For reasons that escape me, the mainstream media has completely ignored the fact New Orleans was not flooded by a hurricane but by an act of negligence by the Federal Government.
I’ve known this (and been posting about it) for months. Now evidence is mounting every single day. It is simply amazing that after 1000 people are dead and hundreds of billions of dollars in property destroyed, the only investigative journalism is being done by a small local paper. Is the MSM awake?
17th Street Canal levee was doomed
Report blames corps: Soil could never hold
By Bob MarshallThe floodwall on the 17th Street Canal levee was destined to fail long before it reached its maximum design load of 14 feet of water because the Army Corps of Engineers underestimated the weak soil layers 10 to 25 feet below the levee, the state’s forensic levee investigation team concluded in a report to be released this week.
That miscalculation was so obvious and fundamental, investigators said, they “could not fathom” how the design team of engineers from the corps, local firm Eustis Engineering and the national firm Modjeski and Masters could have missed what is being termed the costliest engineering mistake in American history.
The failure of the wall and other breaches in the city’s levee system flooded much of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina slammed ashore Aug. 29, prompting investigations that have raised questions about the basic design and construction of the floodwalls.
“It’s simply beyond me,” said Billy Prochaska, a consulting engineer in the forensic group known as Team Louisiana. “This wasn’t a complicated problem. This is something the corps, Eustis, and Modjeski and Masters do all the time. Yet everyone missed it — everyone from the local offices all the way up to Washington.”
[and the smoking gun -ed]
“Using the data we have available from the corps,, we did our own calculations on how much water that design could take in these soils before failure,” said LSU professor Ivor van Heerden, a team member. “Our research shows it would fail at water levels between 11 and 12 feet — which is just what happened” in Katrina.
They used the data they got FROM THE CORPS. This is not something new… The Corps had the data all along. They did didn’t use it properly. It can’t get a whole lot worse from an engineering point of view.
But it does:
Several high-level academic and professional investigations have found that the sheet piling used in the design to support the floodwalls was too short for the 18.5-foot depth of the canal. …
The corps has long claimed the sheet piling was driven to 17.5 feet deep, but Team Louisiana recently used sophisticated ground sonar to prove it was only 10 feet deep [Isn’t that the kind of thing the MSM lives for? ed] . …
Prochaska said a rule of thumb is that the length of sheet piling below a canal bottom should be two to three times longer than the length extending above the canal bottom.
“That’s if you have uniform soils, and we certainly don’t have that in the New Orleans area,” he said. “It kind of boggles the mind that they missed this, because it’s so basic, and there were so many qualified engineers working on this.”
And more disbelief from a “non-60 Minutes” expert:
Robert Bea, a University of California, Berkeley professor who led a National Science Foundation investigation of the levee failures, said the mistakes made by the engineers on the project were hard to accept because the project was so “straightforward.”
“It’s hard to understand, because it seemed so simple, and because the failure has become so large,” Bea said.
“This is the largest civil engineering disaster in the history of the United States. Nothing has come close to the $300 billion in damages and half-million people out of their homes and the lives lost,” he said. “Nothing this big has ever happened before in civil engineering.”
This is just another in the long string of damning pieces done by the Times Picayune. But nothing from the MSM.
There is a reason for me harping on this– Other than the obvious that it was an appalling failure by the Corps…
This makes the case against the Corps (ie the Federal Government) seem to be a slam dunk. Contrary to what the arm-chair lawyers will tell you, the government can be sued for negligence. I’ve been saying it since days after the storm, we are going to see a lawsuit against the feds the likes of which we’ve never seen before. (Can you cay 300 billion?)
It simply amazes me the MSM is missing this story. 60 Minutes runs some whackjob who claims New Orleans is sinking but they ignore who flooded New Orleans?!?! I can’t help but wonder who is making those calls.
If there was an engineering failure on a aircraft that made 3 of the same model aircraft crash and it killed 1000 people, the media would be in full circus mode.
In a not so hypothetical situation- A single teenaged girl disappears in Aruba and that gets front page coverage for months. The Federal Government floods a city of a million people and the media ignores it. What am I missing here?
They’ll figure it our sooner or later. When the lawsuit hits and the Feds are facing a multi-hundred-billion dollar payout, the media will act they they’ve been on top of the story the whole time.
But in the mean time, I have some friendly advice for any MSMers who stumble upon this post. There are dozens of journalism awards just waiting to be claimed on this story. The Corps still won’t release some data the researchers want. Isn’t that why we have a media? Are you folks awake in your ivory tower?
Footnote: (after reading some comments and trackbacks) This is not a single story from the TP. They have a new smoking gun almost daily, this is just today’s edition. It is amazing what just 2 or 3 writers have dug up. I must confess, I’ve never much liked the TP… But these guys are doing some of the best journalism I’ve ever witnessed on this story. If you have an interest, dig thru their archives, it will astound you. The MSM is being embarrassed.
Psst, Paul. You’re missing an ‘R’ in your headline.
Wait a minute, wasn’t it all bushes fault?
Paul,
The MSM will have no part in this story. Why? Because they have spent months spinning this whole catasrophe on GW’s failures “list” and it would do no good to their agenda divert any attention to failing levees. The Dems need this talking point for next years mid-terms, and anything other than blaming Bush directly for the entire fiasco will not suffice. Producers and Editors of the MSM “(Mapes Streaming Media)” just can’t allow that.
Exactly, if this is negligence, then the whole NO fiasco is the fault of decades of Corps construction accross many administrations and not just the lack of forsight of a single [and coincidentially Republican] President.
The knock against the prez isn’t that the place flooded it is about his lack of response after the place flooded. He had cronies running departments that ended up costing lives.
I don’t think Democrats have any reason not to want this story out there as much as Paul does.
I am curious why this paragraph didn’t make it into the analysis above
According to records, Eustis Engineering provided the detailed analyses of the ability of soils along the path of the levee to withstand water pressure once the wall was built on top. The information was provided to Modjeski and Masters, the contractor that designed the wall for the corps. If the project followed normal procedures, the engineers with those firms were using design criteria spelled out in various corps handbooks. “You use the corps cookbook, and you usually have to work it out using corps (computer) programs,” Prochaska said.
Maybe because if the data that was supplied to the corps was “cooked” it reduces the corps responsibilty.
Naw Peter- It is the mainSTEAM media – They really have me steamed majorly. 🙂
thanks
P
I think you can say goodbye to the esteemed engineering firms of Modjeski & Masters and Eustis Engineering. If either were publicly traded, I’d short their stock.
Ah, okay-dokey, Paul. I getcha. 🙂
So they are blaming the ACoE? Who cut the funding of the ACoE? Oh, nevermind.
And right on Bill K. Hurricanes and disasters aren’t the Republicans fault, and I don’t pay any attention to those who try to blame Bush for it. After all, Clinton cut funding too, if I recall correctly. I think the real problem was the response. It was absolutely unacceptable, and no partisan blinders can keep you safe from that. (Playing guitar, eating birthday cake, appointing Brownie)
-jp2
>I am curious why this paragraph didn’t make it into the analysis above
> Maybe because if the data that was supplied to the corps was “cooked” it reduces the corps responsibilty.
Chad,
Your stupidity has been well documented by me before, but I’ll do it again. Let me pull the WHOLE section you quote. My stuff in []’s
———-
Corps approved design [you cut that part eh Chad?]
According to records, Eustis Engineering provided the detailed analyses of the ability of soils along the path of the levee to withstand water pressure once the wall was built on top. The information was provided to Modjeski and Masters, the contractor that designed the wall for the corps. If the project followed normal procedures, the engineers with those firms were using design criteria spelled out in various corps handbooks. “You use the corps cookbook, and you usually have to work it out using corps (computer) programs,” Prochaska said.
[In other words, Chad you nitwit, If they followed normal procedures, they took the raw data and plugged into Corps formulas and Corps software. So if there was a problem with the results, it was the Corps who designed the procedure, not the engineering firm. Can you read?]
Private-sector engineering work must be reviewed by corps personnel in relevant sections. In this case, legal documents show, the work was reviewed by engineers in the corps’ geotechnical and structural engineering branches, as well as the flood control structures section. It was approved and accepted by the district’s chief engineer at the time, Chester Ashley, according to the documents.
———-
So AFTER they took the data and used the Corps toolset (cookbook) to manipulate it, the Corps THEN looked over the results and the STILL approved it Chad.
This just adds another log on the fire roasting the Corps you numbskull. (I’m running out of clean insults)
So to answer your question about wondering why I did not include it? For space reasons you goober. It just damn the Corps more.
So do me a favor, if you are not smart enough to keep up with the conversation, please just ignore my posts. You are still pissed because you made an ass out of yourself and I called you on it. Making a bigger ass out of yourself won’t undo that, it only makes it worse.
Now you have 3 options.
1) Figure out how to raise your IQ quickly
2) Stop making stupid comments
3) Be banned.
The choice is yours.
not so fast wavemaker, read my reply to Chad. They followed Corps procedures.*
P
* well, apparently, since the Corps demands you do and the Corps later approved their work, it so it seems a safe assumption.
The knock against the prez isn’t that the place flooded it is about his lack of response after the place flooded.
It was the largest and fastest federal response in the history of major disaster responses.
The problem was that there was ZERO response by state and local personnel. Whatever the plan called for them to do, they failed to live up to it.
I find it curious that the third-responders are the Democrats’ favorite target. (Actually, it’s not curious at all. It is perfectly predictable.)
Phinn – where on Earth did you get that data?
-jp2
Oh, and as to “third responders:”
From the DHS Website:
“In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort. “
Please note the word “primary.” Also, “swift” and “effective.”
-jp2
I’ll get it for you when I have time (or you can JFGI), but my “data” comes partly comes from living for many years in New Orleans and South Florida.
Compare the federal response times to those experienced following Hugo, Andrew, Georges, Charley, Frances, Jeanne, Wilma …
I lived through all of them (except Hugo). Federal response time is about 5 days. After Katrina, they responded in about 3.
I’ll bet somebody’s shredders are working overtime about now…
As part of its investigation into the nation’s response to Hurricane Katrina, a Senate investigatory committee has delivered a massive request to the Orleans Levee Board to submit records covering everything from transcripts of meetings dating back to 1989 to all e-mails and written communications sent in the days before and after the storm struck on Aug. 29.
A book my wife is reading on the history for New Orleans contains this classic quote:
“Louisiana government was based on the French model. A public position was considered private property and one expected to profit greatly from serving.”
That probably hasn’t changed too much.
Matt, what book was that? I like the quote.
I posted a link a while ago (now, no longer know what it was, but it was posted here in Wizbang just after N.O. was flooded), anyway, it was as to federal funds that Louisiana received for purposes of repairing the levees as needed.
And, the state of Louisiana instead used the funds to pay two or just a few “experts” to study building a bridge over Lake Ponchartrain (spelled?). They devoted the full amount of money to a few hired experts to create a study of the issue…not even build a bridge, just compile a report.
So, perhaps it’s more prudent to focus on who in the state government receives what federal dollars and how who spends them. As with many emergency bottleneck tragedies after Katrina’s complex flooding result, Louisiana is discovered to repeatedly thwart most efforts that are provided to them to solve their problems.
It was written by Mel Leavitt (whom I’m sure you’ve heard of) and called A Short History of New Orleans.
Here’s the Amazon link.
Oh yeah, I know that name….
Can’t play Prep Quiz Bowl during high school in New Orleans and not know that name.
Funny, since the storm I thought about many deceased New Orleanians (both famous and not) and wondered what they would think of their city being destroyed.
Thru all of it, I never thought of Mel Leavitt. -guess he passed so long ago- I’d give 5 bucks to have him come back on the radio and give his thoughts.
I think I have a signed copy of that book somewhere… Maybe it’s time to clean my office.
thanks
Phinn – when you get that data let me know. Sorry, but personal data won’t cut it on a claim as bold as yours.
As far as the Katrina response time, there were people stranded for far more than 3 days. And just because they show up doesn’t mean they are responding properly. And they certainly were not doing that.
-jp2
jp2,
And local and state officials who both did nothing and prevented the feds from doing in the initial reaction? The city officials who let hundreds of buses get destroyed rather than use them for evacuations, as their own plans called for?
They get a pass, right?
I’m going to return my focus here to the issue that is worn-thin to some and that is “personal responsibility.”
IF you live in a flood plain, beneath sea level, in the middle of an ocean, on a coastal dune, whatever…IF you live in an area that is established as being vulnerable to the whims of nature (flooding, storms, sinking…all these far more vulnerable and treacherous situations than wide continental shelfs that experience earthquakes and tornadoes), IF you live along the banks of the Mississippi, for example, in an area that is known to flood and flood again…or in areas of N.O. that are flood plains and only “dry” land because the general area is walled off from surrounding waters…I mean, WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY IS IT when your house/land floods?
There’s a great deal to be said as to who is to blame for what stage of the flooding, but ultimately, ANY INDIVIDUAL who makes choices that places themselves, their property and family at risk of immediate threat such as being washed away, flooded out, swept away by one aspect or another, when it’s established that the area is immediately vulnerable…it becomes a case of INDIVIDUAL RISK and it’s ultimately the responsibility of individuals.
Society in general can only be blamed so many times before individuals have to plan and build smarter. Want to live in a flood plain? Then build something that floats or move somewhere that isn’t vulnerable to floods. Same thing applies to people who build houses on sand dunes that decade after decade are washed away with storms. You have to build (and situate) smarter than that.
Suise…
I’ve ignored you for post after post after post… But I can no longer.
For someone who lives in a freaking earthquake zone to lecture people repeatedly about living in a flood plain strikes me as well… just plain hypocritical.
You live in freaking California and you blast people who live in New Orleans…
We can build a levee… (Well in theory we can…) You can’t build anything to protect you from a quake.
So with all due respect. Shut up.
Thanks.
Paul, great stuff man, but let me suggest:
Both engineering firms will be sued, along with the corp. Both, presumably, have mondo professional liability insurance policies (typically required in major bid procurements). The internal relationship between them and the corps as to ACE’s own design acceptance requirements will not matter a whit as against the claims of innocent third parties who can demonstrate that the harm they suffered was reasonably forseeable. If either firm knew or should have known that the final product they had a hand in was structurally deficient (objectively), they’re both in bankruptcy court, regardless of whether or not they would ultimately have been able to survive the ten years of litigation on the issue of fault/liability.
Consider, as a parallel, why the Big Six accounting firms are now the Big Three.
You build a city in a swamp surrounded on three sides by water and watch it sink deeper and deeper below sea level every year, while these same levees and bank hardening structures jet the sediment the delta needs to survive directly out into the Gulf where it is wasted.
The Army CoE and various coastal and marine studies professionals predict that New Orleans will be in the Gulf within the next 50-90 years.
Yes, the government screwed up with construction. I agree.
But is it fair to ask the rest of the country to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild a city destined for the waves? It seems like an exercise in man’s arrogance and futility to me.
Here in NC we had a similar situation around the turn of the last century. Diamond City was hit directly and all but wiped out by hurricanes. Did they expect anyone else to pay for their poor choice of location? No, they did not.
They moved.
Perhaps New Orleans should do the same.
Paul, I know I haven’t been keeping so up-to-date on this stuff, but the result isn’t anything new; I figured that much out when the plans first came on-line at the IPET website. Although the floodwall plan was poor, its execution was truly awful, and I feel it in my bones that the locality must share some responsibility for this fiasco because the levee boards aren’t cyphers and the Army can’t oversee everything. It is very difficult for Army engineers to blackball a contractor, especially if the contractor has local support and the Army engineers are too under-funded to check important stuff. (This can happen when budgets remain stable yet oversight responsibilities increase as projects accelerate.)
I suspect something of the sort happened here. There won’t be any paperwork to back it up; investigators will have to look into COE staff budgets to figure this part out.
…
In my experience, the MSM doesn’t really want reporters skilled on technical matters. Someone with an engineering degree is prejudged to be a poor communicator or too concerned about their professional reputation to hype up a story sufficiently, or considered too professionally threatening (competent) to other reporters to ever get hired.
They used to say in D.C., “If you want the truth, go to a priest” – but that was before the Catholic Church scandals. Now they don’t say anything about truth at all…
One thing the story’s missing is the setting in time. When were these mistakes made? It seems likely that they were made prior to President Bushitler’s regime, and therefore this news is of limited utility to the media.
There are at least a couple of places where the article at least hints at some private sector responsibility:
“The corps has long claimed the sheet piling was driven to 17.5 feet deep, but Team Louisiana recently used sophisticated ground sonar to prove it was only 10 feet deep.”
Yes, the article goes on to say that 17.5 feet wouldn’t have been enough, but obviously somebody did something wrong there, and a contractor shaving costs certainly seems the most likely explanation.
And the bit about them using the ACE’s software and calculations assumes that the initial inputs were correct and that the error was in the processing/programming. Those are facts not yet in evidence.
I’m not trying to defend the Corps here; they do indeed seem to have screwed up.
The drawings are dated March 1990 (DM20 17th St Outfall Canal).
Correction: there are new drawings available at the IPET web site, stuff that was posted the day before Thanksgiving. (Suddenly my computer can access the site using DSL!) These plans are dated from the mid- to late-90s.
Why on earth would you believe all those liberal scientists and researchers on this? They’re clearly scrambling for grant money and will do anything they can to get it. Obviously they’ll make up and misinterpet data, all as part of a vast conspiracy-
Oh wait, I’m supposed to post this in the global warming thread.
Paul:
I really am sorry so many people in New Orleans died, lost property, friends,pets or were harmed by the Katrina flooding.
–The rest has been removed because “Charles Bannerman” is a worthless sack of dung. ED.
Well Chuck, somehow you don’t sound very sorry. You sound like you’d be glad to be rid of us. I hope nothing like this ever happens to the Garden of Eden in which you undoubtedly reside. Millions of people do love New Orleans. It does have value, and it does contribute to the success of this country. It deserves the same support and sympathy that all of the other areas of the world affected by disasters deserve. Everyone who lives there is not stupid, low-class, poor, and ignorant. Thank you for propagating the negative sterotype, and I’ll refrain from calling your hometown by the names you’ve thrown at mine.
As far as the Katrina response time, there were people stranded for far more than 3 days.
Oh, yes, God forbid a Leftist open his mind to the concept that evacuating many thousands of people from an entire city (that has virtually no access via freeways because they have been destroyed) actually TAKES TIME.
Listen, I’m not saying that the federal disaster response is or was good. They all suck. I’m a free market libertarian, after all, and believe that 99% of what government does is not only wasteful but actively counter-productive.
That said, it is simply counter-factual to allege that the federal response to the Katrina disaster was anything other than typical. If anything, it was better than average, both in terms of response time and magnitude.
The portrayal of this response as exceptional is pure propaganda, and is designed to disguise the complete failure by the state and local governments, which I know from first-hand experience are second-to-none (in the US) for their incompetence and criminality. When they find the “missing” police officers, let me know. (HINT: they never existed. They were fraudulently listed on the payroll in order to inflate the size of police department to (a) get excess funding from the city and (b) qualify for federal funding as a force of at least 1500.)
Katrina made good television. The Left took advantage of that situation to feed the media a “tidy story line” that Bush’s government was somehow a special failure in this case. It wasn’t. It was a garden-variety failure, executed as well or better than every other governmental response to every other hurricane in the last 15 years.
I also recall that many of the tunnels on the $14B Big Dig in Boston are leaking due to shoddy engineering, and our space shuttles keep blowing up — why can’t we have any integrity in our public sector technology any more.
Paul,
There will be no $300B Federal Tort claims lawsuit (or group of suits) based on the T-P’s article. None will be needed. You know, this article has confirmed for me a suspicion I had about why FEMA is sitting on a cash hoard. It seems to me FEMA is preparing for a big-ass buyout of most homeowners in Orleans and St. Bernard parishes. If the money currently being hoarded is not quite up to snuff, a combination of Rep. Richard Baker’s (R-Baton Rouge) Louisiana Recovery Corp, HUD distressed-property swaps, and Section 8 vouchers for the renters will do the total trick. I submit the entire total for that may not even be $75 billion (thank the 7 assessors in NOLA who have been found by the T-P to have been low-balling property assessments!).
Don’t get in too much of a hurry for the MSM to do its job. Let the T-P get the series of Pulitzers it so deserves.
I have a problem with the statement that the Federal Government is responsible for the levee collapse. Saying the Federal Government is responsible is like saying that everyone is responsible, which means no one is responsible. The Federal Government? Does that include the Post Office? The DOT? The FAA? No. The Army Corps Of Engineers. That’s who. And within the ACE, who were the specific individuals? From the General in charge on down. Wanna bet we never get around to that?
Finally, if Eustis and M & M knew the ACE was shorting the levee construction specifications why didn’t they start waving their arms and screaming to all the authorities at the time, including the congressional representatives and locally elected officials, as well as the TP?
“..the mainstream media has completely ignored the fact New Orleans was not flooded by a hurricane but by an act of negligence by the Federal Government.”
Hmmmm.
Perhaps the MSM avoids this issue because it was the liberal left-wing enviro freaks (Save our Wetlands) who stopped the Hurricane Barrier Protection project. This project would have built flood walls and locks at the Rigolets, Chef Pass and the MRGO to protect Lake Ponchartrain from storm surge. Katrina would have likely overtopped these structures, if built, but they would have slowed the rapid increase in water level and therefore would have limited the devastation and possibly saved west Orleans Parish. I was in New Orleans for the storm, and by 4:00 PM on Monday, kids were playing football on our street, watched closely by dads with chain saws and pick-up trucks clearing the roads. We didn’t wait for FEMA. By 5:00 AM Tuesday we were all heading for Houston. When blaming the feds for this disaster, don’t forget the mostly democratic Orleans Levee District, whose marinas, roadways, bridges and casinos weathered the storm better than the levees they were supposed to be managing. Indeed, the president of the Orleans Levee District during the storm was appointed by Edwin Edwards, who is doing time for too many offenses to name.
The beauty of being a civil engineer is that you make the objects so common to all that they actually believe they can do the same despite their total ignorance of the forces involved.
Hmmm. So what they say is this:
But for the Engineers building the defective sea-walls New Orleans would have been saved.
Q.E.D.
Paul,
I’m from Jonesboro-Hodge….How bad is it???
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