Levees here were stuffed with newspaper and lined with termite-attracting sugarcane waste. The absurdity never ends.
Science Daily | Did Termites Help Katrina Destroy New Orleans Floodwalls?
Author Gregg Henderson, a professor at the Louisiana State University AgCenter, discovered Formosan subterranean termites (Coptotermes formosanus Shiraki) in the floodwall seams in August, 2000 five years before Katrina struck and noticed that the seams were made of waste residue from processed sugarcane. Known as bagasse, this waste residue is attractive to Formosan termites.
After the dikes were breached in 2005, Henderson and his colleague Alan Morgan inspected 100 seams for evidence of termites, including three areas where major breaks in the walls had occurred. 70% of the seams in the London Avenue Canal, which experienced two major breaks during Katrina, showed evidence of insect attack, as did 27% of seams inspected in the walls of the 17th Street Canal.
Those damned termites probably re-elected Nagin and voted for “Dollar Bill” Jefferson, too.
I’m never gonna hear the end of it from my pal Justin the tree man. He’s always held to the theory that the termites had something to do with the levee breaches.