Another Shocking Event [That We All Knew About In Advance]: Katrina

This event was about as painfully obvious as one could be. I live in the Midwest and we have our own issues to be sure but, even as a little kid my grandmother told us about what might happen if a hurricane hit New Orleans directly since after all, it was sinking. It wasn’t a secret and there were dozens of stories written discussing the subject like here here here here.

Statistically speaking, New Orleans gets brushed with a hurricane / named storm once every 3.66 years and takes a direct hit once every 12.64 years – it’s due to be hit again by 2014. In the 2000’s alone, New Orleans had three hurricanes foreshadowing Katrina [ Isidore, Ivan, Cindy ] Hell there’s an entire wiki article just on this subject alone: Here. It was simply going to happen, and when it did it was harder to watch than the slow motion steam roller scene from the first Austin Powers.

The first official prediction of landfall near New Orleans was made in the afternoon on Friday, August 26th. Three days later on the 29th – it made landfall near New Orleans. Three days later. You can bitch and complain about Bush’s [read:FEMA] response or Nagin’s or Blanco’s, but we all knew this could and probably would happen and worse probably will happen again. Stop pretending to be shocked.