Posted on 11/03/2012 4:26:34 AM PDT by Bulwinkle
I've seen an estimate that there is/was up to 300 million gallons of water in NY subway system.
Katrina? "The unwatering team successfully removed 250 billion gallons of water from Orleans, St. Bernard and Jefferson parishes after Katrina " http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf/2012/10/new_orleans_corps_employees_jo.html
Sandy, though wide, was not Katrina... FEMA ain't close to handling a large storm.
Alas, levees, once there’s water behind them, work just fine ~ and become part of the problem. I think they’ve improved the AFTER THE STORM drainage capability there.
I’m sure most people don’t understand that New Orleans was extremely lucky with Katrina. By turning to the east before it came ashore the main damage from storm surges was to the Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Biloxi area. Not to diminish the damage in NO but had the storm been 50 miles to the west, there would be no NO today. Waveland was basically wiped of the map near the water as was much of Bay St. Louis. But the residents put their heads down and went to work re-building for the next one to tear it up again. The devistation in NJ and NY will be a VERY long time getting fixed and we pray for those folks with colder weather on the approach. But, the race must go on right Bloomy? Idiot!
Helping keep mankind warm for 65 years.
HY - huge numbers of high rise buildings
NO - not so much
In the high rises without power, the elevators don’t work. All food, water, and other emergency supplies have to be carried up dozens of flights of stairs. Each gallon of water weighs 8 lbs. I saw a report with 60 and 70 year old people carrying water and food up dozens of flights of stairs. They should have drafted some of the marathon runners to help with this.
Maybe by now they’ve rigged up some pulleys to raise the supplies from the exterior.
I would suggest that you seriously need to go and read in detail the reports by the American Society of Civil Engineers, Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force (IPET) which was headed by the Army Corp of Engineers (who were obviously accused of lacking credibility), University of California at Berkeley, Louisiana Department of Transportation and others.
There was a total of 50 locations along the levees were problems occurred and of the just under 300 miles of levees, approximately 60% of it ended up being damaged. There was some overtopping but even in those cases, some levees continued to perform except where they were built on dirt or peat that was quick to erode. Like all major disasters, there wasn’t just ‘one thing’ that could be pointed to after the fact… there was a huge number of design flaws with respect to the poor reinforcement of the levees, the fact that much of it was built on substrata of incredibly low and unacceptable shear strength that had been grossly overestimated with regards to its strength, pilings that were not deep enough, levee sections that were not interlocked, lack of maintenance, a fundamental problem with the design of the I-walls (that had been clearly identified in 1984 as being a disaster waiting to happen) and on and on… The real problem was that there were four major levee breaks which occurred where the water level was still below its design elevation i.e. no overtopping required for failure. Some of those were located in neighbourhoods where the residents had been reporting the growing ‘marshes’ in their backyards for several years. It is not possible to summarize fat reports into a couple of concise conclusions but suffice it to say that when the Army Corp of Engineers accepts the responsibility for the mess, what you are obviously dealing with is a massive engineering failure.
I have seen the report. I also toured the catastrophe zones in March 2006. My understanding from the tour and presentation is that the Lower 9th Ward and Lakeview were inundated because the canal floodwalls failed. While there indeed were some levee failures in the network, the catastrophic flooding was due to floodwalls breaking.
I agree with you but for a different reason. In my post up above, I mentioned the levee failures that occurred which were not related to any ‘overtopping mechanism’ but had more to do with poor design and inadequate soil strength. The higher water levels accompanying the storm surge made it more likely the failure would occur during a hurricane but theoretically, it could have happened anytime since the margin of safety in the levee design was so low (essentially one). What Katrina did was put everyone on high alert so folks had already taken shelter, moved out, higher ground etc. If that failure had of occurred in the middle of the night when nobody was on high alert, chances are that from a human life perspective, the disaster could have been much worse. Katrina might have saved more lives than it cost.
***There is a vast misconception that the levees failed.***
I have read that the levee failed because a barge broke loose and drifted into it.
“And in the surrounding areas of southern Mississippi and Alabama, the roads that ran through the country side were largely dirt roads”
Uh... I-10 was open right after the storm. I know because I drove from Gulfport,Ms to Mobile,Al that day. Paved the whole way.
There were so many problems occurring simultaneously that it’s virtually impossible to sort out what by your definition might be classified as ‘catastrophic flooding’ as opposed to some local ‘garden variety flooding’. The levee along the Mississippi River – Gulf Outlet was completely wiped out. The I-wall along the Industrial Canal, the South Breach and the East Bank were overtopped and obliterated… did that occur strictly due to the ‘overtopping’ per se? Or did it happen because of the poor design of the I-wall which even if overtopped didn’t necessarily have to collapse i.e. if you’ve read the reports you know that the water gap caused by the poor design of I-wall quickly caused a sliding soil condition and entire sections were simply shifted along to the point of destruction. And then as I mentioned earlier, there were walls that went down which were not overtopped at all. None of this really matters of course….it all comes down to proper engineering design, selecting the right materials, making sure that everything was constructed properly and then inspected/maintained properly afterwards. Overall, it was an engineering failure pure and simple… many will blame corrupt politicians and deals that allowed substandard materials and methods to be used. None of this exonerates the engineers who put their licenses on the line and can always withdraw their services if asked to do something that compromises proper design.
What? I live in South Mississippi, and I was here when Katrina hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Despite stereotypes of the South, our roads are indeed paved.
Although Katrina did damage all through the state, the heaviest destruction was not in the "country side," but in South Mississippi near the beach, where the storm surge did a number on many of those paved roads, not to mention the homes and businesses that used to exist.
If New Jersey had a black population (13+%) as New Orleans (67+%), they would have been in there BEFORE the storm hit.
I have a friend in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, that was able to call me and tell me what he needed after Katrina hit. We loaded a truck full of supplies (water, fuel, food, chainsaw equipment) with enough gas to get us down there and back (600 miles round trip) and took it to him. Many of my neighbors did the same thing. My bets those in NYC haven’t got friends with the ability to do what we were able to accomplish. We “Bubbas” can take care of ourselves, no matter where we live.
We knew this storm would hit for at least 5 days. Why weren’t these supplies...food, gas, water, blankets moved into place IN ADVANCE?
Why didn't the residences gather their own supplies? FEMA, Red Cross, utility workers, and various other blanket carriers can't possibly be at everyone's front door the second the storm passed.
Sorry AC, your impression that the flooding in NOLA was due to rain is incorrect. There was indeed a storm surge that accompanied Katrina’s landfall. As someone earlier noted, the flooding in the city was due to over topped, then failed levees.
The catastrophic damage in the outlying parishes and across Mississippi and Alabama had nothing to do with rain. It was all wind and storm surge. 300 foot long casinos were lifted across Hwy. 90. Sections of bridges on I-10 across the Lake and at Pascagoula were washed out as were the Hwy. 90 bridges at Pass Christian and at Biloxi. All of these bridges were 14 to 16 feet above sea level. Rain did not cause that.
My parents live approximately six miles north of the Gulf and over two miles east of Lake Ponchartrain at an eight foot elevation and over thirty miles from the Mississippi River. They had four and a half feet of water in their house. Rain did not cause that.
The government spends so much money on climate alarmism that it doesn’t have the resources to deal with real weather events.
According to sworn testimony of the Army Corps before Congress, the failure of levees and other structures that led to the flooding of New Orleans was the result of design and construction flaws. Nothing whatever to do with maintenance. It was a federal flood, period.
Didn’t you have to detour at Pascagoula? IIRC, the east-bound bridge lost a section or two, or at least was damaged by floating barges.
My family from Slidell was staying with me north of Mobile and we made the trip back to the damage as soon as they let people back into Slidell three or four days later. The west-bound bridge was still converted to two-way traffic.
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