Floodgates Read Online Free PDF

Katrina…when the flood came…I began to wonder whether the lives of those brilliant innovators might make an interesting story. When people started asking questions like, ‘Should we rebuild New Orleans, now that we’ve seen what can happen here? Do we want to fight a losing battle, again and again?’, that’s when I knew that I had a story that was important enough to—”
    As the author spoke, Faye was shocked to see Nina rush at him like an avenging mouse.
    “A losing battle? Don’t you say that! Don’t you ever say that! If you say that on television, then people will believe it’s true.”
    Nina kept moving until she was nose-to-nose with the man. “This was no losing battle. And it was no natural disaster. This was a travesty that didn’t have to happen.”
    The author didn’t even try to finish his sentence. He just stood gaping, on-camera, at a woman who seemed to have simply taken all she could stand.
    “They told us that our levees were solid, and we believed them. They told us that they would hold up under a hurricane that was plenty worse than Katrina. Hell, Katrina didn’t even give us a direct hit. God help us, if she had.”
    She raised a trembling fist. Faye couldn’t imagine that Nina had raised a fist to anybody in her life, ever. “Have you read the independent report on the levee failures? Have you read it?”
    Faye could tell that the author was trying to say that, yes, he’d read it, but Nina’s frustration had been bottled up too long for anything or anybody to stop it from spewing out.
    “Did you know that the design engineers used the same safety factor for our levees that they use for protecting cow pastures? Wouldn’t you build a little bigger safety factor into something that protected a million people and billions of dollars of their stuff? I would, but I’m not an engineer, am I?”
    Nina shook the still-upraised fist. “Did you know that there were trees growing on some levees? How could that be allowed to happen? Levees are made of dirt. How can a pile of dirt hold up under that much water pressure when it’s full of tree roots? But I’m not trained to look after levees. What the hell do I know?”
    Faye was thinking that Nina seemed to know a lot. Charles was still standing where Nina had left him, with his hand sticking awkwardly into the air where her elbow had been just seconds before. He was looking at her as if he’d never seen her before.
    Faye hoped he’d appreciate her friend Nina a little better from here on out. Some men were so busy charming women that it never occurred to them to wonder what was going on in their heads. Well, now he knew what was going on inside Nina’s head. He knew that she was strong and passionate and interesting. And, after that evening’s newscast, so would the rest of New Orleans. Maybe Charles would find that he had competition.
    The newscaster looked like she wanted to ask a question. It didn’t look good for her to lose control of the moment so completely, but a little deft editing could probably fix that. Nina clearly had no intention of giving up her audience. Faye had the definite sense that she was now talking to the viewing public, though her eyes were still boring into the hapless author.
    “Did you know that there was a two-hundred-foot hole in the Orleans Canal levee, because nobody could agree on who was supposed to finish that levee? Don’t you tell me we shouldn’t rebuild our homes! Not when our money—everybody’s money—was being poured down a rat hole. You can build a levee that’s a million miles long, but if there’s a 200-foot hole in it, then you just spent that money on exactly nothing. Doesn’t it make you angry that your money was wasted that way?”
    Godtschalk smoothed his thinning hair off his forehead, and nodded. He tried to speak, but Nina was having none of it.
    “Not rebuild New Orleans? Will we rebuild San Francisco and Los Angeles when the next big earthquake takes one of them out?