Quote: id have to say this is way bigger than 9/11. IN perspective of lives lost and damage done.
3100 people died on 9/11. Only 71 have been officially declared dead as a result of Katrina right now. While the count is surely much higher than that, few put it anywhere near 3100. Only time will tell however. It's doubtful that it will be "way" bigger if it's bigger at all.
But the most significant impact is the psychological one. There's a HUGE difference between a hurricane and a terrorist attack. I've experienced terrorism first-hand while living in Colombia and Venezuela and seen a lot of people killed and have lived through dozens of Hurricanes/Typhoons throughout my life, including Super-Typhoon Paka while on Guam where I got to personally experience the highest wind speeds ever recorded on the face of this planet and sat over the island for almost half an entire day and Pongonosa which wasn't as strong but managed to damn near level the entire island. It'd take a hundred SuperTyphoons, day after day, with all their cumulative damage, before it'd equal the mental impact of just one terrorist attack. You can't fathom that until you experience it.
Quote: .it was the tidal surge that erroded the earthen levees that cause the sea walls on top of the levees to fall, Id say that is pretty direct.
The levees didn't fail until long after the Hurricane, and especially the storm surge, had come and gone. The water simply got too high from the subsequent rising of water as the hurricane inundated the area with rain and eventually the water flooded over it, finding a weakpoint it was able to eventually breakthrough. It's kinda like calling a Dam Burst a natural disaster -- and maybe they do, I don't know -- but I don't personally see it that way. And at least one break, the largest break in the main levee was purportedly according to the Corps of Engineers caused by a loose barge barreling through it.
