www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf?/washingaway/harmsway_1.html
FATEFUL DECISION: Nearly 300 years ago, Jean Baptiste le Moyne, sieur de Bienville, settled along a strip of land between the Mississippi River and the marshes sou th of Lake Pontchartrain. While the location would prove ideal for comme rce, it left the city vulnerable to hurricanes and flooding. IN HARM'S WAY By John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein Staff writers On the night of Aug. The sea rose in the darkness an d trapped hundreds of summer vacationers visiting the popular resort. Wi nd-driven waves 8 feet high raked the island and tore it in two. LAST ISLAND'S WALTZ As hotel guests waltzed away the night, gale winds began whipping outside .
Click for photos/maps By morning, everything standing upright was broken, splintered and washed away, including all of the island's trees, its casinos, a hotel and the summer homes of wealthy New Orleans families. Many were crushed and others drowned after being struck by wreckage in the maelstrom. Claire Rose Champagne's great-great-grandmother Amelie Voisin and a baby daughter were among those lost in the storm. Other family members surviv ed and eventually abandoned Last Island today the Isles Dernieres archip elago for Dulac, a fishing village 30 miles inland up Bayou Grand Caillo u But there was no escape from the storms, which have followed the fami ly inland over five generations. In 1909, Champagne's fisherman grandfather was out at sea when another hu rricane lashed the Louisiana coast with 110-mph winds that propelled a 1 0-foot wave of water through Dulac. "My grandmother and (her) children were left at home and saved themselves by climbing into the attic of the house," she said. "Forty people tied ropes to the house and to two oak trees, then all stayed in the attic wo men and children and some men. After the hurricane the government sent s ome tents for people to live in." Her grandfather made it back alive, bu t about 350 people along the coast died in the storm. Hurricanes are a common heritage for Louisiana residents, who until the p ast few decades had little choice in facing a hurricane but to ride it o ut and pray. Today, billions of dollars worth of levees, sea walls, pumping systems an d satellite hurricane tracking provide a comforting safety margin that h as saved thousands of lives. But modern technology and engineering mask an alarming fact: In the gener ations since those storms menaced Champagne's ancestors, south Louisiana has been growing more vulnerable to hurricanes, not less. Sinking land and chronic coastal erosion in part the unintended byproduct s of flood-protection efforts have opened dangerous new avenues for even relatively weak hurricanes and tropical storms to assault areas well in land. "There's no doubt about it," said Windell Curole, general manager of the South Lafourche Levee District, who maintains a hurricane levee that enc ircles Bayou Lafourche from Larose to the southern tip of Golden Meadow. The Gulf of Mexico is, in effect, probably 20 miles closer to us than it was in 1965 when H urricane Betsy hit." These trends are the source of a complex and growing threat to everyone l iving in south Louisiana and to the regional economy and culture: The combination of sinking land and rising seas has put the Mississippi River delta as much as 3 feet lower relative to sea level than it was a century ago, and the process continues. That means hurricane floods dri ven inland from the Gulf have risen by corresponding amounts. Storms tha t once would not have had much impact can now be devastating events, and flooding penetrates to places where it rarely occurred before. The prob lem also is slowly eroding levee protection, cutting off evacuation rout es sooner and putting dozens of communities and valuable infrastructure at risk of being wiped off the map. Coastal erosion has shaved barrier islands to slivers and turned marshl and to open water, opening the way for hurricane winds and flooding to m ove inland. Hurricanes draw their strength from the sea, so they quickly weaken and begin to dissipate when they make landfall. Hurricanes movin g over fragmenting marshes toward the New Orleans area can retain more s trength, and their winds and large waves pack more speed and destructive power. Though protected by levees designed to withstand the most common storms , New Orleans is surrounded by water and is well below sea level at many points. A flood from a powerful hurricane can get trapped for weeks ins ide the levee system. Emergency officials concede that many of the struc tures in the area, including newer high-rise buildings, would not surviv e the winds of a major storm. The large size of the area at risk also makes it difficult to evacuate the million or more people who live in the area, putting tens of thousan ds of people at risk of dying even with improved forecasting and warning s The American Red Cross will not put emergency shelters in the area be cause it does not want to put volunteers or evacuees in danger. The Army Corps of Engineers says the chance of New Orleans-area levees being topped is remote, but admits the estimate is based on 40-year-old calculations. An independent analysis based on updated data and computer modeling done for The Times-Picayune suggests the risk to some areas, i ncluding St. Charles parishes and eastern New Orleans, m ay be greater than the corps estimates. Corps officials say the agency i s studying the problem with an updated model. It all adds up to a daunting set of long-term economic, engineering and p olitical challenges just to maintain the status quo. Higher levees, a ma ssive coastal-restoration program and even a huge wall across New Orlean s are all being proposed. Without extraordinary measures, key ports, oil and gas production, one of the nation's most important fisheries, the u nique bayou culture, the historic French Quarter and more are at risk of being swept away in a catastrophic hurricane or worn down by smaller on es.
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