Tuesday, August 22, 2006

When The Levees Broke

Did anyone get a chance to watch this last night?? When I had heard Spike Lee was getting ready to release a documentary of Katrina on HBO, I had the timer on my digital box set for it because I really wanted to see the "behind the scenes" look to what really went on down there. Most of the information was a repeat (from CNN) but the interviews with the resident that lived through it were really interesting to listen too. The part about the government in 1965 blowing up the levee so the poor area would flood and the nicer areas of town wouldn't was a bit shocking. Some of the residents swore up and down they all heard explosions at the same time,the same day. Interesting. Dave was saying maybe people should have thought a bit before moving in an area of dike levees and 6 ft below sea level. I told him that those people believed that nothing would happen that those levees would protect them from danger, that's pretty much what the whole town thought.

He must have forgotten that that big LONG 10 mile or so hill across the street from us in our neighbor's field is a dike levee so I guess we're pretty stupid then too for not thinking?? What a moron. lol The city we live in is considered a VALLEY. I think he forgot that too. We live on the higher ground (when we drive to town it feels like you are looking down on town) but when it floods, the water table rises and in 1993 the basement of this house flooded and the old owners had to do a total remodel on it. Yes the dike has protected our house from any major damage but if it was to fail, uhhh we could be screwed. Here's a picture of town about 10 miles from my house in 1929 before they built the dike here. It flooded about 3-4 more times before they finally built something to protect our town. Here's a pic from my front porch of the dike across the street from my place. That white building is a water deal where they check our ground water but you can kinda see how the ground behind it is higher. You might be able to tell better on the pic of Alex getting on the bus below. If we get alot of snow, it's awesome to take the kids over there and let them sled down it. Since we've lived here, it's flooded about 5 times on the other side. It's pretty unbelieveable. There are 2 churches right over the hill and they both look like they are icebergs in the ocean. The rest of it you could take a nice boat through if you wanted but it would be nothing compared to the flooding in New Orleans. The 2nd part of the documentary airs tonight if anyone is interested.

1 comment:

S said...

I cant find it - prob not on canadian tv shoot