Eight / twenty-nine / oh five

Remember the Alamo. Remember the Maine. Remember Pearl Harbor. Remember the World Trade Center by the mnemonic code 9/11 (through its similarity to the emergency phone number 911).

But how will we remember New Orleans, practically destroyed when hurricane Katrina struck it and and dumped Lake Pontchartrain into it on August 29, 2005?

Eight / twenty-nine / oh five was not an unforeseen natural disaster. Last year Joel K. Bourne, Jr. predicted the event with terrifying accuracy in the October 2004 National Geographic. He even told the month it would happen. Only the year was left to the reader's imagination. It was not a question of whether it would happen; it was only a queston of when.

For decades, plans to halt the erosion of the delta, or strengthen the levees that kept New Orleans dry, or both, were made and then curtailed or abandoned for lack of money. Now the plans are moot, the cost of the destruction is far greater than the cost would have been to prevent it, and the death toll may well exceed that of 9/11.

How does New Orleans today resemble Iraq?

• Planning was inadequate.
  
• Financing was and is inadequate.
  
• There aren't enough National Guard people.
  
• Necessary resources are not being provided.
  
• There's no official civilian body count.
  
• It didn't have to happen.