NOVA | The Man Who Predicted Katrina
▻http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/predicting-katrina.html
/wgbh/nova/assets/img/full-size/predicting-katrina-merl.jpg
“A slow-moving Category 3 hurricane or larger will flood the city. There will be between 17 and 20 feet of standing water, and New Orleans as we now know it will no longer exist.”
—Ivor van Heerden, October 29, 2004
For years, Ivor van Heerden, a hurricane expert at Louisiana State University, saw a tragedy coming. Since 2001, he and colleagues had been generating computer models of how a major storm could inundate New Orleans. He and his team sought tenaciously—at times desperately—to have their warnings heeded by government officials. In these interviews, conducted both 10 months before and then soon after Katrina hit, van Heerden expresses some of his worst fears, frustrations, and regrets.
