All technology fails – it’s a matter of time and circumstance. For the city of New Orleans, time in fact collided with circumstance.

In a strange sense, there are no surprises here. A major hurricane was bound to hit town eventually, just like a roulette ball eventually gets to every number on the felt. But it’s the circumstance – and its timing – that has created one horror after the next.

The technology which kept New Orleans “New Orleans” has now become familiar – 172 miles of canals, 20 pumping stations, 129 miles of levees, all of which enabled this city to live close to or below sea level. Yet you could visit New Orleans a dozen times and never know they existed, much less how critical they were in supporting human life.

But then the technology failed. A breach in one flood wall enabled swollen Lake Pontchartrain to dispatch its mighty excess, while a levee break across town released water to the far side of the French Quarter.

Both were failures of technology. And that’s what I’m talking about – the nature of when and how technology fails.

The simplest lesson is basic: Time fatigues all technology. It’s why we can’t send those same space shuttles up year after year, and now decade after decade, and expect nothing to go wrong. Maintenance must be constant, vigilant and able to respond to inevitable breakdown. It must be empowered to take bold strokes to ensure the technology under its watch continues to operate. But over time, even tested technology can fail in ways never anticipated.

If you can’t quite understand that, consider this: What if you had to keep the first car you ever drove as your only transportation … for the rest of your life. Even with cars you love, eventually you say: “It’s time to get a new car. Too many things have gone wrong.” You need the technology of a vehicle that you know works.

The technology of canals and pumping stations and levees and space shuttles and every car you ever owned is the same.

Eventually they fatigue, and they fail.

But it’s just not old technology that fails; it's new, as well. The flood wall break is evidence of that, as it was erected in recent years. So why did it fail? Well, that question may get answered fairly soon, but the operative word is “may.”

We can only surmise about the situation at the exact point of failure. Was it simply that the wall was never designed to withstand that amount of water? At which point, the circumstance of too much water initiated the failure? Or was the foundation compromised by trees or buildings in the area? Or did the soil in that one spot contain an anomaly hitherto unnoticed? Or were there defects in the materials or construction?

All evidence may be washed away permanently, but the lesson remains: All technology fails – It’s a matter of time and circumstance.

It’s early yet to be talking about lessons, given that the suffering of the people of New Orleans has only just begun. Still, we have history to turn to.

Within months, we will mark a century since the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Even today, residents can tell you where the fires were, where the Army Corps of Engineers dynamited, what buildings survived, what landmarks did not. The nature of the city changed that day, and its scars, while healed, remain apparent. So it will be also, a century from now, for the city of New Orleans.

I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.

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