AP FRIDAY NIGHT CLARIFICATION ON BUSH/KATRINA VIDEO ('OVERTOPPED' NOT 'BREACHED')

The AP via The Drudge Report ^ | March 3, 2006

[new yorker 77]

Clarification: Katrina-Video story ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) _ In a March 1 story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing among U.S. officials.

The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about floodwaters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking.

The day before the storm hit, Bush was told there were grave concerns that the levees could be overrun. It wasn't until the next morning, as the storm was hitting, that Michael Brown, then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Bush had inquired about reports of breaches. Bush did not participate in that briefing.

[COEXERJ145]

I need something from a "reputable" media source so I can go over to another forum and beat some idiot liberals over the head with it. Anything from Powerline or Drudge gets the usual "right wing news source" response.

Obviously I don't count the MSM as reputable but we all know how the liberals respond when the article is from anywhere other than the old media.

[Nothometoday]

This is very old news, I am not sure why it is considered newsworthy.
To me, It is all a sad story.
It has been 6 months, and people are still trying to find homes.

[Perdogg]

Has the candyman apologized?

[Petronski]

Olbermann is hated at ESPN.

Dan Patrick has him on his Friday ESPNRadio show every week. For a couple hours.

[new yorker 77]

Listen, FYILib

I'm an engineer.

I do not need a diagram from Daily Kos to understand what happens to a concrete floodwall when a hurricane hits.

The media LIED when they replaced the word OVERTOPPED with BREACHED.

Anyone who says that overtopping equals breach is a liar or an idiot.

Any engineer, like myself, would tell you that.

Since you are likely an ignoramus on this, there is no hope that you would understand the difference.

I could go into bending moments, flow rate, water pressure per square inch, the weight of the concrete walls, the fact that the walls were straight up and down instead of wide at the base, the fact the generations of New Orleans Democrats used dirt filler instead of aggregate for the footing, and many more reasons for the failure.

Overtopping that could lead to a breach over time is not the same as an actual breach.

Overtopping was a regular occurrence in New Orleans during heavy storms and Hurricanes along with excessive flooding from the rainfall itself.

I've worked with these systems before. Primarily the pump stations the relieve the flooding within cities like New Orleans.

They MSM lying in FAKE news items that falsely replace the word 'breached' with 'overtopped' in order to push their FAKE News lines only work with the perpetually obtuse.

[demlosers]

I've just done a search on AP's site, but could not find any clarification, except for some dumb story about Michael Douglas.

Maybe I didn't use the correct keywords...you can try...

http://www.ap.org/

[Alas Babylon!]

I remember that picture but I think it was 2003.

[new yorker 77]

A friend of mine works at ESPN in Bristol.

That's about 30 to 35 miles from where I live.

Olbermann is hate by most hosts, anchors, but mainly the behind the scenes guys like cameramen and technicians.

He is an obnoxious jerk.

[new yorker 77]

Numerical Simulation of Flood Inundation Due to Dam and Levee Breach


http://www.asce.org/files/pdf/hurricane/Models_and_Simulation/Numerical_Simulation_of_Flood_Inundation_Due_To_Dam_and_Levee_Breach.pdf#search=

[rawhide]

Lol! Good one!

[McGavin999]

I'm surprised they didn't end it with:

However, this does not alter the fact that Bush knew of the approaching hurricane and did absolutely nothing to stop it.

[Da Mav]

Me too. Here is a perfect opportunity for the Press Secretary to make a big point about how the media got caught red handed peddling a lie in a major story yet we hear nothing at all.

Very irritating to say the least. The Administration needs a Bolton type critter in that position that is ready to take on these prima donnas. I think it would provide a morale boost to the whole conservative movement.

And what are they going to do to retaliate? Run false stories?

[new yorker 77]

I still think had we placed Chuck Schumer in a tugboat in the path of Katrina he could have sucked up so much energy from the Gulf that it would have reduced Katrina to a Catagory 1 before landfall.

[new yorker 77]

That's a Category 1.

[Fintan]

 

[DocRock]

My sixth grade daughter has to do a "current events" project every Friday. The students have to find a current news article online and print it out, display it on some type of decorated background, and write a two sentence summary which can be anything related.

Last night, I told my daughter to look up the AP article and read it, then I showed her the clip of the video conference and played Mayfield's comments about over topping a couple of times for her to realize the words were different. She looked at me and said, "Daddy, what is the difference between over topping and breaching?" I explained it this way. If the flood walls were "over topped", the water could be pumped out. If the flood walls were "breached", the pumps are under at least 10 feet of water.

Her two sentences to summarize the AP article were crystal clear. She wrote something like this...

"The reporter lied because President Bush was only told that the levees could be over topped. Over topped means the water could be pumped out, but breached means that the pumps would be under water."

My little girl is going to make a fine Freeper one day. She even used bold to add emphasis to "over topped" and "breached" in her short comment.

[McGavin999]

LOL! Or if we had placed a camera in the eye of the storm, the wind generated from the race between Shummer and McCain could have sent it back to sea.

[DarthVader]

AP = Awful Propaganda

[new yorker 77]

Tell your little girl that an electric motor turns the shaft that turns the impeller in the pump that takes the water out of the flooded city.

If the levee is breached, then the motors for the pumps go under water.

Either they shut off automatically or they burn out, or a worse case is that the power station that feeds electricity to the pump station becomes flooded and goes out or goes out. The power station could also go out due to Hurricane winds.

No motor, No pumping.

[maica]

An exchange of emails that I had with a reporter who was following the AP lead yesterday:

.

Ken Lormand
Bureau Chief/Managing Editor
SRN News
703-528-6213
----- Original Message -----
From: maica
To:
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2006 2:36 PM

[SRN is the news service on the station that carries Medved, Hewitt, and other conservative talk shows.]

> Your news report today by Greg Clugston is inaccurate and > misleading. The reporter uses the word "breach" referring to the > potential hazards to expect from hurricane Katrina. The word used in > the briefing conducted with the National Hurricane Center and > President Bush (I heard the tape) is "topped". Words mean things, and > those two words don't mean even remotely the same thing. I the case > of New Orleans the difference is about twenty feet of water. >

> Either the reporters English skills are so bad that he does not > understand the difference, or he is willfully misleading the public.
> Which is it?
maica

(((((((

maica,

I have asked Greg Clugston to respond to your comments.

Thank you for alerting us of your concerns about our news coverage. Let me begin by assuring you, as firmly as possible, that I have not and will not "willfully mislead the public" in my news reporting. That would be dishonest, counterproductive, and an affront to me -- both professionally and personally.

I agree with you: the choice of words used in news reporting is important. I take great care in my writing to accurately and concisely explain news events. In one of my reports on the Bush-Hurricane Katrina story that aired on Thursday, March 2, 2006, I wrote that President Bush received dire warnings about a potential catastrophe on the eve of the hurricane, including the "possibility of the levees being breached." It's now clear that key government officials warned that the levees were at risk, among other worries.

Your specific concern centers on the word "breach." Like you, I heard the audio from a portion of one National Hurricane Center briefing. The Center's director, Max Mayfield, did not use the word "breach." However, there was ample discussion among high-level officials --in that meeting and others-- about the ability of the levees to withstand Katrina's force. Whether or not the word "breach" was used in every discussion, the thrust of those conversations is clear: that a serious disaster, including failure of the levees, was not unforeseeable.

On September 1, 2006, President Bush himself used the word "breach," which further complicated the story for the White House. In a TV interview, the president said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." One reason why I used the word "breach" is because the veracity of the president's statement has been at the center of the post-Katrina analysis and government review.

My 22-second report yesterday attempted to update the story accurately and concisely. It's impossible in that short amount of time to explore or explain every detail of a multi-layered story. However, I believe inclusion of the word "breach" was not misleading. It's quite understandable that any talk about the levees in New Orleans on the eve of largest hurricane in recorded U.S. history conveyed deep concern about the ability of the levees to hold. In this context, the word "breach" is appropriate.

For the record, I recorded two (2) voice reports on the Bush-Hurricane Katrina story on Thursday, March 2, 2006. One of the stories included the word "breach," the other did not. In your e-mail, you said my news report was "repeated half-hourly." It's the policy of SRN News not to re-air the same report within four hours. Perhaps, in addition to one of my stories, you heard other reports on the same story that were generated by someone else.

It was never my intention to cause confusion with my story and, if that was the case, please accept my apologies.

Sincerely,

Greg Clugston
SRN News White House correspondent

------------------

I wrote back to him, pointing out the timeline that he so conveniently has compressed and distorted.