Tonight I needed to work through a lot of pressing issues for our community association, so I wasn’t able to write my blog as usual tonight.  I will write more about Seoraksan tomorrow.  It’s late and I have to get some sleep, but I wanted to leave you with this intriguing article from National Geographic online about the disaster in New Orleans and the Mississippi River delta: 

 

What is so amazing about this article is that it was featured in National Geographic Magazine in October 2004, just 10 months before Hurricane Katrina hit.  The prediction seems uncannily accurate.  I truly hope that the predicted death toll and other horrors foretold are dramatically overstated.  Somehow, I don’t think the truth is far from what it describes. 

 

The article talks about a proposed solution that could have prevented what happened in New Orleans last week.  Unfortunately, the solution would have taken years to complete, and it would not have been ready by the time Hurricane Katrina hit, even if it had been accepted in its entirety.  Blame can be assessed later.  However, efforts to avoid this catastrophe would have had to have been implemented years, if not decades, before the catastrophe occurred.  Hindsight is always 20-20.  The article states–again, written in 2004–that the three greatest potential disasters facing the United States are a terrorist attack on New York City (2001), the flooding of New Orleans (2005), and California earthquakes.  Californians are very aware of the impact of earthquakes; New York and New Orleans were neither prepared nor accustomed to the potential threats facing them–until they happened.