I Should Not Be Surprised...

Full article HERE.

"The Mississippi River Basin is the largest river basin in the world, and stretches from New York to Idaho and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. In the course of American history, the river often flooded, but not until 1927 had so many people been killed and left homeless and never had such a large land area been covered by water. It was the greatest flood in history, but this fact is not as well known: government caused it."

I knew that men have attempted to "lasso" the Mississippi for a long time, I just had no idea the level of insanity (or maybe just simple human hubris?) involved.

"The mighty Mississippi River had literally been lifted above ground level in many places."

I knew that New Orleans was actually below sea level. I thought this was because of dredged out land that used to be swamp. I never considered that it was also due to the water rising around it too.

"The original 7.5 foot levee at Morganza, Louisiana, was able to maintain the Great Flood of 1850 but by the 1920s the levee required a 38-foot height to hold the same amount of water. In the Great Flood of 1927 the Durina Levee broke, flooding 175,000 acres. When the levee at Mounds Landing broke, water covered one million acres with water ten feet deep. Estimates place the death toll in the Mississippi Delta alone at as high as 1,000 people. Damage estimates ranged as high as 1 billion (1927) dollars."

No wonder New Orleans was devastated so badly. Amazing how we ignore history time and time again. Sad too.

Sadder still that a good number of us turn to the government to fix these problems when they made so many of them in the first place.