Interesting Disaster & Engineering Web Sites
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, communities are asking questions about their levees
The northeastern United States continues to recover from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy last week. In New Jersey and New York in particular, there are concerns about the levees that were destroyed during the storm. There's one additional complication: no one is quite sure where all the levees were located. In an interview with NPR, Professor Gerald Galloway of the University of Maryland in College Park observed that this is because of the way many levees come into being. He suggested that many levees are created by farmers or developers and that after they are completed there are no national standards for what constitutes an "adequate" levee. Of course, the last time there was a national conversation about this issue was in the wake of Hurricane Katrina back in 2005 and a myriad of solutions were proposed to deal with this issue. Recently, Steven Sweeney, president of the New Jersey State Senate, suggested that one long-term solution might be to have the government buy the homes of those persons who live in flood-prone areas, tear the properties down, and then forbid anyone from building there again. Given the nature of local land-use planning decisions in the United States, this might be a rather difficult matter to resolve in this fashion.
- Levee Rebuilding Questioned After Sandy Breach
- NPR's Weekend Edition
- A radio piece from NPR's Weekend Edition program about rebuilding levees destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.
- In Flooded New Jersey, No Oversight for Levees
- WBUR
- A feature from Boston about the fact that in New Jersey there is no direct oversight of levees..
- Sandy's Power Dwarfed by Katrina's Gutting of the Gulf
- Business Week
- A piece from Bloomberg Businessweek which compares the devastation brought by Hurricane Sandy to that of Hurricane Katrina.
- State of New Jersey: Hurricane Sandy Information Center
- State of New Jersey
- From the official homepage created by the state of New Jersey to track the cleanup of Hurricane Sandy.
- New Orleans Since Katrina: Before and After
- Huffington Post
- A profile of New Orleans' recovery after Hurricane Katrina.
- National Hurricane Center
- National Hurricane Center
- The official homepage of the National Weather Service's National Hurricane Center."
Internet Scout Research Group. "The Scout Report -- Volume 18, Number 45." Internet Scout. November 9, 2012. Web. November 12, 2012.