Ivor Heerden Quotations

My concern was that the focus was not on protecting Louisiana.

If we don't undertake the levee reconstruction and coastal restoration, we're just leaving New Orleans more vulnerable than it was before.

He tried the best that he could, under the circumstances.

Go home and identify all the chemicals in your house. It's a very long list.

I was basically shocked. What do lobbyists know about a plan for the reconstruction and restoration of Louisiana?

Most of the flooding of New Orleans was due to man's follies. Society owes those who lost their lives, and the approximately 100,000 families who lost all, an apology.

We need to recognize we may be about to experience our equivalent of the Asian tsunami, in terms of the damage and the numbers of people that can be killed.

We agree that every single foot of the I-walls is suspect. When asked, we have constantly urged anyone returning to New Orleans to exercise caution, because the system now in place could fail in a Category 2 storm. It has already failed during a fast-moving Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans by 30 miles.

We're doing repairs on the breaches, but there are many, many, many miles of levee that we don't have any idea of.

This was a bill put together by lobbyists without any involvement from scientists from Louisiana who know the situation.

What bothers me the most is all the people who've died unnecessarily.

People trusted the security of the levee system. More than 100,000 people lost everything. The government's at fault, and they should step up to the plate to give people some semblance of dignity.

No sewage, no drinking water, contamination, threat of rapid increase in mosquitoes, roads are impassible, downed power lines everywhere, trees, debris from houses in the roads, no way to go shopping, no gas.

The bottom line I got out of this is that unless you were a lobbyist, they did not want you to participate.

This is fairly typical of some of the failures we've seen. These walls underwent catastrophic structural failure.

They should have been monitoring this and informed people all the way to the top, then they should have warned people.

This is what we've been saying is going to happen for years.

It's going to be days before they get all that water out.

It's going to take people being willing to take a chance, to be bold, to sort out Louisiana's levee problems.

This is just a few Band-Aids, really. We really need to go the step further and start implementing projects now that would make New Orleans safe.

Their response to me was: 'Americans don't live in tents,' and that was about it.

For people to feel confident about coming back again, they're going to have to rebuild the levee system.

This has the potential to be as disastrous as the Asian tsunami. Tens of thousands of people could lose their lives. We could witness the total destruction of New Orleans as we know it.

All indications are that this is absolutely worst-case scenario.

All of those chemical plants have the potential to be flooded, especially those at Port Arthur, where the levees are only 14 feet above sea level. Those are going to be virtually on the edge of the eye wall. You could see significant wind damage from those facilities, too, and you could see chemical releases.