A Checkered Past

By now it's clear that Hurricane Katrina did not drown New Orleans by herself. The city flooded because its levees and floodwalls failed in the face of a challenge they should have contained. Those walls against the water were tangible expressions of a community's trust. People trusted their homes, belongings – their very lives – to a hurricane protection system that was 40 years in the making and then undone in a day.

from the radio program Living on Earth