"Forewarned"

"Environmental reporters are often the town criers on looming disasters. Sometimes we listen. Often we don't."

"For many reporters, Walter Maestri, the emergency manager for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, was the go-to guy on the devastating impacts of the hurricane that changed New Orleans forever.

'As the water recedes,' Maestri told Mark Fischetti of Scientific American, 'we expect to find a lot of dead bodies.'

John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein, reporters for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, wrote an extensive series on their hometown’s losses, and Maestri gave them bad news on the city’s most vulnerable residents: 'We anticipate that [even] with refuges of last resort in place, some 5 [percent] to 10 percent of the individuals who remain in the face of catastrophic storms are going to lose their lives.'"

Peter Dykstra reports for Ensia Edge February 2017.