New Orleans Floods

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In the spring season of 1719, New Orleans floods and the building of levees begins and continues for three centuries, which is an example of the several times history has repeated itself.
Although there are many positive attributes of the city, New Orleans has persevered through some of the most devastating natural disasters in the past century. The city of New Orleans was originally founded by Jean- Baptiste Le Moyne in 1717. His chief engineers informed him that the location was not an ideal place for a city because it was located along the Mississippi River, which was known to be prone to flooding. In 1722, construction of an earthen levee began, but still by 1726 the building of the barrier was not complete. Flooding in New Orleans started to become a bigger issue in 1731, so the local …show more content…

Following the tragic event, the Water and Sewage Board in New Orleans ordered taller levees to be constructed. Hurricane Betsy in 1965 caused leaders to redesign the levee system and the responsibility of levee construction was placed under the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Once again citizens of New Orleans started to reconstruct their city after another natural disaster. Only forty years later Hurricane Katrina, the unfortunate event that was due to the failure of levees to withhold water, left many homeless, dead and looting for survival. Not only did the levees fail the people of New Orleans, but their government also fell short of supplying the desperate citizens of the city with aid and support. The reaction to Hurricane Katrina to me is shockingly similar to events that have happened both in the past and today in New Orleans. In the weeks after Katrina, the people of New Orleans were devastated by the death of family members, and the loss of their businesses, but eventually they began to rebuild the city just like they did after Hurricane Betsy. Since the construction of the levees