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| Great White North |
| Katrina: Forget everything you thought you knew |
| 2006-08-31 |
| WASHINGTON - If you’ve only gotten your news about Hurricane Katrina from the mainstream media, everything you think you know about Katrina flooding New Orleans is probably wrong. On this first anniversary of the tragedy, while the networks congratulate themselves on their often wildly inaccurate reporting in the days following Katrina, there’s a far more important story not being told. We’ve all heard the story: In the early morning hours of Aug 29, 2005, the Category 4 Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, overwhelming the New Orleans levee system and flooding the city. That story is, frankly, an urban legend. In the year since Katrina, we’ve learned that the storm was a Category 1 by the time she hit New Orleans. We’ve also learned that the primary levee breach — the one that caused 70 percent of the flooding in the city — was not caused by the storm surge but by poor engineering. After months of dissembling and obfuscation by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — the designers of the levee system — the Corps was forced to admit what all the outside experts were saying; critical engineering mistakes caused the walls that were supposed to protect the city to collapse before they were overtopped by the storm surge. And on the east side of the city, the flooding was largely caused by a shipping channel the Corps dug three decades earlier. The Great Flood of New Orleans was not a natural disaster but a man made one. What was not really told to the public however is how quickly the floodwalls in the city collapsed — how high the water got up the walls before they failed. This is an important question to a city rebuilding — $250 billion in infrastructure. It is commonly assumed by the public that the water must have been quite high. A newly released video, taken by New Orleans firefighters as the 17th Street Canal floodwall was actually in the process of breaking during Katrina, shockingly, seems to dispute that. The video, taken while the damage in the floodwall is still limited to meters and not city blocks shows the water in the canal at near normal levels. (The wall fell over a period of about two hours.) The real importance of the video comes from looking not at the breach itself, but at the wall of the canal where the water appears to be less than 1 meter above normal. City planners were hoping that only 2.5 meters of water would enter the canal. Months after the storm, it was reported that water had been seeping underneath the levee for almost a year near the break. Homeowners in the area reported it, but the report never got into the right hands. Engineers had not properly accounted for the soil conditions in the area and the pilings supporting the wall were not long enough, allowing water to come under the levee. Poor soils in the area, engineering blunders, bureaucratic snafus, but only a little water conspired to wash out the foundation of the floodwall and produce the majority of New Orleans’ flooding. Surprisingly, the video gives us every indication that New Orleans was doomed with or without Katrina. The amount of water in the canal was not unusual and, in fact, that wall had held far more water on previous occasions; that was before it was undermined for the better part of a year. All this leads to the even more shocking conclusion that Hurricane Katrina probably saved 50,000 lives. That levee was doomed. While Katrina was the last straw, it was destined to fail. Studies done before the storm indicated that if a major hurricane overwhelmed the city’s levees, as many as 100,000 people would die as a result. If the levee had failed without warning, there would have been no evacuation, no preparation, no state/federal support, no Coast Guardsmen in helicopters etc. If you think Katrina was bad with governmental preparations, consider an event half that size without it. To be sure, while this single floodwall accounted for the majority of the flooding in New Orleans, the story does not end there. Even without the 17th street canal wall failing, there would have been significant flooding especially to the east side of the city and the Gulf Coast would have been hammered either way. But the story of the flooding in New Orleans that the media is telling is largely wrong. The Great Flood of New Orleans was not a natural disaster. It was an engineering disaster bound to happen sooner or later. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #12 Well, I haven't been posting much in the past year, but I've decided to start again. News from the fridge. Don't ask me what the title means, I don't know. (Sort of like who was the killer in The Big Sleep. |
| Posted by: Phil 2006-08-31 19:46 |
| #11 Phil, Yes, sure. What blog is that? |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2006-08-31 19:13 |
| #10 Glenmore, can I quote your comments on my 'blog? |
| Posted by: Phil 2006-08-31 18:17 |
| #9 Also, based on the apparent damage from photographs, what hit Mississippi was much more than a Category 1. OTOH, Mississippi was on the "stronger" side of the storm. |
| Posted by: Phil 2006-08-31 18:17 |
| #8 Thanks Glenmore, sounds like you know. |
| Posted by: 6 2006-08-31 17:57 |
| #7 Good article. Some additional comments: "Category 1 by the time she hit New Orleans" Maybe so, but the extent of roof damage, as well as windows, walls, trees, says it had more and stronger gusts than a typical Cat. 1. Even without the flooding this storm did a whole lot of damage. The levees that failed & flooded the main part of the city were not truly 'designed & built' by the Corps of Engineers; they 'evolved' over 100 years, and the Corps added to them. They didn't add to them very well, and did so without records of what they were adding to (soil types, buried structures, etc.) The levees were doomed. Those levees were not just leaking for a year - try at least 20 years. Inspection & maintainance are city levee board responsibility (not Corps), which they badly neglected. Those jobs were political 'rewards'. The levees were doomed. And unless something changes they're still doomed. When Bush made the infamous statement after the storm passed that we never expected the levees to fail I suspect he was meaning essentially what was stated in this article - that given the conditions actually encountered the levees shouldn't have failed. Once the storm passed we all thought we'd dodged the bullet again, until reports started trickling in about flooding. For a while people didn't believe it, since it shouldn't have happened. The sense of urgency was directed at the MS coast, where the devastation was obvious. The downriver side of the Industrial Canal (New Orleans East, Lower Ninth Ward, St. Bernard Parish) was flooded by a bunch of levee failures independent of design or maintainance - they were just overwhelmed, and most people fully expected that. The failure of either the 17th St Canal (subject of the video) or the London Ave Canal would have flooded the city to the same level - essentially sea level. That two failed just doubled the fill rate. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2006-08-31 17:39 |
| #6 i thought everything was bushs' fault. i mean damn didn't he make the hurricane |
| Posted by: sinse 2006-08-31 17:04 |
| #5 I always thought Monkey Mountain in the Audubon Park Zoo was the highest point in the city limits. |
| Posted by: 6 2006-08-31 15:05 |
| #4 Things We Learned From Hurricane Katrina * If you lose your child in a level 1-5 hurricane, it's Bushs's fault. * Kanye West's career peaked last September. * New Orleans is a sinkhole. * In the summer... New Orleans is a hot, humid sinkhole. * Bourbon Street is the highest point in New Orleans... figures! * Hurricane survivors did not eat corpses to survive. * There were no bodies stacked in the basement of the Superdome. * If you are told to bring enough supplies to an emergency shelter for three days and you run out of food and water in 4 hours, its Bush's fault. * If you live in Utah and welcome New Orleans citizens into your communities, you're still racists and part of the problem. * Buses run best dry. * Oprah and Ray Nagin, "They're murdering people in there (superdome)!" - Not True. * Oprah and Ray Nagin, "They're raping people in there (superdome)!" - Not True. * Oprah and Ray Nagin, "The babies! (are dying)" - Nope. * If you live in hurricane alley make sure you elect a Republican governor. * Spike Lee peaked with "Do the Right Thing". * The people in Houston were the real Saints. * Houston's crime rate is soaring. * Finally, if you can't find your child for two months after a level 1-5 hurricane, it's Bush's fault. Hat Tip Gateway Pundit |
| Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC 2006-08-31 13:44 |
| #3 So let's not rebuild the levee. If NOLA wants to, it can pay for it itself. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-08-31 13:28 |
| #2 But...but...Spike Lee sed... |
| Posted by: SLO Jim 2006-08-31 13:17 |
| #1 It's all Bushes fault I tell ya. But to add insult to injury, nearly all the aid money is going to New Orleans and very little is going to the devistated outlying areas. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2006-08-31 13:12 |