Replies

Bump/Check

Posted on Fri, Sep. 02, 2005

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12539792.htm

Floods unavoidable, Army engineers say

The Army Corp of Engineers said recent studies on strengthening New Orleans' levee system, designed decades ago, had not made much progress.

BY PETER CAREY

Knight Ridder News Service

The levee system that protected New Orleans from hurricane-spawned surges along Lake Pontchartrain was never designed to survive a storm the size of Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.

The levees were built to withstand only a Category 3 storm, something projections suggested would strike New Orleans only once every two or three centuries, the commander of the corps, Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, told reporters during a conference call. Katrina was a Category 4 storm.

''Unfortunately, that occurred in this case,'' Strock said.

OLD TECHNOLOGY

Strock said the levee system's design was settled on a quarter of a century ago, before the current numerical system of classifying storms was in widespread use. He said studies had begun recently on strengthening the system to protect against Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, but hadn't progressed very far.

Strock said that despite a May report by the Corps' Louisiana district that a lack of federal funding had slowed construction of hurricane protection, nothing the Corps could have done recently would have prevented Katrina from flooding New Orleans.

''The levee projects that failed were at full project design and were not really going to be improved,'' Strock said.

`EVERYBODY KNEW'

Strock's comments drew immediate criticism from flood-protection advocates, who said that the Corps' May report was a call for action and a complaint about insufficient funding, and that no action took place.

''The Corps knew, everybody knew, that the levees had limited capability,'' said Joseph Suhayda, a retired director of the Louisiana State University's Water Resources and Research Institute.

''Because of exercises and simulations, we knew that the consequences of overtopping [water coming over the levees] would be disastrous. People were playing with matches in the fireworks factory and it went off,'' he said.

Suhayda, an expert in coastal oceanography, said, ``the fact the levee failed is not according to design. If it was overtopped, it's because it was lower in that spot than other spots. The fact that it was only designed for a Category 3 meant it was going to get overtopped. I knew that. They knew that. There were limits.''

NO SECURITY?

Some critics Thursday questioned the usefulness of levees, saying that all of them fail eventually.

''There are lots of ways for levees to fail. Overtopping is just one of them,'' said Michael Lindell, of Texas A&M University's Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center. 'There's a lot of smoke screen about `low probabilities.' Low probabilities just means 'Takes a long time.' ''

Strock said stopping the flow of water over the levees has proved to be ''a very challenging effort.'' Engineers have been unable to reach the levees and have had to draw up plans based only on observations from the air. ''We, too, are victims in this situation,'' he said.

In Louisiana, Army Corps officials said they hoped that one break, in what's known as the 17th Street Canal, might be closed by the end of Thursday, but that a second break in the London Avenue canal is proving more intractable.

Short sections of the walls that protected the city from Lake Pontchartrain caved in under storm surges, including an area that recently had been strengthened.

A fact sheet issued by the Corps in May said that seven construction projects in New Orleans had been stalled for lack of funding. It noted that the budget proposed by President Bush for 2005 was $3 million and called that amount insufficient to fund new construction contracts.

MONEY CRUNCH

''We could spend $20 million if the funds were provided,'' the fact sheet said. Two major pump stations needed to be protected against hurricane storm surges, the fact sheet said, but the budgets for 2005 and 2006 ``will prevent the corps from addressing these pressing needs.''

Acknowledging delays in construction, Corps officials in Louisiana said that those projects weren't where the failures occurred. ''They did not contribute to the flooding of the city,'' said Al Naomi, a senior project manager.

''The design was not adequate to protect against a storm of this nature,'' he said. ``We were not authorized to provide protection to Category 4 or 5 design.''

How much did the Louisiana governor pledge to keep the Saints in New Orleans?

You're 100% correct... that's why Bush will be blamed.

I think we should at least let these people get out of the squalid situation they are trying to escape before we start pointing the finger of blame in their direction. FGS, at least let them gather and bury their dead.

I heard a Corp guy on a talk show yesterday saying the Corp of Army engineers decided that levees to withstand "3'" hurricane were sufficient in New Orleans. Also apparently, they built the stuff without proper engineering with stuff laying around. The reporters said 'how do you feel now'. His reply was 'I think we need to revisit the situation'. Well duh...

Ping

ping/save

I wonder how much they spent of illegals in that time frame...

As usual, in NO politics and corruption prevailed over common sense.

ping

I agree with what Franklin Graham said last night:

All the men standing around waiting to be evacuated, if they aren't sick or hurt, put them to work cleaning up there in New Orleans.

I heard a poll was taken a few months ago and they calculated that 1/3 of the population would not leave the city in the event of catastrophe. I guess that just about proved to be true. You can't protect people from their own folly.

I also keep wondering where the emergency planning was by the local and state government was. A decadent attitude just doesn't begin to describe the ineptness of everyone directly involved with this disaster. There were so many basic things that should have been done immediately....that were totally ignored by the powers that be. I suspect the looters aren't the only criminals we need to look at, eh?

Word up.

EXTREMELY WELL PUT.

Would love to have that forcefully tatooed on every traitorous congress critter and media traitor in the land's forehead.

What salaries are you calculating for the per capita income? Are you including the people of Metairie and Kenner? I lived in Metairie for 9 years. I moved away a year ago last August. New Orleans is made up of people who either don't work, i.e. welfare, or people who don't need to work, i.e. the very rich, or people in either the service industry (restaurants and hotels) or health care industry.(The NOPD lived there too but only because they were forced to.) The majority of the workers commuted in to New Orleans to work.

Many people left the city because of over taxation, terrible schools, and corrupt government workers. The attitude of the city was for the most part was, "I really don't care."

So the people who did care either moved to the burbs or left all together. The city was left with what looked like a third world demographic made up of the very poor and the very rich and not much in between.

The very poor made a habit of murder, drugs addiction, rape, robbery, assault, etc. There was a mentality in the projects that if you spoke correct English then you were "Actin White". Same with school. If you made any effort to escape you circumstances then the neighborhood turned on you for denying who you really were. For many, this was just fine and they were OK with the government supporting them from cradle to grave.

Since that mentality was the majority in Orleans Parish, they voted for all of the government officials. (Sometimes more than once!) Corruption was winked at. Until Mayor Nagin came in, there were no computers at city hall. All of the accounting was done BY HAND!!! You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that this system was ripe with the stench of corruption.

Once Mayor Nagin took office he made an earnest effort to clean things up. He had several death threats made towards him. He never had time to peel back all the layers of corruption, let alone address the poor levee system.

The Governor is clueless. No one supported the mayor. Senator Landrieu is incredibly corrupt. She had a very shady election. And dont even get me started on the representative for New Orleans.

This is how the city operated, or failed to operate. With all of this corruption, do you think fixing the levee system ever made a blip on the radar? Where do you think the federal money went that was suppose to go towards the levee? It was talked about, but never acted upon. They just didnt care.

"Yes, given our screwed up, socialist system, we can blame, within that system, Governor Blanco for incompetence"

Definately a lot of blame there.

"the Congress for cutting funds for New Orleans flood control"

New Orleans flood control is a local issue. If it's too large of an issue for the local area to handle, then it should be a state issue.

There's no reason that there should have been federal dollars funding flood control in New Orleans.

"FEMA for slow response"

FEMA moved resources into place even before the hurricane hit.

However, disaster relief for New Orleans and the State is the responsibility of New Orleans and the State. In the case where the state resources are not sufficient to deal with the task. The governor has the authority to call up the national guard.

In a huge disaster like this we all need to pull together as a country and lend a hand. However, the infrastructure in LA has been destroyed. It takes a lot of time to move stores of food and drinking water into place when the infrastructure is wiped out.

The States need to be prepared. They can't assume that the federal government is going to take care of things. The federal government doesn't even have the constitutional authority to step in and take care of things.

"but the real cause of the disaster is the people of New Orleans and the entitlement mentality that infects them."

Bingo!

"They preferred rolling the dice year after year on whether their city would live or die to actually doing anything to ensure that it wouldn't die - beyond looking for an open nipple on the Big Sow in Washington."

New Orleans is an area with a lot of wealth, yet they did not take steps to provide for their own safety and have resources available in the event of a disaster.

The reason sufficient help is slow in comming is that LA wasn't prepared.

I posted this in another thread, but I think it is also appropriate here:

The buck stops at the mayor of each affected city, the president of each affected parish, and the governors of the affected states. Gov. Blanco seemed stunned that the federal government was immediately on the scene. Why did she have that opinion? It was because she, like millions of Americans, believes that we don't truly have a "federal" government, but a "national" government. She mistakenly believes that her state is but a subdivision within that national government and that she's somewhere on that org chart.

She's wrong. Her state is her responsibility. That she was not prepared for a disaster like this is her fault. I know this sounds callous, but in fact there is no responsibility on the part of the federal government to help the states deal with such disasters. Go look at the Constitution yourself and you'll see for yourself. There is nothing in there that authorizes Congress to appropriate funds for disaster relief and nothing about the Executive Branch dealing with disaster relief.

There is an account of Congress voting to provide relief to a veteran's widow when her house burned down. This occurred sometime in the 1830's and the account details how U.S. Rep. Davy Crockett - yes, that Davy Crockett - convinced Congress it was wrong to appropriate those funds as it was not their money to give. Click here.

Yes, there is a precedent. And that is the problem. Originally, the states were like sovereign nations of their own. The Constitution created a union of those states with a limited federal government to keep the states trading together and to protect them from foreign invasion, etc. Over the years, the states became more and more dependent upon the federal government and the original model was forgotten. State militias were relegated to the National Guard which was basically turned over to the federal government with very little state control.

In the aftermath of the hurricane we're seeing two things. Among the people in NO we're seeing the results of decades of leftist brainwashing that convinces a large number of people that they are "entitled" to something as well as widespread acceptance of the ghetto thug culture. With the people responsible for governing these people we're seeing the results of decades of leftist dependence upon the federal government to fix every little problem.

I'm not going to blame Bush. I'm not going to blame FEMA. I blame the people of NO, their mayor, their parish presidents, and their governor for being unprepared. This is not the federal government's fault, this is their fault. The people have forgotten that they are the government. And now they've got the government that they deserve and it has proven to be deadly.

I'm not saying the Federal Government should not respond to this specific crisis. There really is no other choice at this point. The state utterly failed to live up to its responsibility and somebody has to do something. I'm just lamenting the fact that our federal model is so unrecognizable from what it was intended to be and that because that has happened we're seeing its deadly results.