I don’t recall seeing a post up here on Booman about the Army Corps of Engineers report titled: Performance Evaluation of the New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Protection System [.pdf] when it was released back in June, but if it has previously been discussed, let me address it again now a week shy of the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
John Biguenet, a novelist and New Orleans native, has been blogging on and off for the NY Times for the last year about New Orleans post-Katrina. Unfortunately, it’s behind the Times Select paywall, but I have access to it and I’ll quote a few passages from his most recent post from yesterday which discusses how many or most of the things most people have heard about New Orleans since Katrina hit is just plain wrong [except, surprise surprise, what we’ve all heard about FEMA and their inadequacies]. And it also pointed to the Army Corps report referenced above.
I don’t have the time nor resources right now to fact check his stuff, but considering the tone of the post, I’ll take it on faith that they’re accurate.
You may also think that poor, black New Orleanians constituted the majority of victims killed by the Corps’ incompetence. In fact, white and black, rich and poor, New Orleanians shared equally in the suffering and death. The last published tally I saw showed that whites and blacks died in roughly the same proportion. If that is accurate, given that the population of the city in the last census was only 28-percent white, white New Orleanians died in proportionately higher numbers.
I found that shocking.
And he laid into the Army Corps of Engineers using their own report, which is quite cut and dry and to the facts, as the damning evidence.
After the flooding, New Orleanians were roundly criticized by Congressional leaders for choosing to live in an area below sea level. In fact, only parts of New Orleans are below sea level. My house, for example, is a foot above sea level, and it still received four feet of floodwater. We were hardly as foolish as Americans living in earthquake zones like San Francisco and Anchorage are. After all, we had assurances from the Corps of Engineers that we would be safe in a hurricane of Katrina’s strength. If we were foolish, it was in believing our government.
And now to that report. The failure and inadequacies were astounding. I’ve only read through the Executive Summary [aren’t they great?], but it paints a broad picture for what follows in the 68 page report. The ‘Overarching Findings’ starts off with this volley:
The System did not perform as a system: the hurricane protection in New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana was a system in name only. Flood protection systems are an example of a
series system–if a single levee or floodwall fails, the entire area is impacted. It is important that
all components have a common capability based on the character of the hazard they face. Such systems also need redundancy, an ability for a second tier of protection to help compensate for the failure of the first tier. Pumping may be the sole example of some form of redundancy; however, the pumping stations are not designed to operate in major hurricane conditions… Redundancy was simply not included.
Ouch. It’s some pretty sharp language the Corps is using in looking at their own failures, the kind of honesty sorely lacking in this administration’s handling of, well, everything. I didn’t see a single signer of this report from the White House – I wonder how much pull the White House used to squash this report.
On the design of the levees:
The storm exceeded design criteria, but the performance was less than the design intent: sections of the hurricane protection system were in many ways overwhelmed by the conditions created by Hurricane Katrina… This devastation, however, was aided by the presence of incomplete protection, lower than authorized structures, and levee sections with erodible
materials. While overtopping and extensive flooding from Katrina were inevitable, a complete system at authorized elevations would have reduced the losses incurred.
It seems as if the Army Corps were a little overzealous in what they built in 1965, as if nothing Mother Nature could throw at them could be strong enough. So overconfident that they didn’t account for adequate redundancies and the design of the pumping mechanism as their sole inadequate redundancy screwed things up even more.
The duration of flooding could have been reduced if the pumping capability had been able to continue, but the pumping systems were not designed to operate in severe hurricane conditions.
I remember the reports of the pumps going offline, one by one, those that had not already been completely washed over in the initial flooding. Poor planning.
But what’s a story about the failures leading up to the unnecessary tragedies after the hurricane without mentioning an anecdote about Brownie’s FEMA. From Biguenet’s post:
So there’s a great deal about what happened in New Orleans that is widely misunderstood. On the other hand, what you think you know about FEMA is probably right. A few months ago at a neighborhood property owners association meeting, called to discuss the future of our area, a doctor who lives near me described how he had used his small fishing boat to rescue those stranded during the flooding. One evening, he found a group of people huddled on a rooftop, and he started ferrying them to dry ground. On the way back for a second load, he passed a boat with men wearing FEMA T-shirts. He shouted for them to follow him to pick up the remaining family members. The men refused, explaining that it was after 5 p.m. and they weren’t authorized for overtime.
Good god. When I was interning at Vibe magazine for three summers from 1998-200, my for-pay hours were capped at 44 hours per week. That didn’t stop me putting in an extra 10 hours a week because I had shit to do for a measly music magazine. I wasn’t part of an organization which was supposed to be out there saving lives. It’s one thing to be working 12-hour shifts and not being able to keep going due to exhaustion. Calling it a day at 5p because you’re not going to get paid? Holy shit. And for FEMA to not be organized enough to have constant rolling shifts so there were no gaps in rescue operations? Chroist.
If you or a friend has HBO, Spike Lee’s 4-hour documentary When the Levees Broke airs tonight and tomorrow in two parts as well as on the 29th in full on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
