either adjusted it or just had a more free market system to let insurers adjust we'd soon see a lot fewer development companies building houses that are soon to be underwater.
@@AlexanderRM1000 if the government incentivized more people to move to the Great Plains and rocky mountains it would help a little bit…wouldn’t save everyone but at least it would help populate those states and get their economies strong, because the country is going to be relying on the economies of inland states to support economic recovery/mitigation efforts of the costal states from climate change. Lot of good land out there, the dakotas, Utah, Montana. Nice places
No, this isn't a "bad habit". Most of these cities are hundreds of years old, built and expanded long before climate change, rising sea levels, or extreme weather ever came into consideration during planning. Back then, sea lanes were THE way to get anything anywhere (still kinda is), so that's where people went.
The result was a disruption of entire populations and that was the plan all along. Cleaned clock on whole groups of thugs including the police dept. (remember when N. O. cops were KILLING other cops???) take the city down.
@@Dwightstjohn-fo8ki Are you trying to say that the hurricane was 1) manufactured 2) intentionally made in order to kill people? You dropped your tinfoil hat 🤦
@UCpWSVuv7sahnNHREAjXMGrg no human could create a hurricane. We can make them worse with global warming, but not create them. If you think Mother Nature is controlled by us than you are the kinda person that probably gets killed by it in some kind of natural disaster.
Easily prevented? Um no, you can't stop a hurricane, and secondly the city was already super developed by the late 90s that it would take DECADES of relocating and resources to SLIGHTLY improve the flooding. The flooding was inevitable the only thing that could be done is improve forecast models and teach people how to prepare and evacuate.
It was a cover story on Scientific American magazine in October 2001, about 4 years before Katrina. They had a detailed map showing what would be flooded. So when Bush said no one could have predicted it, people already predicted it and published a detailed report on it.
@@soolly357 someone else in these comments mentions the city having an assessment done by Dutch engineers, who suggested various measures to take. None of these were taken as the state said it was too expensive. This is third-hand knowledge at least so you should definitely check for yourself if it sounds interesting
Lol Canada is full of people just like us XD As much as the poeple of America are a force to be reconed with on the homefeild, is an unspoken truth we got our ass handed to us in 1812 by Canada "Yeah lets get some land, walk those dirty brith lovers back into there boats" Canadians: "hay eh, those colonists are getting kinda wild eh. We should show em why the british let us be our own settlement." "Wanna burn down there white house? Show em we mean business eh?" And they marched us back and burned the white house and left Not forced home, not retreated Fires over eh, lets go home kinda chilly eh XD
@@donovanulrich348 Canadian here. The war of 1812 was a military stalemate. USA stopped 3 of 5 incursions Canada stopped 3 of 5 incursions and we both burned eachothers capitals to the ground in the battles of York and DC. Nobody handed anybody their asses.
Sorta, you'll find the problem is often times when the issue becomes politicized, meaning the people who want to help get grouped up with the greedy kind of politician. If you want to change anything large scale, you need money, which means more taxes, which means you are a freedom hating antiamerican democrat.
This is exactly what politicians want. You to be pissed at liberals so you focus on fighting with someone who probably wants the same things as you. Also social issues are important, every American is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
@@davidreeding9176 Lmao, you've got it so wrong. People wouldn't mind higher taxes if it ever got back to them. People hate democrats because they raise taxes, and you literally never see that tax raise in action. The money always mysteriously "disappears" into these projects that are supposed to help reduce poverty and crime, but every goddamn time the poverty and crime goes up instead of down. And suddenly you're paying 50% of your income in taxes, to live in a fucking nightmare realm like San Francisco. The mayor of New Orleans was a democrat before, during, and after Katrina. New Orleans city has a 5% income tax rate, that you have to pay just for living in the city, on top of state and federal taxes. That is also a very high tax rate for a city, fyi. And yet, none of that tax money ended up going into Levee maintenance. HMMMMMM.
At 3:21, him being too near that spinning pump is giving me live leak vibes. Don't ever stand too near a spinning machinery, especially one as big as this.
Don't worry. When I lived there most of the pumps did not work, even if they had been installed. The parish levee boards skimmed off most of the money designated for pumps.
Not only predicted by PBS BUT after I came back home from New Orleans back in the '80's I found a great article in the National Geographic about the problems of erosion etc. and flooding in New Orleans. Anyone else see that article? That's why, when I watched the people being sheltered during Katrina I knew, I just knew, they would die. It was tremendously heartbreaking for me to watch. And yes, call me a conspiracy nut but I believe there was a land grab!
Quad8track Perfect spot for the French to trade with native Americans and control the Mississippi in the 1700s it was the best land imaginable for profit at the time and was believed to be protected from hurricanes Now days It seems like a horrible location for a city But new Orleans benefited being at the mouth of the Mississippi river and prospered in the 1800s until 1860s civil war came.
Understood but the 9th ward was built much later and intended to be cheap, low-income housing. Then all of the engineering involved to build levees to protect it. Just seemed like a really dumb idea to begin with.
Settlements needed water for trade, transportation, and farming. In the past, such storms weren't as frequent as they are now so back then it was the perfect spot.
@TheYumsoda Just to clarify, I'm not trying to put down on NOLA, every place seems to have some risk. All four corners of North America are either faced with wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, flash floods, blizzards, or a combination of these. Nothing lasts forever.
@@jayasmrmore3687 Yeah, you're also technically you're still likely to be shot anywhere in the US, but going to the heart of Chicago and yelling the N word might adjust your chances. Just as setting up shop on a faultline or building a city next to a volcano do. The idea is the restrain the risk, cause when you build a city below the waterline and a hurricane floods it the question has to be asked.
People who survived Katrina are still living in FEMA trailers today. No help from our government but we can give other countries shitloads of money and artillery.
More accurately, the local and state government totally "f-ed" up. The feds did what they could, but the "government" is the absolute worst way to do ANYTHING.
About one year prior to Katrina, I attended a symposium and conference celebrating twenty years of the Environmental Law Program at Tulane, lead by Oliver Houck. I distinctly remember the name of one of the round-table discussions: Global Warming...Are We Under Water Yet? Katrina wasn't the worst case scenario for the 2000's...far from it. And now that we are in the 2010's and approaching the 2020's, the rise in mean sea level and the average ocean temp variables have only gotten worse. I don't think that it's too fire to make the prediction that the next "Big One" may indeed be the hurricane that starts the rest of the country seriously questioning whether New Orleans should be "abandoned".
I've been saying for years to people that one day New Orleans will be New Atlantis. I would guess by 2105, 100 years post katrina. Of course i won't see it, but i think it'll happen. That superdome will be a giant fish bowl, and you will need to go deep diving to go to bourbon street.
Last night my dad looked at the tv. Apparently another one hit just recently. And he just goes "I dont understand why they keep rebuilding. Its below sea level and on the coast whats the point" and honestly yeah tbh
Hello! I’m a 6th grade science teacher and I’m creating a video for my class about Hurricane Katrina. May I use short clips from this video to highlight NOLA before, during, and after Katrina?
In the first 30 seconds he is walking in front of the St. Louis Catholic Cathedral, which is oddly enough 2 blocks away from Bourbon Street. Probably the quietest part in the French Quarter.
The mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin was never held to account for criminal negligence in failing to provide adequate barriers to flooding. He was convicted of other, corruption-related crimes in 2014, but amazingly remained Mayor of New Orleans until 2010.
He stayed mayor because of the "chocolate" (as Ray Nagin called them himself) IDIOTS of New Orleans that vote for ANYONE with a "D" behind their name. Look at the trash that's New Orleans' mayor currently in 2021!
One thing I learned from this video is to never buy a house in New Orleans
NcCrullex lol, I live in New Orleans...
Lol hurricane aren't the only reason not to buy a house in new Orleans
Crime would be a bigger problem
Dirty Dan That’s true. My name is DIRTY DAN!
Why not? Buy a house and get the best insurance you can for it.
“The big easy dodged a bullet.” Little did they know, it was a Final Destination style dodge.
out of the frying pan, and into the fire
😐Little did they know, the algorithm wanted everyone to see this video AGAIN.
I think people knew that a disaster was coming, they just didn’t care enough to do anything about it.
Every politician that denies climate change knows exactly what the reality is, they’re just not interested in doing anything to avert to impending catastrophe
@@randbarrett8706 Selfish ppl
Bludworth : You have to realize is that we're just a mouse that a cat has by the tail, every single move we make from the mundane to the monumental, the red light that we stop at or run, the people we have sex with or want with us, the airplanes that we ride or walk out of, it's all part of Death's sadistic design. Leading to the grave.
Out of context, "Closed due to IVAN" just makes it seem like some guy named Ivan really screwed over that casino
Much like covert 19 throwing shade at the Cronna Beer compony
Paid advertising
@@donovanulrich348 huhh
bro i died laughing because Ivan, is slang for Russians lol "closed because a russian entered" or something to that effect just killed me
😔
@@DisorderInOrder well Finland probably got invaded again, the Scandinavian’s have very right to panic
Many people don’t realize that Katrina wasn’t even a direct hit to New Orleans it hit Mississippi the hardest, but New Orleans got so much flooding, and few evacuated.
So I guess that’s the answer to the end.
People wouldn’t evacuate
In terms of wind and the center it wasn’t a directly hit but Katrina was the worst case scenario path in terms of surge for New Orleans. It making landfall just south and east of New Orleans put the right front quadrant in the position to not only push surge up the Mississippi, MRGO, Lake Borgne and the Intracoastal Waterway(The Funnel/Industrial Canal) but the northerly winds on the west side of the eye pushed surge from Lake Pontchartrain into the levees
@@matthewbelczyk5264 I never knew this to I read the op’s and your comment.
I was way to young to understand and only recently became interested in weather lol
@@matthewbelczyk5264 yeah I know they had the flooding there, but it’s frustrating that no one knows how bad it was in other places.
@@EvilNeuro Biloxi/Gulfport and the town just west of there practically got flattened. It’s frustrating that no attention was given to MS. My uncle lived an hour inland, and they were right in the path. People kept asking why all the trees were leaning, and we got damage all the way up to north MS.
This episode would have aired between October of 2004 to July of 2005, because Hurricane Ivan hit on September of 2004 and Katrina hit on late August of 2005.
Damn and Ida just hit!
Watch out for the Hurricane that statists with a K!
I remember watching this exact episode only 3 or 4 days before Katrina hit. Idk if it was a rerun or the original airing, but I remember thinking about it the whole time Katrina was building up because she had just passed Florida when I saw it.
@@SilentHunter7 me too. I had this Nova episode in mind when I first learned of Katrina
365th like!
@@missxspencer1538 426th like
Exaggeration or not, Katrina did EVERYTHING they talked about in this documentary.
Ben Schaeffer besides killing 50.000 people
I know this is 6 years old but I’m just saying I was the 69th like.
Matthew Schuhmann 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Ben Schaeffer 😂😂😂
I'm the 111th like
New Orleans was built essentially on a slow moving sink hole.
Brilliant.
I could be wrong but living ten feet below sea level ,doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
.
Same with Mexico City
Same with West Palm Beach.
People are idiots
@@stevek5600 agreed
I was stationed at the Navy Reserve HQ in NOLA in 2000. Each year the entire command was given a Hurricane preparation brief. The worst case scenario was presented as a hurricane landing just EAST of NOLA (not the direct hit everyone worries about) with the counterclockwise winds pushing Lake Pontchartrain into the city, which is exactly what happened.
hey
New Orleans is the modern man’s attempt to give the future man an Atlantis.
clever🤔😄😄
without all the cool architecture and history
@@highonlife2323 exactly, if any city needs a bath it's probably New Orleans 😂
@@noirceur_ You over here hitting nails on heads buddy I see you.
@@highonlife2323 tbf ppl from the future would probably think its cool if they havent seen it and like everything else make up its history
The RUclips algorithm has a sick but timely sense of humor
Ida 💀
Yeap, very timely. Though New Orleans can't do much... it's a geographic issue.
I D A ❗️ ( 2021 )
RUclips and PBS must have caused katrina and Ida. There are machines that can cause storms
Lmao
"Luckily for everyone, Ivan narrowly missed new Orleans and just veered off into alabama"
Meh, Alabama's coast line is a lot better geographically to take a hit like that. New Orleans is just about the worst place a major hurricane can hit.
@@tinkandtory Okay, so you’re saying- in addition to the fact no one cares about Alabama, it’s also geographically better? Win-win… gotcha.
@@dylconnaway9976 who said no one cares about Alabama? 😂😂😂
@@tinkandtory not particularly, they both lay on a coastal plain, the difference is the overall geography of the state, one laying at the foothills of the appalachians causing a higher elevation further inland preventing the hurricane from travelling further compared to the overall topographic flatness of Louisiana.
Southern Alabama is far less populous than New Orleans. Also no one cares about Alabama
It feels like this was inevitable. That’s like the worst place a city could be built
Real Life Lore has a good video on this, and how up until the last century, New Orleans was actually the BEST place to build a city. It sits at the mouth of the Mississippi River, which made it a vital center for trade and commerce for much of the United States. The advent of rail, highways, and then air travel reduced its influence in the modern era.
@@softpiglet I went to NOLA in 2004 and stood on the levee separating the river from the below-sea level Black neighborhoods, and thought, these folks be dead meat someday
Not in an era where boats were the fastest means of travel.
@@softpiglet why not build a city literally anywhere else along the river? like, based purely on what you mentioned that still leaves plenty of room not to be cucked by nature and live in a soon-to-be lake
@@KoloXD bc a city that sits at the mouth of the river controls all the trade that flows into and out of it. the mouth that new orleans sits on (mississippi), was vital to basically half of the country at that time.
I don't want to alarm anyone, but I don't think New Orleans is safe from hurricanes.
rlly????
Nah that’s total bullshit
Now that’s a prediction
@@govenormayor87 NOLA will one day get damaged to the point everyone in NOLA has to evaluate.
That has absolutely no basis, your clearly just guessing
I'm not a civil engineer or anything, but the first time I drove uphill out of a New Orleans neighborhood to the ocean, I got chills. Not only did it seem like a terrible idea, but it felt like stepping into an impossible M. C. Escher lithograph.
Christ yeah, I've had to go to the city a few times just driving over there bridges get me nervous
I thought New Orleans was like an hour from the ocean? (Nvm I just checked on google maps lol)
"I'm an idiot. Anyway"
Reminds me of
"Oh no! Anyway"
haha no big deal, water mostly all looks the same and it's hard to tell what shape it is the bigger it gets.
Exactly how I felt when I drove from Baton Rouge to NOLA. I was like… if theres an earthquake or something in these bridges were all gone…
If you want to experience a similar feeling, drive through Tampa.
A National Geographic documentary predicted this way back in the 90's. Not that one needs a documentary to understand that what is below the waterline will become under the waterline with sufficient actions by nature.
Exactly
I've seen documentaries like that as a kid in 90s and 2000s.
The problems with New Orleans has not been a secret. And 22' storm surges are definitely possible. I am wondering why the State and Local Governments weren't better prepared.
Or by manually causing them
The documentary is educational, but the title tries to imply the show predicted something obvious, probably to get views by rehashing old videos.
@@joepromedio The city of New Orleans tried for almost 20 years to get "permission" to rebuild their levees, but the enviro-whack jobs kept filing lawsuits to prevent them from doing so. PBS is nothing more than another leftist outfit, lovingly named "Politcal Bullsh!te System.
It wasn't only PBS that made this prediction. My friend who lived in New Orleans told me about this whole scenario several years before Hurricane Katrina. As far as I can tell, this possibility was common knowledge in New Orleans prior to Katrina, at least among people who were paying attention.
well.... did they learn their lesson tho?
@@tehpurplepills I believe that the levee system has been improved since Katrina, so the people in charge of the levees have probably learned a lesson. As for the general population of New Orleans, I'm not sure what lesson they should learn, unless it's to evacuate next time. I don't think we can expect that the entire population of the city will abandon New Orleans and move elsewhere.
@@tehpurplepillstf you mean? Is a literal citys worth of folks supposed to just uo and leave? To where? I guess the lesson is to not have been born there
@@leaffinite2001oh yeah life is a videogame and lets you hand pick your parents and where to grow up in lmao
The only way to not be born there is to move elsewhere.
@@LorikQuinnI think they were being facetious. Sorta like that joke from The Emperor’s New Groove (bear with me) where Yzma says to a peasant, something along the lines of, ‘you should’ve thought about that before being born poor!’
When a city is in a hole next to the ocean, a catastrophe is guaranteed.
If watching survivor has provided any benefit, it would be build your house not in a hole next to the ocean, or you will be swimming with the fishes
Irs sad that you can make it that simple and people understand it but politicians and the army corps of engineers can't figure that out.
Ehhh, the Dutch handle it pretty well, and there entire country lives under sea level. Then again they’ve had similar catastrophes just not after the 20th century, something about listening and funding the engineers who design, build, and maintain the levees and systems that protect them.
Well, next to the sea actually. But they are inbetween the sea and a lake and there is a river flowing through the city what is in a hole. Only thing missing is elevated channels connecting the river and the lake.
@@ShadowSlayer1441 but that would mean higher taxes!!!
“The government predicts that a hurricane would be devastating here.” - PBS
This video: PBS PREDICTED THE FUTURE
based tdlr.
@@grabthebagnow too didn’t long read
@@gameguy8101 "Weather manipulation has been a thing since the 70's. The technology absolutely exists for this to have been orchestrated.
Remember how weird the path of the hurricane was?" Please don't copy me
Kind of weird this is in my feed 10 years later
@@gameguy8101 I agree, but what does that have to do with the original comment?
My science teacher predicted it. Honestly it's common sense that it would happen. But like everything, no one gives a crap until someone dies.
I think it was intentionally ignored. I went to New Orleans and everybody I would talk to agreed that in some ways it did more good then bad. It stimulated the economy and helped bring more attention to the city.
@@EdwardOrnelas "Stimulated the economy" Translation: got billions of federal taxpayer dollars funneled into the area
Correction: *until there's a lot of money lost by the wealthy ones
Reminds me of this classic Onion video: ruclips.net/video/yjfrJzdx7DA/видео.html
"they" blew up levies on purpose
Whoever decided to build a city in a swamp below sea level in an area where hurricanes happen regularly between a lake and the largest river in the country was a freaking GENIUS
It was the europeans who built it
Specifically the French
It was because of it's location that it was the most important city in the south of the US for more then 100 years. People don't seem to realise just how important the city was.
To give you some perspective, during the confederacy, New Orleans was the largest city, with a population of 168.000. The second largest confederate city was Charleston, population 40.000.
Also back during those times there was a lot more land between the city and the ocean. Damming up the river and global warming eroded most of the sandbar away on top of the city sinking
Greetings from Florida!
The state knew this. They had Dutch Engineers propose a way to fix the lock and levee infrastructure but Louisiana said it was way too expensive and nothing like that would ever happen. I guess it’s cheaper and easier to blame Bush for it.
The Dutch would know too, they keep out the North Sea.
@@trinitytwo14992 And, so far, have done a pretty good job of it!
I ended up here cause apparently this was broadcasted in The Netherlands. And yes the one tax I love to pay are our watertaxes, meant to upkeep the watermanagement system in the area I live
People weren’t blaming Bush for the levee failure. They were blaming Bush for his response in the aftermath.
@@K3v114 when you’re told to leave and you don’t, that’s someone else’s fault I guess.
sounds like ivan was a necessary component of katrina, sadly. the hurricane that cried wolf.
Yes and no. Hurricanes arnt on rails and if someone thinks they are, they are an idiot. When they come, you get out of the way or risk death(depending on its strength)
Ivan is why so many residents did NOT evacuate for Katrina
@@jessiejanson1528 I believe what OP is saying is that Ivan was a component to the tragedy that was Katrina. Because they evacuated "unnecessarily" with Ivan, people were resistant to evacuating Katrina. Which was clearly a mistake.
@@shawnhughes4192 lack of resources and proper education and an overreliance on shit like prayer is why people stay. To an educated person with money Ivan is a warning to prepare.
@@theewildrose okay im sorry but what are you talking about dude you try leaving your life and all your money twice. These people did that and lost tons of stuff they didnt want to leave again
This whole situation reminds me of digging a hole on the beach as a kid. Eventually one wave always seems to make it up to your hole and flood it.
Best description ever
Quite true
Yeah, I hate it when shit floods my hole.
I would make barriers and holes close to them to stop them.
@@puddinpop1835 ayo wtf
This aired on January 25, 2005... 7 months later, the worst case scenario did in fact happen.
I remember reading about New Orleans' vulnerability to floods when I was in 4th grade (2002-2003) and remember being surprised that people would effectively live in a bowl submerged in water.
Comment posted September 13, 2023 11:55 pm
mm
mm
mm
Mm
mm
Ivan happened in 2004, a year before katrina happened... chilling..
Ivan is my best friend! 🌀
How are you
Almost like a warning.
slaymaster999 I had known about the danger back then...I lived in Alabama, and that had to be the only time I prayed for a hurricane to turn TOWARDS where I lived. Bad as it was for places like Mobile and Pensacola, I knew we in Alabama and the Panhandle could handle it better than NOLA.
(As for why I wanted the storm to come towards us...east...rather than to turn west, the eastern side of the hurricane is the nastier one. For the western side to graze NOLA would be a lot less severe than getting grazed by the east side at the same distance.)
Hurricane Katrina what up bruh
Off topic but I miss that era of television. It was so comfy, idk how to explain it
Frs everything changed
Yess it just makes me feel at home somehow
Same, maybe it is the way they explain concepts, maybe it a feeling like the experts are just good people without any hyped up ulterior agenda but it is comforting.
Watch Newshour any day and it has the same type of programming.
It’s PBS, which means it’s not funded solely on viewership and thus doesn’t have to rely on sensationalism to stay afloat.
Pbs always surprises me with their stories. Not like any other USA broadcaster.
Because it is publicly funded, not like sensationalized overly dramatized shows on Discovery, History or Nat Geo by the establishment. "PBS is supported by viewers like you" Is what they used to say towards the beginning of every show. I am 37, my childhood was spent watching lots of PBS. I watched everything from Sesame Street and Bob Ross to documentaries.
@@BFKAnthony817 damn i just watched like caillou and barny and now look im all fucked up and my life is ruined
PBS and PBS kids was my childhood
I loved watching Nova, Nature, and Wild Kratts
@@BFKAnthony817 I didn't realise it was publicly funded. I guess the what the 'P' part is in the name.
So PBS is similarly funded to the BBC in the UK, some advertising revenue with some government money to prop up producers of content?
I’m always surprised, also, how liberal left they are.
There was a weather channel special on hurricanes that I believe was produced around 1992 that predicted that New Orleans would be devastated by a direct hit due to significant parts of the city being under water.
I think New Orleans's vulnerability was understood decades before Katrina hit.
they didn’t predict it they told facts as it was literally inevitable for such a susceptible city like new orleans
That’s what a prediction is my guy
@@BisexualPlagueDoctor ok
@@BisexualPlagueDoctor lol idk why but that made my day.
@@Twitchy-Idjit i predict youll continue making dumb comments
@@noobFPV I'm guessing you don't read a dictionary because the meaning of prediction based on the Cambridge dictionary is "a statement about what you think will happen in the future." Please don't act so smart on the internet.
The flooding of New Orleans had been predicted decades before this. It was a common item to include in discussions of the consequences of hurricanes or flooding in general, and it was well publicized on the news in Louisiana. I lived in Baton Rouge (~70 miles inland) when Hurricane Katrina hit, and honestly, I was stunned at the number of people who claimed that they had been totally surprised and never knew this could happen. How can you live below sea level in the middle of a swamp (it's obvious, if you've never been to New Orleans) and not realize that flooding might be a major issue. I feel for the people who died, especially the ones who couldn't do anything to help themselves, but man, there were a lot of people who should have known better and wound up in a bad spot.
same people build their houses next to a volcano and then wonder why molten hot magma is ruining their living room.
like gee idk man. couldnt tell ya.
I dont know why people go straight passed this well known fact, and jump STRAIGHT to full on weather manipulation to purposely move the storm to hit there.
You‘re spot on with that but I think in the end of the day it’s the responsibility of the city and state to make sure everyone knows that and to have proper evacuation and emergency protocols. even for their own self-preservation…
Makes sense they didn't know, otherwise why would they be there?
people don't just know things, and obviously real estate agents aren't going to be the ones educating people on why the house they're selling might be a bad idea to move into.
We learned about the inevitable flooding of New Orleans during my undergraduate geology degree. It wasn't just PBS that was talking about this in the late 90s and early 2000s.
@Trigger Man Hahahah why say it like that? Not just "the mayor"?
@Trigger Man how do you change geological features. You can think the white people back then who decided to build on a swamp
@Trigger Man just racist and wrong. How tf can you change the geological makeup of the earth who tf do you think people are God? You’re just wrong
@Trigger Man do you know how large those levy’s already are, it’s the same thing in florida with lake Okeechobee. Largest lake and it looks like an ocean. They built a levy but it’s gonna overflow someday. You underestimate the power of turbulent water
@Trigger Man the smart thing was to not build on a swamp
On a lighter note, if y’all ever have the chance to take a trip to New Orleans, do it. Probably the most culturally unique city in the US. Especially when it’s not under 25 feet of water.
It's not even a nice place to visit now. I know, I lived there.
my family said never to go there EVER
It's significant to know that when they're talking about how high the water would be in their theoretical nightmare situation, 22 feet above water in the French Quarter -- in a city that is basically entirely below sea level, the French Quarter aka the richest area is the highest. So if they're sitting below 22 feet of water, the rest of the city is completely screwed.
The senario pointed out is the absolute worst case. Katrina was terrible, but not a direct hit from a category 5. Ida would have been similar to Katrina if it wasn't for the billions spent on improving levees after Katrina.
@@tylersmith4265 Exactly. I am from New Orleans myself. If they didn't invest $14 billion into the levee system, IDA very well may have even been worse than Katrina.
When it comes to these storms like, yes category matters but what matters even more than that is circumstances. Like, what time of year is it? How high is the water going to be throughout the storm? How long will it last? Where exactly does it hit? That's why they're all so different.
But thank God they reinforced the levee systems in between these two major storms. Not even during Katrina did the power system suffer a catastrophic failure like it did during Ida. So my guess is their next step once the dust settles will be to reinforce that, next. Meanwhile people in the most affected parishes I suspect will either relocate to other parts of the city within the levee system OR move altogether.
That was a BS number. You are right that the Quarter is some of the highest ground - that is where the city started - as a port city.
@@doctorlarry2273 It would truly be a nightmare scenario if the water ever got that high in the Quarter. I dunno how they arrived at that figure, but I think what they're trying to say is that if the worst possible scenario ever happened where every possible thing that could go wrong DID go wrong (like, levees broke and the pumps all were not working, etc.) that that might happen. That's the only thing I could figure. All I am saying is that if the Quarter is flooded and underneath water, the rest of the city is at the bottom of a lake now basically.
@@tylersmith4265 They weren't improved. They were just rebuilt. So, same result next time, watch.
"PBS predicted Hurrican Katrina disaster."
Literally everyone who knows New Orleans is a few feet below sea level could predicted it.
Clickbaity title is clickbait
I agree. There's a fine line between being educated and outright prediction. If I explain to you how supernovae work, and in millions of years the Earth is swallowed by the sun...does that mean I predicted humanity's end? No...it means I explained how a supernova works...and one just so happened to end us all based on humanity's understanding of how such an inevitable event carries out. I wouldn't call that a prediction, I would call that common sense and being educated on the topic.
@@crawlingkhaos8970 When there are millions of people who don't think climate change is real then even being educated is impressive.
Nah. If the oeeves held it wouldn't have been so bad.
@@stupidsnek that has nothing to do with this comment lol the video was literally talking about “if the LEVEES fail” lol
"This disaster nearly happened this past hurricane season."
Woah, good thing we learned from our mistakes. ....right guys?
Well New Orleans has put billions of dollars into levees since Katrina and what made Katrina so devastating was the levees breaking. So unless the levees were to break again a storm as fatal as Katrina is unlikely
What do you suggest?
The repair cost of Katrina would have been billions dog
Ponchartrain flooded into new Orleans
And thats before the golf of mexico came to join the party
And no we havent learned
As much as 9/11 was a inside job no a t of god can change, them blowing the levies to lake ponchartrain was some bullshit
Not gonna say katrina woulnd have, but the ocean levis should have gone first if thats the case
The demo in this video just shows water cresting the ponch levy first Not breaking ether
Well in what world dose the reinforced canall fail before the miles of ocean barriors?
Fr
@John Doe you’re in denial bro. I work with a Louisiana guy and he says the same thing Louisiana is always getting hit by hurricanes the gulf is ruthless
I remember watching this episode when it aired. so when Katrina happened and everyone in tv was saying no one saw this coming, all I could think about was this episode. Never could find this episode after Katrina till now
"When the storm surge overwhelms the levees ... New Orleans will become Lake New Orleans." And when the Army Corps of Engineers pump the water out, New Orleans becomes the Poison Pit of Death! It happened to a degree with Katrina...
Wow
what happened? where can i get more info on this?
I kept trying to click “show more” on the comment
@@yottanuclei wikipedia?
A government knowing all this statistical likelihood and doing nothing would make the government liable to any sort of damage.
I disagree. The people refused to pay for it. No one elects someone that will raise taxes. Regulations and safety infrastructure take blood to become a reality these days, and the voters will never blame themselves. A similar thing is happening in California. Towns refused to raise taxes specifically for additional firefighters, and are now mad and seeking to sue the same underfunded firefighters that risked their lives for not saving their houses. It’s easier to blame a faceless organization than it is to blame yourself.
Hahahah..... you think the government cares about your safety?
@@canada_rye Right. They sure didn't care on 9/11. Probably was an inside job anyway from inside the CIA. Still waiting when the truth comes out on that day. If it will ever happen.
Ben R. Seriously... Katrina was the emergency band aid to all the momentum the “truth er” movement had, don’t forget widows marched on Washington over 9// and no one remembers that...
@@dylconnaway9976 capitalism ruins everything it seems
This was recorded just a few months before Katrina.
Ivan happened in 2004. They talk about it as " past hurracane season"...so this probably went on air in the early or late summer of 2005.
Or in January-May...
it was in May or June I saw it
we had evacuated for Ivan
it sent shivers down my spine
yet I cam very close to not leaving for katrina
It takes a real genius to predict that building a city below sea level right next to the sea is a bad idea
I was there with the national guard after Katrina. The closest thing to a zombie movie as far as the surroundings
We were there as well staying on the high-school football field in Jefferson Parish about 200yds from the river. We worked with the food trucks from MT & stayed with the Pennsylvania National Guard... truly devastating on a different level when you are literally in the direct middle of hell. Videos like this & every major storm there since has a completely different significance from the impact to your perspective. The anger never goes away either however... 😔🤨
Saw a documentary about it and you are so on point sir.
Theft everywhere, riots for food and water, lots of fires at stores and houses, water everywhere and helicopters rescuing the wounded and isolated
Scary
Basically, a taste of what life is in countries that the U.S. invaded in the “name of freedom.”
@@passaroquetemasanaovoa flooded?
@Rodrigo weird side-track from the discussion of American lives being ruined. Go fuck yourself
The weather channel predicted it too. There is an episode of It could happen tomorrow about a cat 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans that didn't air because of Katrina.
bradhig what a fitting title!
bradhig Someday we will be watching a documentary where someone tries to take credit for predicting California breaking off from the mainland. Like we all didn’t basically predict it.
The weather Channel, hahaha
Went to NO once, stood on a levy and looked down at the city and couldn’t believe how foolish it seemed. Why would so many people choose to live below the water?
The same reason they choose to live in wildfire areas, tornado alley, blizzard zones and earthquake zones. It's home.
@@speralta8243 just because it's "home" doesn't make it a smart place to live
@@speralta8243 “blizzard zones” what the hell is that? Lol! You can literally just go inside your house or car if it’s a blizzard. Not deadly at all with the right clothing.
@@stevegoldstein3402 no power no food no fuel water... you clearly have no idea how bad winter storms actually are
@@stevegoldstein3402 No, but it can cause damage. What if you're blocked and snowed in and can't get food? It's happened. You can split hairs all you like, I made my point.
Imagine seeing this, seeing Katrina and still living in New Orleans. Maybe it happens once every 20 years, but if you move, your kids won’t have to make the wrong decision. If you don’t move, your kids bond with a city that’s a trap.
I honestly hate how badly built everything is in New Orleans, the city of balconies lol
Last year the hard rock hotel collapsed and they had to leave 2 cadavers in the rubble for MONTHS. My condolences to the families, I can't imagine hundreds of people walking past where your love ones passed away and are left unceremoniously unburied.
Technically, they were buried. If anything, they actually disturbed their graves when they finally brought them out
@@cadMeFromLife lmao nahh you got it
What are you talking about the city of balconies? You made it seem like the whole city looks like Bourbon street.
Well
Us small towns have porches And porches usuly dont extend past your house, just add to the geometry and space
Our condos might have balconys, if they arnt duplexes Cuz its a porch on a duplex
@@cadMeFromLife one cadaver was left "half" exposed and all the city did was put a tarp over it. (the image is online- just look up Hard rock hotel New Orleans cadaver)Which, mind you, blew away from the wind within a couple of days... exposing him yet again. I've never seen such disrespect for someone who works for the benefit of the city, only to be left rotting away in a cold dark place.
New Orleans didn't get the devastating winds of Katrina. Got a category 1. The failure of the levees after the hurrican caused the damage in New Orleans.
Upcame Hill true the winds were cat 1 but the storm surge was cat 4-5 which is why the levies failed and cause Katrina was a pretty massive hurricane size wise
Connor Mcgregor is gay We’re seeing a similar situation in North Carolina right now with the aftermath of Florence. Hit the state as a Cat 2/1 but was ginormous in size and brought tens of feet of flooding
@@zippity010 You don't have to compare to Hurricane Katrina When that bitch smacked New Orleans within 5 hours my apartment was submerged in 25' of water
Upcame Hill Katrina was a category 4 when it hit New Orleans. Nice try though.
What do you mean....New Orleans got a direct hit when Katrina was a cat 3...that’s what made the levees break
My 4th grade teacher predicted that mess back in 94. I remember her explaining sea level to us and how New Orleans was below it. I grew up in Florida, so obviously hurricanes come up in the conversation. I remember her telling us that if a powerful enough hurricane were to hit NOLA head on, it would be a disaster.
@@ZZerkZZerkNOLA is New Orleans, Louisiana
@@Deadpool784thank you
Same, my 3rd grade teacher explained this to us by drawing a bowl on the chalkboard in the mid-90s.
@@ZZerkZZerk Nola isn't an uncommon or random acronym, you're probably just not from the South.
@@ZZerkZZerkits common here and on tourist merch
Randy Newman wrote a song about this, "Louisiana 1927", about a similar disaster that affected the state. Aaron Neville famously covered it during a Hurricane Katrina benefit concert in 2005. The federal government has known about the precarious position of New Orleans for over a century. It is no mistake that these disasters of neglect happen, and continue to happen.
in the city of New Orlean, they should had Life boats on their tall buildings like you see on cruise ships. and ocean liners.
Katrina was a disaster because the levies broke, not because there weren't enough life boats.
That would get too expensive
Some boats would recede back into the ocean I think. Probably not a good idea lol
@@allyourcode …but when the levies broke they would have been fine if they all had a lifeboat
Image means to much…
God, growing up in Pensacola, I remember Hurricane Ivan and man, that storm was horrifying
Grew up in Mobile brother. Ivan was a beast.
Bayou La Batre, that name is forbidden.
Same here!
I was in Navarre
Ida just hit Louisiana a few weeks ago and I’ll admit that’s the strongest hurricane I’ve witnessed. Katrina had more water, but Ida’s winds were much more destructive. Thibodaux was sad to see, because I attended college there until recently. So much is just gone now
Fun fact: The name Orleans derives from the emperor Aurelian, who ended the Crisis of the Third Century and was granted the title "Restorer of the World" by the Senate after reconquering Rome's lost territories. He was then murdered by his corrupt secretary.
You were right, that fact WAS fun!
Its more that his corrupt secretary was worried he'd be executed by Aurelian for being corrupt, so he convinced the senior command of the army that Aurelian was going to unjustly execute them, and the senior command killed Aurelian believing that they had saved themselves. When they found out what happened they were extremely angry and murdered the secretary as well.
Louisiana. A state plagued by so much corruption it even has a city named after an emperor killed by corruption. Talk about a metaphor
to be pedantic Aurelian didn't end the crisis of the third century, he just reunified Rome. It was Diocletian who ended it
He was asking for it
PBS Nova and BBC Horizon documentaries are the best. 👍🏻
50,000 estimated dead, they only got somewhere around 2000 casualties, which is admittedly awful, but no where near as bad as predicted thank God!
thats because people evacuated
x _ x how?
Ivan probably got them in high gear to prepare for the next.
Yea but the storm in the video prediction is bigger than Katrina was. Mass evacuations helped and the water “only” rose to 19.9 feet in some places. If A bigger surge than Katrina happened than the casualty rate would have/will be much higher, if New Orleans fills to flat capacity and like they said in the video will never be drainable or habitable again. And it will most likely happen sooner than Most people think due to drastic weather changes
It is possible that tens of thousands would have died from the storm surge in New Orleans had Katrina hit it directly as a high cat 4 or cat 5. Instead, Katrina weakened slightly and veered to the east, putting New Orleans on the weaker, western half of the storm. Caused by the failure of the levees, the flooding started after the storm had mostly passed through. The water rose much more slowly than it would have had the levees been over-topped and/or destroyed in the middle of the storm.
Every state should invest in finding weak spots in their state, such as for weather, a
Terror attack, evacuations, or road congession. Would be ready for almost every sutuation and best way to go about it effeciently and safley.
@It’s Jonathan Galatians 5:22-23 Sad, but true!
Lol efficient lol America haha
And then heaven sends an asteroid…
Well they do but idiots don’t listen and approve the funding. Like covid got plenty of warnings but no one listened and the idiots call it a conspiracy. Louisiana is a conservative state and everyone voted against the bonds for protection.
The government gives too much money to the "poor people who don't want to work" and they have no funds left over to do things like this.
That bowl thing is also what happed to some towns in Japan when they were hit with the tsunami. The tsunami waves topped their storm walls and towns just filled up. Many times, when the waves receded, the water was just trapped.
I swear, the old Establishers of towns and such never played with a bowl in some water. Sure, you can float the bowl, and even push down a bit, so the water is right at the edge, but the moment it crests, it's filled and sinking to the bottom
@@schwig44 people hundreds of years ago probably didn't even realize the town was below sea level. Any walls that were built were probably built within the last 100 years as they've started to notice sea levels rising and so on
@@AwesomeSauce7176 People hundreds of years ago drained a coastal swamp to build it. They probably didn’t know it would sink further, but they knew from the beginning that they were going to be somewhere below sea level.
@@AwesomeSauce7176 In the US South at least, many of the native tribes actually never built permanent settlements on the coastal floodplains and the deltas for the thousands of years they inhabited the region. They knew from oral history passed down from generations of experience that those lands were unstable. They also noticed signs from nature such as animals like migratory birds freaking out and instictually heading higher upland and inland since they can sense incoming hurricanes and landslide shifting (relief topography).
My hurricane Katrina rescue kitty died early this year, she was almost 18 years old. I always thought about the other rescues from Katrina, its crazy knowing it was so long ago now.
"The city was built on a swamp". Why? Did no one say, "Hey, this city placement is literally dog shit, let's settle somewhere else".
blame the french, as you can with most things
I think they wanted a city there no matter what. Washington DC was built on a swamp too.
@@humanbeing7504 ::stubs toe:: Damn Frenchies!
There weren't any better locations to guard the entry to the Mississippi River. The one thing they might have done differently is restrict New Orleans to just a fortress, and have the port be further inland. But the earliest settlers would of course want to be near the fort for protection, and the governments of the time either didn't know better or didn't care. But that's all water -under- over the bridge now.
The strategic importance of having a city at the mouth of the mississippi was more important for people back then than the long-term implications centuries later.
Prescient. Thing is, Katrina also wasn't a direct hit on the city. It actually veered east also, just much closer to the city than Ivan. As the winds of the hurricane blow counterclockwise, it pushed Lake Ponchartrain into the city from the north, much as this video explained. But it actually could have been even worse if the hurricane had made a direct hit.
Katrina also weakened quickly at the last minute from a Cat 5 to a strong 3 at landfall. If a 4 or 5 came ashore directly near New Orleans it could be Katrina all over again.
1:01 I love how the hurricane has a human name so when it says "We are temporarily closed due to ivan", it sounds like there's just some poor guy named ivan who somehow fucked everything up
🤣🤣🤣🤣
I guess all them animals you wanted to have it with since you are a furry after all got swept away when Katrina came. Shame Katrina missed the furries though we don’t need misanthropes in this world!
Uhhhhhh
What are politicans and the .0001% Alex
For a Million$
@@miyamotoobliteratesgeneric5235 Who TF are you to judge? If people aren’t hurting anybody, leave them alone.
@Matthew Wehri
Enabling people with a hobby to continue enjoying their hobby that harms nobody?
It's a hole in the ground below sea level surrounded by water.. what do they expect?
Case closed johnson
"When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move, ooh." - Led Zeppellin
"How highs the water, mama?"- Johnny Cash
New Orleans is sinking man and I don't wanna swim
Do you think Plant stole his lyrics like Page stole his riffs?
@@boofert.washington2499 Its an old blues song. Everyone took everyone elses songs
Literally everyone in the Gulf predicted it; Ray Nagin and city council had so mismanaged the money they were given that it was inevitable. I was living in Mobile at the time and everyone knew it was bound to happen.
This was not ray nagin’s fault. This was a issue that the city new was coming decades before it happened. If you lived in the city at the time you would remember we did not take Katrina seriously until last minute (when bob breck announced it on the news) similar to the recent hurricane that hit. So while every one else in the gulf predicted it, in New Orleans it was just another storm.
@@Twinnzel The FEDERAL level, including studies done in the fifties AND the Army Corps. of Engineers knew it. This was a Federal decision to do nothing. It's on the Feds, no some local city council.
That's why Nagin is in prison.
For Christ sake! You have to walk UP a flight of stairs to get to the Mississippi River. Hours of binge drinking didn't stop me from instantly recognizing that was a horrible idea.
So was building a city in a desert, building one in tornado alley, building a city in the tundra, building on a mountainside with mudslides, or in a forest prone to fire or an earthquake zone.
@@speralta8243 Bad, and illogical / intellectually dishonest argument
I live in a hurricane-prone area(1) and are close to the sea(2), but we're mostly fine because we're not under sea level (I'm about 50 decimetres from sea level at the moment) and we have some islands / a sweeping coast protecting us from the worst of storm surges.
The Dutch live below sea level(1) but they're mostly fine because they're not in a place with significant tectonic activity or hurricane risk.
New Orleans is not only below sea level(1), it is also sandwiched by bodies of water that are above the city itself (2), right next to the sea (3), and is in a hurricane-prone area (4). It's just a disaster waiting to happen. I imagine there might be ways around this, of course.
@@takumiyamamiya8877 Thank you for sharing your opinion. I live there. I live it. Say what you will, add whatever arguments, I don't care. I'm not here to prove or disprove anything. Good bye.
@@speralta8243 You may live there, but it helps no-one and most especially not you for you to bury your head in the sand, go "IT'S FINE! IT'S FINE! (insert whataboutism here)", and pretend that the issue doesn't exist or that it's not that big of an issue- the flood risks of New Orleans are a known issue.
If you truly care about the place you live in, you would look into the geographic or ecological issues it faces and try to see what you can do to mitigate them.
There's very little that can be done with New Orleans' elevation problems outside of levelling the areas currently under sea level, filling them up with soil, and then building new districts on top of them.
But you CAN mitigate storm surges, for example, by encouraging marshland/mangrove growth expansion to act as natural storm barriers. It's what spared us, in my locality, from the worst of the storm surges when Hurricane Haiyan (Yolanda) hit. And we were EXACTLY in the eye of that supertyphoon.
@@takumiyamamiya8877 Actually, we don’t have tectonic activity and hurricanes at all. Though, in the province Groningen, they dig for natural gas which results in the ground sinking causing ‘earthquakes’ these are rather small on the Richter scale and the area is mostly sparsely populated.
We do not get hurricanes and we don’t have to worry about ‘storm surge’(for now at least) But we do deal with windstorms, these are known to cause damage to roofs, slowing traffic eg. bu that’s really it.
building new orleans on a swamp is like that castle joke in monty python's holy grail
Roy Nagin (seen here) was part of the tragedy. He rejected Amtrak’s offer to send a relief train into the city over the trestle from the west. Most New Orleanians don’t need cars because of our terrific streetcar system. Buses were unavailable -their drivers were saving their families.
The second part of this horror was the failure NOT of the levees but of the New Orleans Levee Board. The three canals, Orleans, 17th Street and London Avenue, all had pumping stations to suck waters out of the city into Lake Pontchartrain.
The failure here has been hidden: the New Orleans Levee Board failed to approve the requests by the U.S. Corps of Engineers for locks.
Great point, alwyas wanted to know what the local city officials had in mind. People blaim the national government but ignore local
growing up I always heard stories about how awful and corrupt the local government in that area was@@soolly357
“George Bush doesn’t care about black people” Kanye West
I remember the look on Michael Myers face, it was absolutely priceless.
Michael Myers kills people of all races as long as it’s Halloween night
Funniest video ever
No politician cares about anybody, except for a brief period just before needing them to vote.
@@alexmaclean1 95% accurate
Look all politicians care about people
Who else is gonna pay there taxes and spend money on there businesses?
Cuz the politicians dodge tax and do each other favors rather then charge
New Orleans can survive fine with adequate levees. They held during Ida. Still, I wouldn’t invest long term in the soup bowl.
It wont do anything. The city is like venice and sinks every year. Just pouring more money into a sinkhole
The more you think about it the more new orleans becomes like a soft drink. Pleasing because of the unique taste, but long term? It's eventually bad for your health.
This was clear concise and well done reporting. Full and complete reporting. Forgot how good reporting was back in the day compared to now.
This video is 10 years old, and yet I somehow clicked on it at the exact moment it reached 1 million views.
And now it’s at just over 1.5M
imagine building a coastal city below sea level and being surprised when it gets flooded
Exactly!! Talk about the earth trying to correct itself.
It can be done just look at the Netherlands
Actually there was very good reason to build a city there
ruclips.net/video/dVpEEBcE8tc/видео.html
Ok now do that with half a country and you got the Netherlands, who’s been successfully fighting water back for centuries
It's just that they neglected infrastructure for decades. If they had listened to the engineers Katrina would not have happened. New Orleans is better now but still not completely safe. So far no one is willing to put up the money to make it fully safe.
I remember seeing this only a year or so before Katrina and thinking that maybe I just imagined the show in my mind(?) because it seemed too much of a coincidence.
To think that this aired months before Katrina, and also to think that two of the people interviewed here, Mr. Maestri and Dr. Van Heerden were sacked for calling the state and federal governments out for their inaction after the storm ended.
The issue was the levee failure (engineering problem)
The levees actually weren’t overtopped, there was a blowout from the bottom!
That's not how that works.
The N. East side of a hurricane is the strongest, and they rotate counterclockwise(east->west). Katrina went to the east of N. Orleans and pushed all of the surge west into Orleans. That literally piled water up on the levees until they were breached. There was no "bottom blowout" or an explosion. It's simple physics.
However, as is seen on dam breaks, once the water flows over the top(or through) erosion increases exponentially. This makes things like levees and dams "U-out" as the water flows through. That can make it seem like the bottom failed, but that's simply not what happened.
“On August 29, 2005, flood walls and levees catastrophically failed throughout the metro area. Some collapsed well below design thresholds (17th Street and London Canals). Others collapsed after a brief period of overtopping (Industrial Canal) caused scouring or erosion of the earthen levee walls. “
Soooo both happened
@@timgleason2527 You just confirmed exactly what I said.
@@timgleason2527 That doesn't mean it blew out, it means the weight was higher than the levee itself could handle.
There was a sand body at depth the USACE had recognized but engineers ignored. That sand body fluidized and blew out from the bottom of the levee.
i saw this a few months before Katrina hit. When it was moving into new orleans I knew the city was going to be obliterated.
apparently "the experts" knew too. as well, bush cancelled some hundreds of millions in funding to the army corps of engineers (bad ass btw) to reinforce the levees. coinkseedinksee
@@murb2586 Wrong. The New Orleans Levee Board denied the funding to the US Army Corps of Engineers for the floodgates they wanted to build to control the open mouths of the canals which drained into Lake Pontchartrain. 20 feet of water surged into the lake through the Pass of the Rigolets and rushed into the city in hours.
@@annbush1826 @Ann Bush www.govexec.com/defense/2005/09/ex-army-corps-officials-say-budget-cuts-imperiled-flood-mitigation-efforts/20033/
"Mike Parker, the former head of the Army Corps of Engineers, was forced to resign in 2002 over budget disagreements with the White House. He clashed with Mitch Daniels, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, which sets the administration's annual budget goals."
thanks for the extra info
Sometimes I can't tell if the RUclips algorithm is run by a primordial Oracle or if the AI chooses to troll humans instead of destroying us.
Why not both?
Maybe the AI became too powerful, and RUclips couldn't control it. So instead they demonetize random channels to appease their great machine God.
@Parker Productions
And you need to realize when someone's making an obvious joke.
@scarletbard6511 this post was not a joke
Humanity has a really bad habit of placing major cities near the coastline. It made sense back in the day, and even sort of now with ports and trade, but those areas are gonna be in big trouble over the next 150 years. As an individual I say run for the hills, build on high and dry land
One issue exacerbating this in the US: The federal government subsidizes flood insurance nationwide and refuses to adjust rates based on global warming/rising sea levels. If they either adjusted it or just had a more free market system to let insurers adjust we'd soon see a lot fewer development companies building houses that are soon to be underwater.
@@AlexanderRM1000 if the government incentivized more people to move to the Great Plains and rocky mountains it would help a little bit…wouldn’t save everyone but at least it would help populate those states and get their economies strong, because the country is going to be relying on the economies of inland states to support economic recovery/mitigation efforts of the costal states from climate change. Lot of good land out there, the dakotas, Utah, Montana. Nice places
No, this isn't a "bad habit". Most of these cities are hundreds of years old, built and expanded long before climate change, rising sea levels, or extreme weather ever came into consideration during planning. Back then, sea lanes were THE way to get anything anywhere (still kinda is), so that's where people went.
@@kaigao4842 good for trade, bad for ease of invasion, disease, overcrowdedness, natural disasters.
As a kid, I remember Ivan being a close hit, and knowing that it was probably only a matter of time... Katrina could have easily been prevented.
The result was a disruption of entire populations and that was the plan all along. Cleaned clock on whole groups of thugs including the police dept. (remember when N. O. cops were KILLING other cops???) take the city down.
@@Dwightstjohn-fo8ki Are you trying to say that the hurricane was
1) manufactured
2) intentionally made in order to kill people?
You dropped your tinfoil hat 🤦
@UCpWSVuv7sahnNHREAjXMGrg no human could create a hurricane. We can make them worse with global warming, but not create them. If you think Mother Nature is controlled by us than you are the kinda person that probably gets killed by it in some kind of natural disaster.
@@Dwightstjohn-fo8ki you need an metrology class
Easily prevented? Um no, you can't stop a hurricane, and secondly the city was already super developed by the late 90s that it would take DECADES of relocating and resources to SLIGHTLY improve the flooding.
The flooding was inevitable the only thing that could be done is improve forecast models and teach people how to prepare and evacuate.
It was a cover story on Scientific American magazine in October 2001, about 4 years before Katrina. They had a detailed map showing what would be flooded. So when Bush said no one could have predicted it, people already predicted it and published a detailed report on it.
To be fair no one predicted it on the national/federal level. The people of NO or the city engineers should have expected it.
@@soolly357 someone else in these comments mentions the city having an assessment done by Dutch engineers, who suggested various measures to take. None of these were taken as the state said it was too expensive. This is third-hand knowledge at least so you should definitely check for yourself if it sounds interesting
"No one could have predicted it"
Huh... that rings a bell... I feel like I heard that from another president recently
That's why rapepublicans are trash
Shit, The Tragically Hip wrote the song "New Orleans is Sinking" in the late 80's. "New Orleans is sinkin, man and I dont wanna swim"
Huh, I didn't think a Canadian band cared that much
@@moblinmajorgeneral they are Canadian
Lol Canada is full of people just like us XD
As much as the poeple of America are a force to be reconed with on the homefeild, is an unspoken truth we got our ass handed to us in 1812 by Canada
"Yeah lets get some land, walk those dirty brith lovers back into there boats"
Canadians: "hay eh, those colonists are getting kinda wild eh. We should show em why the british let us be our own settlement."
"Wanna burn down there white house? Show em we mean business eh?"
And they marched us back and burned the white house and left
Not forced home, not retreated
Fires over eh, lets go home kinda chilly eh XD
@@donovanulrich348 Canadian here. The war of 1812 was a military stalemate. USA stopped 3 of 5 incursions Canada stopped 3 of 5 incursions and we both burned eachothers capitals to the ground in the battles of York and DC. Nobody handed anybody their asses.
Led Zeppelin beat them to it by a few decades with "When The Levee Breaks"...
Released in 1971.
We knew this would happen before Katrina hit... the people of New Orleans just ignored it, and the rescue was bungled.
The city can spend 100's of millions of dollars on a stadium, but they couldn't spend on proper levy system
Government corruption at its finest
@@evanhuizenga8626 Also the city is a little too chocolate, so why would they care.
It’s almost like our leaders know all they need to know, but are more concerned with getting rich & stupid busybody social issues.
Sorta, you'll find the problem is often times when the issue becomes politicized, meaning the people who want to help get grouped up with the greedy kind of politician. If you want to change anything large scale, you need money, which means more taxes, which means you are a freedom hating antiamerican democrat.
This is exactly what politicians want. You to be pissed at liberals so you focus on fighting with someone who probably wants the same things as you. Also social issues are important, every American is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
@@davidreeding9176 Lmao, you've got it so wrong. People wouldn't mind higher taxes if it ever got back to them. People hate democrats because they raise taxes, and you literally never see that tax raise in action. The money always mysteriously "disappears" into these projects that are supposed to help reduce poverty and crime, but every goddamn time the poverty and crime goes up instead of down. And suddenly you're paying 50% of your income in taxes, to live in a fucking nightmare realm like San Francisco.
The mayor of New Orleans was a democrat before, during, and after Katrina. New Orleans city has a 5% income tax rate, that you have to pay just for living in the city, on top of state and federal taxes. That is also a very high tax rate for a city, fyi. And yet, none of that tax money ended up going into Levee maintenance. HMMMMMM.
At 3:21, him being too near that spinning pump is giving me live leak vibes. Don't ever stand too near a spinning machinery, especially one as big as this.
Don't worry. When I lived there most of the pumps did not work, even if they had been installed. The parish levee boards skimmed off most of the money designated for pumps.
I remember watching this before Katrina! I was amazed at the time that this program wasn’t mentioned when the storm arrived in ‘05.
Not only predicted by PBS BUT after I came back home from New Orleans back in the '80's I found a great article in the National Geographic about the problems of erosion etc. and flooding in New Orleans. Anyone else see that article? That's why, when I watched the people being sheltered during Katrina I knew, I just knew, they would die. It was tremendously heartbreaking for me to watch. And yes, call me a conspiracy nut but I believe there was a land grab!
What do you mean by land grab?
Why in the hell was New Orleans built in that location in the first place?
Quad8track
Perfect spot for the French to trade with native Americans and control the Mississippi in the 1700s it was the best land imaginable for profit at the time and was believed to be protected from hurricanes
Now days It seems like a horrible location for a city
But new Orleans benefited being at the mouth of the Mississippi river and prospered in the 1800s until 1860s civil war came.
Understood but the 9th ward was built much later and intended to be cheap, low-income housing. Then all of the engineering involved to build levees to protect it. Just seemed like a really dumb idea to begin with.
Quad8track At the time it was a good port
its built around the superdome which is a natural formation
Settlements needed water for trade, transportation, and farming.
In the past, such storms weren't as frequent as they are now so back then it was the perfect spot.
Does it bother anyone how New Orleans is known for its art and music? Probably the last place I'd want my art archived.
@TheYumsoda you make a valid point! However, let's not forget the works hanging up in houses that are not properly protected are at risk of ruin.
@TheYumsoda Just to clarify, I'm not trying to put down on NOLA, every place seems to have some risk. All four corners of North America are either faced with wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, flash floods, blizzards, or a combination of these. Nothing lasts forever.
Nashville is more known for it's music, the junction boxes on the sidewalks play music
@@christopherhall5361 Nashville is known for country music. New Orleans is WORLD famous for JAZZ. It's no secret and not up for debate.
@@williamhickey9200 Oh, they're going to do anything they can to downplay that fact, I can promise.
It’s creepy how accurate this video is.
Humans, lord's of "if living here doesn't kill all of us, it's a good place to raise children", just like loving near volcanos and faultlines.
well in the old times they didn’t think much about it
It's just another mountain until it explodes out of nowhere
No matter where you go, you will experience some natural disaster
@@jayasmrmore3687 Yeah, you're also technically you're still likely to be shot anywhere in the US, but going to the heart of Chicago and yelling the N word might adjust your chances. Just as setting up shop on a faultline or building a city next to a volcano do. The idea is the restrain the risk, cause when you build a city below the waterline and a hurricane floods it the question has to be asked.
@@Srparisher but still, if not hurricanes then tornadoes, if not tornadoes then wildfires etc
one thing too remember is that it will happen again, another powerful hurricane will someday hit new orleans.
Touché
Unfortunately they have a storm this weekend 😕 8/29/21
Yep, could be tomorrow. :/ Watching from St Petersburg, FL. Hoping it doesn't veer this way also.
This aged like gold!
And it has. Hurricane Ida slapped the hell out of the gulf coast.. 🥲
“PBS” should read: “Federal officials”, people actually responsible for doing better beforehand.
This just makes the unpreparedness of the government to deal with Katrina even more unforgivable.
People who survived Katrina are still living in FEMA trailers today. No help from our government but we can give other countries shitloads of money and artillery.
How 'bout don't let anyone build in a flood plain?
More accurately, the local and state government totally "f-ed" up. The feds did what they could, but the "government" is the absolute worst way to do ANYTHING.
Welcome to America. Where priorities are fkd and so are we.
You must have missed the fact the mayor at the time stole the fed funding. People of new orleans keep electing complete crooks
About one year prior to Katrina, I attended a symposium and conference celebrating twenty years of the Environmental Law Program at Tulane, lead by Oliver Houck. I distinctly remember the name of one of the round-table discussions: Global Warming...Are We Under Water Yet? Katrina wasn't the worst case scenario for the 2000's...far from it. And now that we are in the 2010's and approaching the 2020's, the rise in mean sea level and the average ocean temp variables have only gotten worse. I don't think that it's too fire to make the prediction that the next "Big One" may indeed be the hurricane that starts the rest of the country seriously questioning whether New Orleans should be "abandoned".
Louis Byron I remember reading if Tampa gets hit they're under water
AccessDenied well, they're taking the brunt of Irma tommorow and on the back end of it the wind direction is going to give them problems with surge .
AccessDenied yep, there is this video going around called project Phoenix. It’s about a worse case scenario for the Tampa area
I've been saying for years to people that one day New Orleans will be New Atlantis. I would guess by 2105, 100 years post katrina. Of course i won't see it, but i think it'll happen. That superdome will be a giant fish bowl, and you will need to go deep diving to go to bourbon street.
youtuber now that freaks me out^
Last night my dad looked at the tv. Apparently another one hit just recently. And he just goes "I dont understand why they keep rebuilding. Its below sea level and on the coast whats the point" and honestly yeah tbh
Sunk cost fallacy.
Hello! I’m a 6th grade science teacher and I’m creating a video for my class about Hurricane Katrina. May I use short clips from this video to highlight NOLA before, during, and after Katrina?
They didn’t predict shit they were just stating the obvious.
In the first 30 seconds he is walking in front of the St. Louis Catholic Cathedral, which is oddly enough 2 blocks away from Bourbon Street. Probably the quietest part in the French Quarter.
I went recently and I can confirm. It’s crazy how loud and quiet some places are
The mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin was never held to account for criminal negligence in failing to provide adequate barriers to flooding. He was convicted of other, corruption-related crimes in 2014, but amazingly remained Mayor of New Orleans until 2010.
He stayed mayor because of the "chocolate" (as Ray Nagin called them himself) IDIOTS of New Orleans that vote for ANYONE with a "D" behind their name. Look at the trash that's New Orleans' mayor currently in 2021!
Where did they get the Music @ 0:34?? So over the top LOL
Hurricane Ivan was a test run,for trying to hit The N.,O. Katrina,was the stamp
james bondero what do u mean? U think it was a man-made evacuation???