Katrina was a Category five as it approached the shoreline, just as it was about to hit it was downgraded, why? Well the eye-wall was reforming as they often do along the way. Many Christians attributed to their prayers for the City of New Orleans, the Hurricane then slightly jogged to the right or Eastward. This helped in two ways, one minimized the direction of flow and duration of the storm surge into the inlet area in the direction of the lake.

Yes it could have been worse. People were warned early on thanks to the media weather folks, NASA Storm computer modeling and rapid response from the President to get on the air and tell people; “Please Get Out.” Over 1 million people evacuated New Orleans in 48-hours and you thought your local traffic was bad?

Still the Hurricanes size and time over the City caused weakening of the levee system, which was eventually breached in multiple places, one more than 100-yards wide and water poured into the city. Islamic Radical Terrorists cheered claiming that they have been praying for America to be destroyed and that Allah had answered by attacking the Gulf Coast. While Christians prayers were said to be immediately answered and it looked as if New Orleans was spared, the engineering marvel of 350-miles worth of levees had been weakened by one of the worst storms ever to hit our Nation.

Luckily now the Army Corp of Engineering has a plan it will soon execute to temporarily fix the breach for now, and then use the pumps to slowly remove the water for clean-up. The plan should work and we must hope that we are not hit with back to back storms like last year along the Gulf Shores as FEMA crews and Team USA shows us what we are really made of as Americans. So, you see although the damage is substantial, our early warning saved tens of thousands of lives thanks to NASA, TV Media, and the President’s Team to get the word out. It could have been so much worse.

by Lance Winslow