Raging southward

摘要

ALFRED HITCHCOCK, who knew about such things, explained the difference between shock and suspense thus. Shock is when a bomb suddenly explodes. Suspense is when viewers see a bomb beneath a table where people are peacefully chatting. Shock is seeing the tops of telephone poles and trees poking above roiling waters on one side of the two-lane causeway between Morganza and Batchelor in Louisiana-particularly when the Mississippi River is on the other side of the road. Suspense is imagining where that water will be in a few days. And relief is knowing where it won't be: in the streets of New Orleans or Baton Rouge. On May 14th the Army Corps of Engineers created that wall of water when it opened up the Morganza Spillway, sending 600,000 cubic feet of water per second into the Atchafalaya River basin but keeping the floods from reaching Louisiana's two big downriver cities and keeping the river itself from changing course.