Was Katrina More Powerful Than We Have Been Told?

By James Donahue

Sept. 5, 2005

Among the many Internet conspiracy theories making the circuit concerning Hurricane Katrina is a troubling report from the Russian media that the storm was much more catastrophic than our government is allowing us to know.

Another report quotes U.S. financial losses from the storm in the trillions and says the losses in wages, goods and services could threaten a world wide depression.

A report by Russian writer Sorcha Faal states that the estimated strength of Katrina’s winds when it struck land were clocked at 217 miles an hour and the tidal surge was estimated at over 50 feet, thus destroying everything in its path for up to three miles inland.

The Faal story said this surge had the potential to level every human made structure in its path, even displacing the well anchored oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

Indeed, from the aerial photos and other images we have been seeing on our nightly television screens and on the web show entire towns flattened with homes that have withstood numerous hurricanes in past years completely obliterated. Even strong brick and concrete buildings have been turned to rubble in some areas.

While reports are hard to find, we are receiving evidence that those big oil rigs anchored in the gulf were, indeed, uprooted. One of them crashed into a bridge ashore and that image made the nightly news. The U.S. Coast Guard has admitted that several production platforms and drilling rigs are either sunk, destroyed or adrift.

A second article, also by Faal, reports losses already counted at over $500 Billion and that Russian economic experts are making estimates at up to $2 Trillion before it is over. The stories say as many as 50,000 people may have died, or that many will eventually be lost as a result of this storm.

These statistics are staggering. If valid, they imply that 1.) Our government is not telling us the truth about what actually happened, and 2.) The impact of Katrina has devastated our national economy.

There is one other disturbing comment by this Russian writer that caught our attention. Faal writes:

“No longer do these Americans ever have to speculate as to what it is like to live under a Fascist Military Regime as their newspapers, radios and televisions are filled with the sounds and images of what life is truly like under military rule.

“Where once these great American people were the ‘saviors’ of not only their own fellow countrymen during times of disaster, they were also the saviors of the world, but which under their military leaders are not even wanted anymore.”

Faal then quotes from a directive issued by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Authority that says: “First responders urged not to respond to hurricane impact areas unless dispatched by state, local authorities.”

Faal has a point. Is American willingness to sit back and let its government act in times of crisis the reason for the slow response to the relief effort in New Orleans? Did everybody sit back and wait for a committee to decide what to do?

We are convinced that there was no conspiracy to create Hurricane Katrina as some web writers would like us to think. But in a sense, the theorists are correct in that we helped cause this disaster.

America’s unwillingness to recognize the effect industrial emissions of greenhouse gasses, smog and soot into the atmosphere has had on global warming, and our unwillingness to take immediate steps to do something about it, is our failure. What we have done is having a dramatic effect on world weather patterns.