[RayChuang88]

What I find interesting is the newest issue of Popular Science has suggested a number of very good ideas for make New Orleans less vulnerable to another Category 4-5 hurricane strike.

Three of the suggestions from the magazine are probably the best:

1. Create a series of water barrier gates (similar to what the city of Venice in Italy is now building) in open water that will reduce or eliminate the storm surge from the Gulf of Mexico northeast of the city.

2. Create a series of barrier walls inside the city, with particular attention to hospitals and emergency management centers. That way, instead of flooding a whole area you only flood a far smaller area.

3. Create a series of supersized under city level sewers connected to high-mounted water pumping stations, with the pumping stations having their own generators to operate independently of the power grid.

Let's see if the folks in Louisiana will take these suggestions to heart.

[caryatid]

storm surge from the Gulf of Mexico northeast of the city. Someone needs to get a map ... or, perhaps, a magnifying glass!

That is not the Gulf of Mexico, "northeast of the city"! It is a body of water forever known as Lake Pontchartrain.