Gustav was no Katrina, but the hurricane put New Orleans’s emergency strategy to its first real test for three years.
Dubbed “the storm of the century” before it made landfall by mayor Ray Nagin, Gustav was actually not the most demanding of tests. Katrina reached the maximum intensity of category 5 over open ocean and made landfall at a powerful category 3, but Gustav packed a weaker punch, hitting land at category 2 on Monday. While Katrina passed east of New Orleans, whipping up the waters of Lake Pontchartrain, which flooded the city, Gustav passed to the south-west, leaving…
