By host Tom Ashbrook:

June 1st, the opening day for hurricane season, is just around the corner, and the debate over whether the Gulf Coast is ready for another Katrina is all too real.

In New Orleans, where mayor Ray Nagin has just be re-elected, they’ve been practicing evacuation. Along the Mississippi, the Army Corps of Engineers bulldozers have been roaring for months.

National forecasters predict another heavy hurricane season. And Ivor van Heerden says it all still adds up to huge vulnerability. The top Louisiana hurricane planner says the levees weren’t right before, and they’re not right now. New Orleans, he says, may still become a lost Atlantis.

Hear from the man who predicted Katrina on what lies ahead.

Guests:

Ivor van Heerden, co-founder and deputy director of the Louisiana Hurricane Center and director of the Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes. He’s also author of “The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina — The Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist”

Peter Kovacs, managing editor at The Times-Picayune newspaper

Colonel Terry Ebbert, Director of Homeland Security for New Orleans