6A
NEWS/^ie CIsrIotte
Thursday, March 16, 2005
SIX MONTHS AFTER KATRINA
Have a story
idea?
CaU The lost at
(704) 376-0496
Non-Abuse and Non-Violence, Inc.
www.nonabuse-nonvioleiice.org
You’re Invited
Annual Fundraiser and Fashion Show
Friday, March 24, 2006 • 6p.ni. - 9p.m.
semi-formal required • $100.00
Special Invited Guest Maria Howell
Marion Dihl Senior Center
2219 Ty\o\a Road • Charlotte, NC 28210
AFRO NEWSPAPERS PHOTO
Damage to homes and businesses in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast states of Louisiana,
Mississippi, Texas and Alabama ran into billions of dollars.
Many believe New Orleans
was intentionally exposed
Continued from page 1A
blew that levee. I believe the
Canal Street levee broke but
they blew that one by the
Ninth Ward Then they talk
ing about a barge hit the
levee...These people are full
of s—t”
There is no question that
the 9th Ward was an
unsightly scene.
Black bodies floated in the
poisonous stew of gasoline
and sewage; Black men,
women and children were
marooned on roofs and
ignored by passing heli
copters, black people were
crammed into a putrid
Superdome by the thou
sands going for days without
food or water and Black
homes sustained the worst of
the damage.
Set up to fail
Many believe it was
planned.
The rumor that officials
purposefully breached fhe
levees to sluice water away
fix)m majority White, rich
areas like the French
Quarter has flooded the bio-
gospha:^.
Andrea Garland a former
resident now living in Tbxas,
wrote in her blog at
Getyouracton.com: “Also
heard that part of the reason
our house flooded is they
dynamited part of the levee
after the first section
broke—they did this to pre
vent Uptown (the rich part of
town) firom being flooded.
Apparently, they used too
much dynamite, thus flood
ing part of the B5water. So
now I know who is responsi
ble for flooding my house—
not Katrina, but our govern
ment”
And the rumors have
spread on a tide of discontent
and anger to Capitol Hfll.
In a Dec. 6 hearing con
ducted by the House Select
Committee on Hurricane
Katrina, New Orleans resi
dent Dyan French testified
that she actually heard the
explosion.
‘T was on my fix)nt porch. I
have witnesses that they
bombed the walls of the
levee, boom, boom!” Dyan
said, gesticulating with her
hands. ‘TTl never foiget it.”
Mayor Ray Nagin in a
Sept. 11 ABC News report
rejected tiie rumors as
untrue.
“That storm was so power
ful and it pushed so much
water, there’s no way anyone
could have calculated, would
dynamite the levee to have
the kind of impact to save
the French Quarter.”
The current levee system,
a 16-foot high wall that cov
ers about 350 nules, was
built after Hurricane Betsy
in 1965 to counter, maximal
ly, a Category 3 storm.
Katrina, at 125 miles per
hour on landfall, was a
Category 4.
‘T don’t think anybody
anticipated the break of the
levees,” President Bush said
soon after the storm.
However, thaf s not true.
Warning signs
Scientists predicted in pub
lications that the detmora-
tion of natural barriers, a
sinking delta and rising sea
levels would eventually
fODve too much for the lev- •
ees. So did a 2002 Thnes-
Picayune prophetic series
that warned that 'major
flooding was "just a matter of
time”.
Engineers, scientists and
state and city attorneys are
now investigating whether
malfeasance in design, con
struction or maintenance
caused the flooding.
‘Tt became obvious to us
pretty quickly that the flood
walls along the 17th Street
Canal had not failed throio^
overtopping, they failed
through some other mecha
nism,” said G. Paul Kemp,
associate professor of
Louisiana State Univa^ty’s
School of the Coast and the
Environment and a member
of a state sponsored forensics
team investigating the flood
ing. TThe preliminary report
does show some question
able decisions about the
depth that tiaey drove the
sheet pile that support the
wall.”
Another preliminary
report by a team of engineers
from the University of
Cafifomia at Berkeley and
the American Society of Civil
Engineers concluded:
“Several major and costly
breaches appear to have
been the restilt of stability
failures of the foundation
soils and/or the eartlien
levee embankments them
selves. In addition, it
appears that many of the
levees and floodwalls that
failed due to overtopping
might have performed better
if relatively inexpensive
detaQs had been added
and/or altered during their
original design and construc
tion.”
Still, locals hold on to the
theory that the wall was
deliberately blown, goaded
on by memories of govern
ment complicity in the
TUskegee experiment and
the Federal Bureau of
Investigation’s COINTEL-
PRO program to undermine
civil ri^ts groups.
The Ttiskegee experiment
was a government-sanc
tioned program that began
in 1932 and involved the use
of 399 black men as guinea
pigs to discover the eSects of
syphilis.' Though told they
would receive fi^ "special
treatment” for their “bad
blood,” the men were left
untreated and attempts to
obtain treatment elsewhere
were stopped. The story did
not reach the public until
1972. Evctl then, neither the
men nor their families
received an apology.
President Bill Chnton finally
offered an apology in 1997 -
25 years later.
COINTELPRO, an
acronym for
Counterintelligence
Program, was a covert oper
ation initiated by the FBI in
1956 \mder the directorship
of J. Edgar Hoover to "neu
tralize” domestic political
groups like the Communist
Party and the Socialist
Workers’ Party but was
almost immediately extaid-
ed to so-called dissident
organizations including, the
Nation of Islam, the Black
Panthers and Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr’s Southern
Christian Leadership
Conference. Through sur
veillance, wiretaps, black
mail and other unsavory
means, the FBI attempted to
discredit and disrupt Black
civil ri^ts organizations. In
one scheme, the FBI sent
tape-recordings of Dr. King’s
extramarital sexual activity
to King and urged him to
commit suicide or risk being
publicly exposed as immoral
The covert program did not
end until the early ‘70s when
its details were exposed dur
ing a Congressional investi
gation.
Despite the backdrop of
that history Katrina theo
ries have been mocked by
conservative media pundits
see HURRICANE/7A
“Don’t
forget to pick up
my
from the pharmacy. Remember
it won’t cost any
use our
I when you
I'rom now until !uiy31st, generic prescriptions are free for
members of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina. Just present your
ID card to your pharmacist and well waive your copay
(or coinsurance) on generics, wiiich are just as 'safe and
effective as brand name medications. Tn 2004, North
Carolinians saxed over 117 million in just three months during our generic
copayment waiver. The power’s in the card. The money’s in your wallet.
get more information at bcbsnc.com
lna9Y0tiv« heoltti (are designed around year | tcbsne.ci
I BlueCross BlueShield
of North Carolina
The only thing better than saving time
and money is getting $50 for doing both.
Now when you open a Free Personal or Free Business Checking Account at SunTrust, we'll welcome you with a $50 SunTrust
Visa® Gift Card. Plus, you’ll get Free Online Bill Pay, so you can pay all your bills fromyourcomputer, quickly and easily-with
no minimum balance requirements or monthly maintenance fees. So hurry to your nearest SunTrust branch, call 866.422.1365,
or visit suntrust.com/freechecking, and see why SunTrust is a better bank for your money and your lifestyle,
Free $50 SunTrustVisa®Gift Card
for opening a Free Personal or
Free Business Checking Account
J'
SunTrust
Seeing beyond money
w Free Checking Account from 2/13/06 through 3/31/06 coreceivr
' dtirgsccDunlmstenals no later than 4/21/06 The account mi
‘■--nt toijuelifyingdients by 7/15/06
!®Cift CaWwlllbea
ft Car) IS accepted everywhere ir
k, Member FDIC ®2006SunTru:
Banks, Inc SunTrust a
sa* Debit Cart is accepted,
j "Seeing beyond money" ai
■servicemarksofSunTrust Banks.