The Gov't did explode levees & flood low-lying poor areas in NOLA

In 1927, the government did indeed explode the levees to flood low-lying poor (read: black) neighborhoods in downriver New Orleans in order to save the uptown.

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in United States history until the Hurricane Katrina flood of 2005.

The Mississippi River broke out of its levee system in 145 places and flooded 27,000 square miles or about 16,570,627 acres (70,000 km²). The area was inundated up to a depth of 30 feet (10 m). The flood caused over $400 million in damages and killed 246 people in seven states.

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As the flood approached New Orleans, Louisiana 30 tons of dynamite were set off on the levee at Caernarvon, Louisiana and sent 250,000 ft³/s (7,000 m³/s) of water pouring through. This prevented New Orleans from experiencing serious damage but destroyed much of the marsh below the city and flooded all of St. Bernard Parish. As it turned out, the destruction of the Caernarvon levee was unnecessary; several major levee breaks well upstream of New Orleans, including one the day after the dynamiting, made it impossible for flood waters to seriously threaten the city.

By August 1927 the flood subsided. During the disaster 700,000 people were displaced, including 330,000 African-Americans who were moved to 154 relief camps. Over 13,000 refugees near Greenville, Mississippi were gathered from area farms and evacuated to the crest of an unbroken levee, and stranded there for days without food or clean water, while boats arrived to evacuate white women and children. Many African-Americans were detained and forced to labor at gunpoint during flood relief efforts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mississippi_Flood_of_1927


A question I have is who owned the barge?

With just a few changes this reads very similar to what happened with Katrina & the levees...

"During the disaster 700,000 people were displaced, including 330,000 African-Americans who were moved to 154 relief camps. Over 13,000 refugees near Greenville, Mississippi were gathered from area farms and evacuated to the crest of an unbroken levee, and stranded there for days without food or clean water, while boats arrived to evacuate white women and children. Many African-Americans were detained and forced to labor at gunpoint during flood relief efforts."

Who claims the levees were breached on purpose and that is why she and her boyfriend had to leave their home. They made it through the hurricane just fine but then she said when "they breached the levee to reduce flooding" their neighborhood started filling up with water fast.

I don't know where she got her info, I didn't ask, she was justifing putting her mastiff in the attic with no food or water and no way out in that sweltering heat, so I walked away without asking.

As is already widely known, “money buys altitude” in New Orleans, meaning those most affected by the storm were largely poor and black and resided in the lower sections of the city that were completely destroyed as the higher, whiter sections remained untouched.

Excellent book on the history of the flood problems on the Mississippi River system and the Great Flood of 1927.

It was a fascinating read and very informative.

the edit time is out and I had to run out after posting. Now it almost seems appropriately provocative to consider the historical patterns and certainly shows without doubt that those who were called conspiracists when they suggested the Levee might have been purposefully blown up had not only good present day reasons/suspicions for such a view but also could point to an exact historical event as evidence for suggesting it could happen.
Ouch!Quite a cumbersome sentence.

That a high-tech computer-simulation program was also available, allowing for detailed analysis and simulation of various, and specific, conditions for the NOLA area?

A couple of weeks post-Katrina, I recalled reading an article in Popular Science magazines about natural disasters. I still had the copy, and re-read this article from the April 2005 issue:

This part caught my attention, because of various posts and articles I had read about the levees being purposefully breached:



http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/22040b4511b84010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html

Here's more on Naomi of Army Corps of Engineers and this ADCIRC program from 2003.



http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:ms-fFbqJ6soJ:www.pubs.asce.org/ceonline/ceonline03/0603feat.html+adcirc+naomi&hl=en

So, seems they had a pretty high tech program in which to study this problem in detail, with computer simulations. In light of your post, and with the powers that be in control, one might have to wonder just how they were using this ADCIRC program.

Okay, I'll remove the tin foil now.

1. Why did the floodwalls along the 17th Street Canal only break on the New Orleans side and not on the Metairie side? Was this the result of neglect and poor maintenance by New Orleans authorities?

2. Who owned the huge barge that was catapulted through the wall of the Industrial Canal, killing hundreds in the Lower Ninth Ward -- the most deadly hit-and-run accident in U.S. history?

3. All of New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish east of the Industrial Canal were drowned, except for the Almonaster-Michoud Industrial District along Chef Menteur Highway. Why was industrial land apparently protected by stronger levees than nearby residential neighborhoods?

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20. Who is responsible for the suspicious fires that have swept the city? Why have so many fires occurred in blue-collar areas that have long been targets of proposed gentrification, such as the Section 8 homes on Constance Street in the Lower Garden District or the wharfs along the river in Bywater?

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=24875