City ABOVE the sea

Here's something I found interesting. Yet another refutation of all the simplified info that's fed to America by the national media, who are useless, by the way. I must say that even I didn't realize that as much as 1/2 the city is ABOVE sea level.

Here are a few of the most enlightening excerpts:
"Innumerable media reports following Hurricane Katrina described the topography of New Orleans as unconditionally below sea level," the study notes. "This oversimplification is inaccurate by half, and its frequent repetition does a great disservice to the city."

"After Katrina smacked the city, floodwaters soaked above- sea-level parts of the Holy Cross neighborhood, but did not inundate parts of Bywater at roughly the same elevation. The location and severity of levee failures determined which of those areas flooded. The same was true for below- sea-level areas on different sides of the 17th Street Canal. Floodwaters spewed into Lakeview from a collapsed section of the floodwall on the Orleans side while some low-lying parts of Metairie remained dry because they were behind the Jefferson Parish side of the floodwall, which held."