Community Chat

[pinkskates4]

"It's all about saving Baton Rouge and New Orleans while they flood people down here," Wiggins said, pointing out that most people in his neighborhood did not carry flood insurance.

"So I guess it's all about saving the rich and burying the poor?" he asked.

Failing to open the spillway would have put New Orleans at risk of flooding that, according to computer models, would eclipse that seen during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. About 80 percent of the city was flooded by Katrina and 1,600 people were killed.

The Army Corps of Engineers has taken drastic steps to prevent flooding. Engineers blew up a levee in Missouri — inundating an estimated 200 square miles of farmland and damaging or destroying about 100 homes — to take the pressure off floodwalls protecting the town of Cairo, Ill., population 2,800.

The Morganza flooding is more controlled, however, and residents are warned each year that the spillway could be opened. A spillway at the 7,000-foot Bonnet Carre structure in Louisiana also has been opened.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43044325/ns/weather/

So sad. Praying for all involved.