The RisingSun Post

                                     CHAPTER IV Colonial policy, and subsequent state policy, sought to maintain structural defenses. New Orleans’s topographic condition has rendered it extremely susceptible to both river floods and hurricane storm surge over the years. Wind and waves lifted homes off their piers and piled them up along the levees that lined the lower river. Thousands of people were camped out on the outside ramps of the Superdome. About 100 dogs were tied up to the ticket window. The National Guard was able to keep the people relatively quiet during daylight hours, but apparently, after dark, people started to get anxious and panic. They then became rowdy and dangerous.  Eventually, lots of people came into the city to help. For the first several days there was nothing, and then the boats began to appear. They were lined up on Canal Street ready to go out and rescue people who had been stranded in the flood waters. A battery-powered radio announced that the storm woul

                                                CHAPTER 3 Katrina’s eye was still hours away, but parts of New Orleans were already flooding. Katrina’s eye moved past New Orleans at about nine a.m., approximately twelve miles east of the center of town. Across the city, a thousand others were also dead- or about to be. In many places, bodies floated in the streets, dead tissue beginning to bloat in the dirty flow. By early afternoon, the wind and rain were letting up and the sky brightening. The city continued taking on water like a great sinking ship. Its flood defenses had been all but destroyed. Earthen barriers protecting the east side had been overtopped and breached in dozens of locations. Canal levees within the city proper were breached at dozens of points. The swollen lake could take another two days to drain out, and as it did, most of the city would flood. Water was flowing freely into the city, and the flood would continue until someone found a way to stop it. The r

                                      CHAPTER II         The day hike along the river trail proved to be hungersome, as they stopped to prepare their backpacking meals to eat. After lunch, they continued down the trail that lead through a mosaic of forest gaps and tall, healthy trees. The family spotted an eastern bluebird, a blue-winged, orange –breasted thrush that roams in small groups and gleams its diet of insects and small fruits from the ground or from low shrubs. The trail then descended rather steeply to reach the reservoir banks. Starting south of the river, a morass of logs, branches, silt, and other debris stubbornly impeded a 150-mile channel southward for hundred of years.  The flooding from the main artery of the river sometimes resulted in “raft lakes”, or outlets that became impounded by a combination of the logjam and the raised riverbed. The depth of the raft lakes constantly fluctuated with the river’s whims. Today, this region offers dozens of miles for hiking. The