In 2005, a disaster struck New Orleans. You know the rest. Or do you?
The media reported that what happened in New Orleans was a natural disaster primarily affecting poor black people. On both counts, the media was wrong. But its inability or unwillingness to report the hard truth - that these tragic floods creating widespread damage were caused by manmade errors in engineering and judgment - has failed both journalism and public safety. For what happened in New Orleans could happen again in other cities across the United States.
In his feature-length documentary The Big Uneasy, humorist and New Orleans resident Harry Shearer gets the inside story of a disaster that could have been prevented from the people who were there. Shearer speaks to the tireless investigators and experts who poked through the muck as the water receded, and uncovers a courageous whistle-blower from the Army Corps of Engineers. His dogged pursuit of facts reveals that some of the same flawed methods responsible for levee failure during Hurricane Katrina are being used to rebuild the system expected to protect the "new" New Orleans from future peril.