The Catastrophe Wasn't Katrina

[MountainLaurel]

But rather the shoddy state of the levees and canals.

The evidence, by now, is overwhelming: Beautiful, decadent New Orleans wasn't doomed by Hurricane Katrina but by decades of human incompetence and neglect. As far as the drowned city is concerned, the greatest natural disaster in the nation's history would have been just a messy inconvenience if not for the fumbling hand of man.

The mortal threat to New Orleans, as Katrina plowed into the Gulf Coast, was not the powerful winds -- Mississippi took the brunt of those -- but the massive storm surge the hurricane generated. We now know that the levees, floodwalls and other barriers protecting the city were, for the most part, plenty tall enough and theoretically strong enough to keep the waters at bay. On paper, New Orleans should have ended up wet and wounded, but basically intact.

What happened instead was "the single most costly catastrophic failure of an engineered system in history," according to a report issued last week by the Independent Levee Investigation Team, a blue-ribbon panel led by experts from the University of California at Berkeley and funded by the National Science Foundation.

Some of the flood barriers were built using inadequate materials, the report says. Others were designed so poorly that they provided weak spots for the waters to exploit. Still others were left unfinished for lack of funds.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/29/AR2006052900733.html

[MountainLaurel]

1. Another important statement from the article

The most chilling sentence in the report is this one:

"A number of these same problems appear to be somewhat pervasive, and call into question the integrity and reliability of other sections of the flood protection system that did not fail during the event."

[slackmaster]

2. More information from Cal w/link to draft of final report

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/05/24_leveereport.shtml

For those wishing to go straight to the report:

http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~new_orleans/

[MountainLaurel]

3. Thank you Slackmaster

This information needs to get out there!

[slackmaster]

4. I think everyone should become aware of it - problem not confined to NO

Plenty of blame to go around, plenty of opportunities to get our leaders on the stick before something happens.

[OneBlueSky]

5. "decades of human incompetence and neglect" . . .

Their Levees -- Our Levees

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0112-15.htm

Here's how the British hold back the waters from flooding London:


And the Dutch solution to protecting an entire nation that mostly rests below sea level:


The Italians are defending their city on the sea, Venice:


And...

Here's how the richest, most powerful and technologically advanced
nation on earth protected against the long-forecasted flooding of New Orleans:


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0112-15.htm