Democracy Now! talked with two journalists who have written about the hurricane hazard facing New Orleans: Mark Fischetti, contributing editor of Scientific American, and John McQuaid of the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

(I mentioned the T-P series in an earlier post).

An excerpt:

JOHN MCQUAID: ... There are two main problems. One is that the coastline, the entire region of New Orleans and its surrounding areas are built on is sinking and eroding due to a number of different factors. It's been doing that essentially since the people started living there. Over the years, it's gotten lower. They have built levees and other structures to prevent floodwaters from hurricanes and heavy rains and other things from staying in this area. Get them out and keep them from penetrating into it. But the problem continues to get worse. So, the government is constantly playing catch-up to construct levees, to build up existing structures, to build new structures, and essentially they never caught up.

AMY GOODMAN: We're also joined by Mark Fischetti, contributing editor of Scientific American. You wrote the piece, The Drowning of New Orleans, warning that massive re-engineering of Southeastern Louisiana could save New Orleans from a catastrophic flood. Talk more about this. Talk about what you are seeing today and what you were warning, not one, not two, was it more than three years ago in 2001?

MARK FISCHETTI: Yeah. Right. It was 2001, and a lot of what that was predicated on was actually a plan that was put together in 1998 by a number of local scientists, engineers, and the governor's office of Louisiana, which basically showed with computer models what would happen if a hurricane came in this direction and hit New Orleans directly. The models pretty much predicted exactly what's happened, so this whole group of experts down there came up with a pretty consolidated plan of four or five major steps that should be taken to protect the city and the delta as much as possible. The plan came out and really didn't get a whole lot of response on a national level. It was an expensive program, as you might have imagined, and it sort of was just left there.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And John McQuaid, your articles were amazingly describing the scenarios of the experts that you talked to about the potential catastrophe in New Orleans from a direct hit from a hurricane. It's amazing how precisely those predictions have turned out to be as a result of this hurricane. Could you talk about what you warned then of the potential -- how the disaster would play out?

JOHN MCQUAID: Yes. All the experts looked at the basic topography and they saw that New Orleans was on average five feet below sea level. The lake is one-and-a-half feet above sea level, and so -- all that's between them is the levee system, so if the levee system is over topped by a large storm surge from a hurricane or if it is breached, as happened in this case, then you get a flood the bowl situation where water just flows into the city from the lake, basically until it's at the same level in both, and that means essentially the entire city of New Orleans under w ater. There's no easy way to get rid of that water. In most flood situations, in natural disasters, floods like the tsunami or river floods, the water will rise very quickly and then it will disappear relatively quickly. In this situation, it's just stuck there, and there's no way to get it out. Electricity that powers the pumps is down. The pumps are inundated. They don't work. So, you have a situation of standing water, and as was mentioned at the top of the program, you have all of the waste, garbage, dead bodies, some of it quite toxic, is just floating around in that. So, and it gets worse the longer it goes on. So, the corps of engineers is desperately trying to get that water out of there, but again, it's the type of thing where you have to cut holes in the levee and pump the water out, and that just takes a very long time. So, it's a very unique and horrible situation.