Isaac Socks New Orleans
Hurricane Doing a Heck of a Job in Flooding Area

(New Orleans, LA) — Seven years ago, Hurricane Katrina, a Category 3 storm that had once been a Category 5 hurricane, battered New Orleans, flooding the city and the Gulf Coast, killing over 1800 people and causing $108 billion in damages. So it was a twist of cruel irony when New Orleans residents woke up this morning to find that Hurricane Isaac, a Category 1 hurricane, was battering them with wind, rain and tidal surges.

Isaac eerily followed the course set by Katrina in 2005, and late on August 28, Isaac made landfall. Unlike Katrina, however, Isaac is a slow-moving storm which, at six miles per hour, may not actually reach New Orleans until the middle of the day today. The size of the storm means that its wind and rain over a projected 48-hour period will sow untold destruction. Hours before Isaac hit New Orleans, over 500,000 residents and businesses were already without power.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Craig Fugate was keeping appraised of the deteriorating situation. He did not know when President Obama might come to visit and tell him, "Craigie, you're doing a heck of a job!" These kudos were bestowed upon Mike "Brownie" Brown, head of FEMA during Katrina, by President George W. Bush, while both men stood in the middle of a multi-state disaster area, littered with debris and dead bodies.

The levees in Plaquemines Parish, which were not part of the $14.5 billion strengthening project undertaken in the aftermath of Katrina, were already reportedly overtopped, resulting in flooded houses and stranded residents who did not heed the mandatory evacuation. The system of levees, including the ones that failed in 2005 and have since been enhanced, are managed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D-LA) referred to some residents as "knuckleheads" who were ignoring orders to stay indoors. These were kinder words than his sister, Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA), used in the aftermath of Katrina in September 2005: "Mayor Nagin and most mayors in this country have a hard time getting their people to work on a sunny day, let alone getting them out of the city in front of a hurricane." The words were also kinder than those used by many officials during and after the 2005 storm.

Isaac started out threatening Tampa, Florida, where Republicans are holding their nominating convention, before it veered west and headed for Mississippi and Louisiana. While Pat Robertson has been silent on this storm (unlike Hurricane Katrina, which he said was God's punishment for abortion), conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh had plenty to say, alleging that the Obama administration had tampered with NOAA's storm forecasts in order to put the Republican convention into disarray. Indeed, one day of the convention was cut short, though it was not clear whether this was due to Isaac or a food shortage for Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ).