Scientific American Predicted New Orleans Flood

7 September 2005 - 7:00am

Scientific American releases its prescient article from 2001, titled "Drowning New Orleans." The article predicts "a major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands," as a result of land use policies.

From the 2001 article:

"New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms. The low-lying Mississippi Delta, which buffers the city from the gulf, is also rapidly disappearing. A year from now another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh--an area the size of Manhattan--will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes. Each loss gives a storm surge a clearer path to wash over the delta and pour into the bowl, trapping one million people inside and another million in surrounding communities. Extensive evacuation would be impossible because the surging water would cut off the few escape routes. Scientists at Louisiana State University (L.S.U.), who have modeled hundreds of possible storm tracks on advanced computers, predict that more than 100,000 people could die."

Full Story: Drowning New Orleans
Source: Scientific American, September 7, 2005
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