Day By Day

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

More Katrina Revisionism

Knight-Ridder reports:

(KRT) - Hurricane Katrina might have battered New Orleans and the Gulf Coast as a considerably weaker system than the Category 4 tempest initially reported.

New, preliminary information, compiled by hurricane researchers, suggests the system struck southeast Louisiana on Aug. 29 with peak-sustained winds of 115 mph. That would have made it a Category 3 storm, still a major hurricane but a step down from the enormous destructive force of a Category 4.

Katrina might have further downgraded to a strong Category 1 system with 95-mph winds, when it punched water through New Orleans' levees, severely flooding most of the city and killing hundreds. The levees were designed to withstand a Category 3 storm. [emphasis mine]

Read it here.

We have been told by the MSM, quoting government sources, that the levee system could handle Cat 3 storms, but not Cat 4. But if Katrina was only a cat 3, that analysis is, as they say, no longer operative. And, if it was only a Cat 1 storm when the levee broke the questions begin to proliferate. Just what was going on with New Orleans' levees?

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