The RisingSun Post

                               CHAPTER VI The water wasn’t high enough to overflow I-walls further to the west in two city drainage channels- the 17th Street and London Avenue canals. But as the floodwaters rose in the canals, the telltale gaps opened up. Wall sections soon collapsed in three places, and there was no stopping the water from inundating central New Orleans. Problems ranged from errors in designs of individual structures to the system’s basic architecture.  The levees, walls and floodgates were supposed to act in concert to repel flooding. The geography of New Orleans exposes it to the vagaries of nature. The city sits in a low-lying river delta mostly below sea level in a dangerous hurricane zone. It is surrounded by water, nestled in a curve of the Mississippi River, with Lake Pontchartrain immediately to the north and Lake Borgne and Chandeleur Sound to the east.  All of these bodies of water are, to varying degrees, open to the Gulf of Mexico. But when a hurricane str

                                CHAPTER V Decapitation, we call it. Founded on the bend of the Mississippi River, New Orleans was claimed for Louis 14 in 1699, making it the only U.S. city in which French was the prevailing language for more than 100 years. The area was slow to settle, but a trade route by water was established, with crops of indigo, rice, and tobacco all produced on Louisiana plantations. When Louisiana became a U.S. territory in 1803, some Creoles resented the upstart Americans who arrived in their city.  The military came in, and they set up evac, medvac, and other different units. They were stationed throughout the city anywhere from the Westbank, Convention Center, Superdome, at various points of the Interstate, and anyone that needed medical attention was sent to one of those. Evacuees received hepatitis shots, tetanus shots, and received any needed medical assistance. The National Guard came around. They were the ones who would drive around every day. They would