And the story gets more interesting:
Louisiana’s top hurricane experts have rejected the official explanations for the floodwall collapses that inundated much of New Orleans, concluding that Hurricane Katrina’s storm surges were much smaller than authorities have suggested and that the city’s flood- protection system should have kept most of the city dry…
In the weeks since Katrina drowned this low-lying city, there has been an intense focus on the chaotic government response to the flood. But Ivor van Heerden, the Hurricane Center’s deputy director, said the real scandal of Katrina is the “catastrophic structural failure” of barriers that should have handled the hurricane with relative ease…
The center’s researchers said it is too early to say whether the breaches were caused by poor design, faulty construction or some combination. But van Heerden said the floodwalls at issue — massive concrete slabs mounted on steel sheet pilings — looked more like the sound barriers found on major highways. He also suggested that the slabs should have been interlocked, and that the canals they were supposed to protect should have had floodgates to keep out water from the lake.
Former representative Bob Livingston (R-La.), who helped lead the charge for Corps projects in Louisiana when he chaired the House Appropriations Committee, noted that the earthen levees along Lake Pontchartrain had all held, while the concrete floodwalls had failed. He was especially concerned about the 17th Street barrier, saying it “shouldn’t have broken.”
“I don’t know if it’s bad construction or bad design, but whoever the contractor is has a problem,” said Livingston, now a lobbyist on Capitol Hill.
Former senator J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) said he remembers numerous briefings from Corps officials about the danger of a hurricane overtopping the New Orleans levees. But he said he never envisioned a scenario like this one. “This came as a surprise,” he said.
The Corps has not identified the contractors who built the floodgates that failed; Paul Johnston said there will be a full investigation into the breaches.
If this is faulty construction or design flaws, there is going to be hell to pay.
The NY Times has more:
Along the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, great earthen levees were ample to hold off much of the surging water propelled by Hurricane Katrina.
But concrete flood walls installed over the last several decades along the drainage and barge canals cutting into New Orleans were built in a way that by Army Corps of Engineers standards left them potentially unstable in a flood, according to government documents and interviews. The walls collapsed in several places during the storm.
A corps engineering manual cautions that such flood walls “rarely exceed” seven feet because they can lose stability as waters rise. But some of the New Orleans canal walls rose as high as 11 feet above dirt berms in which they were anchored…
Hassan S. Mashriqui, an engineering professor at Louisiana State University and an expert on storm surges, said the segmented nature of the walls could be an additional problem, since any weak point could cause a catastrophic failure.
“Since they’re not tied together you get a little bit of a gap and that’s what water needs to make it fail,” Dr. Mashriqui said.
Other questions surround the walls’ design, known as an “I-wall” for its slim cross section that fits easily into densely developed areas.
The corps manual for flood control construction suggests a different design for walls higher than seven feet – walls shaped like an inverted T, with the horizontal section buried in the dirt for extra stability.
They better get this right when they rebuild.
*** Update ***
More here.
Mr Furious
Don’t worry John. I’m sure the last Iraq Spending Bill or Omnibus has some blanket liability protection clause inserted into it… Or, the next one will.
Mac Buckets
When Sideshow Bob’s brother Cecil got the contract to build Springfield Dam, he built it hollow and made off with all the excess money.
I’m just saying.
Another Jeff
I thought Louie Farrakhan already solved the levee mystery when he said that whitey blew a hole in them to flood out blacks.
Whitey
Hey, I was in Utah when that thing went, don’t blame me!
Mr Furious
I’m kidding above, of course. John’s right in his update: They had better get this right. There are no excuses now. We’ve seen the results. And Bush has declared he’ll spend “what it costs.”
If we’re going to accept any foriegn aid as a result of Katrina, make it in the form of Dutch engineers.
scs
You know I was wondering when I saw pictures of some concrete blocks piled on top of each other and thought, “This is the billions of dollar levee that is supposed to save a city? I have some concrete blocks piled up like that in my yard to drain water too.” It looked ridiculous, but I thought, well maybe there is more than meets the eye there, there might be something behind it that’s strong that keeps it up. Now I find out that it WAS what met the eye. We need to start spending more on infrastructure.
jg
Cecil was arrested. However that is a great way of relating the story of the missing billion or two in Iraq. $3500 for american MP-5’s, open the box, $200 egyptian knockoffs. LOL
Mac Buckets
Only because he confessed. Wiggum was going to send up Bob for the fraud, assuming that he was guilty, because, well, he always is. So where was Cecil when Iraq was buying old and counterfeit weapons? Hmmmm?
jg
OK. You said:
He didn’t, he planned to, but he didn’t. Thats all I was respopnding to. Wasn’t trying to start a Simpsons plot argument.
BTW I never noticed until that episode that Kelsey Grammer was the voice of Sideshow Bob. Its so obvious now but before that episode it didn’t register..
DougJ
I guess this proves that none of this was Bush’s fault.
Mission accomplished, Colie!
goonie bird
The levee failed becuase of the jerks from SIERRA CLUB and the EARTH JUSTICE so you need anyreson to indite the eco-freak movment?
Steve S
Who else can we blame besides the President for his shit poor response to Katrina?
Maybe the spotted owls of Oregon?
ET
Humph!
I spent 18 years of my life in that city listening to people complain about the Corps. I bet that when all is said and done, right/wrongly – the Corps will take a beating from the locals and others.
Just as an interesting side-note one of the primary office for the Corps is right at the bottom of a earthen levee at the river not far from where Carrolton meets St. Charles.