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August 31, 2005
The Great Flood of 1927 and Its Relevance for Today
I was thinking today about a book I read several years ago, Rising Tide: The Great Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. This story of the nation’s greatest flood documents the power of the Mississippi River unleashed against the levee system, which was breached in about a dozen different places. Floodwaters covered over 26,000 square miles of land, an area larger than the entire state of West Virginia. At one point during this disaster, 13% of Arkansas’s land mass was covered in floodwaters.
Times were quite different almost 80 years ago, as this book recounts. In fact, author John Barry offers a social history as much as the history of a natural disaster.
Relevant to today, however, this book offers a glimpse not only how long it takes to get back to "normal" after a disaster like Katrina, but it also reveals how disasters can permanently change a region forever.
The Gulf Coast area, and New Orleans in particular, will be permanently changed in ways we can only guess at for now.
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