Ivor Heerden Quotes (16 Quotes)

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.

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

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

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.

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

When it comes to a storm like this, the pumps are mission impossible. Number one, they aren't safe for the operators and the second thing is that you need very powerful systems with a very good electrical supply, but the more robust a storm is, the harder it is to operate a pump. As soon as you start that pump, every bit of trash that gets into the canal gets sucked into the pump. And as soon as buildings start coming apart, the level of debris shoots up dramatically.

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.

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

We're talking about in essence having in the continental United States having a refugee camp of a million people.

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.

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.

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

It should have been obvious.

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.

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

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