This is for you since your knowledge of Katrina events, by your own
admission, are not from actually being there. You don't have to swallow
this whole, or at all, but it's worth reading word-for-word just for the
reputable references and to compare with other media materials and
first-person accounts. I am not the author. ~~Embalmer~~
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Why New Orleans Flooded
Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2005
A steel barge that came cra****ng into one of the levee walls, and not
the failure of that levee to hold back an immense tidal wave, was to
blame for much of the flooding that drowned parts of New Orleans.
Lying an average of seven feet below sea level, surrounded by the waters
of Lake Ponchartrain, the Mississippi River and Lake Borgne, which
separates Lake Pontchartrain from the Gulf of Mexico, and protected by a
series of sinking levees, the city of New Orleans was a disaster waiting
to happen.
It happened on August 29, 2005, just as the city was breathing a
collective sigh of relief that hurricane Katrina had not been as bad as
predicted.
It turned out to be far worse, not because of the destructive winds of a
Category Four hurricane, but because three massive walls of water
spurred by those winds inundated many parts of the city after the winds
moved away.
As politicians play the blame game, many facts about the roots of the
disaster have either been overlooked or deliberately ignored because
they are inconvenient to those seeking to put the onus for the tragedy
upon their political targets. One of them was the story behind the flood
that turned a major disaster into a catastrophe of immense magnitude.
In a fact-filled retrospective that told the full story, the Wall Street
Journal explained in great detail just what happened when much of the
Big Easy became an adjunct of Lake Ponchartrain.
The Journal told the truth, but the truth hurts when you are seeking to
put your spin on the assignment of blame. So the remainder of the media
simply ignored a story the American people are entitled to know.
Facts Ignored and Not Investigated
Among the facts exposed of the Journal which the mainstream media has
studiously ignored:
# In two cases, storm-driven water, far higher than the levees were
designed to hold back (up to 15 feet of tidal surge), overwhelmed them
and went pouring down on parts of the city. According to the Journal,
the waves inundated the mostly working-class eastern districts, home to
160,000 people. In some places, the water rose as fast as a foot per
minute, survivors told the Journal. These levees did not break.
According to engineers, scientists, local officials and the accounts of
nearly 90 survivors of Katrina interviewed by the Journal, the first of
the three waves swept from the north out of Lake Pontchartrain.
The wave of undetermined height poured over 15-foot-high levees along
the Industrial Canal, which were several feet lower than others in the
central areas of the city. Wrote the Journal: "About the same time, a
similar wave exploded without warning across Lake Borgne, which
separates Lake Pontchartrain from the Gulf of Mexico. It filled the
lake, engulfed its surrounding marshes, raced over levees and poured
into eastern New Orleans."
# Another huge wave came across Lake Pontchartrain in the north. It sent
a steel barge ramming through the Industrial Canal, a major ****pping
artery that cuts north to south through the city, possibly creating a
breach that grew to 500 feet, letting water pour into nearby
neighborhoods of the city's Ninth Ward.
The barge's remains were found lying on the bottom of the gap. An early
eyewitness re****ted seeing the barge smash through the levee. His re****t
was never followed up by the media.
Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental
Studies at the University of New Orleans, said that break was
particularly surprising because one of the levee breaks was "along a
section that was just upgraded."
"It did not have an earthen levee," Dr. Penland told the New York Times.
"It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick."
# Vital repairs for which a whopping $600 million had been appropriated
by the federal government were stopped after residents of the Ninth Ward
complained about the noise created by the repair project and sued to
halt it.
The Industrial Canal, now operated and maintained mostly by the federal
government, which the Journal described as "the area's defining presence
since it was built in the 1920s," has been damaged by the passage of
time and heavy use.
Barges and ****ps were routinely delayed because of growing traffic
levels and the lock was "literally falling apart at the hinges" in 1998,
according to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers re****t, which called it an
"antique" and recommended replacing it.
The lock replacement project didn't get very far because Ninth Ward
residents complained about noise and launched a legal fight that bogged
down the work.
Levees Not Tall Enough
The levees along the Industrial Canal's eastern side are supposed to
stand at a height of 15 feet, according to the New Orleans district of
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Joseph Suhayda, a retired Louisiana State University coastal
oceanographer, who told the Journal he suspects the levees aren't
actually that tall, partly due to sinking of the land beneath them. Mr.
Suhayda now consults for a maker of flood-protection barriers. If he's
right, that would mean the levees weren't high enough to handle even a
Category 2 or 3 hurricane. Katrina was nearly a Category 5.
The Corps of Engineers concedes some of its levees in the area "have
settled and need to be raised to provide" the level of protection for
which they were designed, according to a fact sheet on the Corps's Web
site dated May 23, 2005. But federal budget shortfalls in fiscal 2005
and 2006 "will prevent the Corps from addressing these pressing needs."
Even had sufficient funds been available the work could not have been
completed in time to prevent the Katrina floods.
Designed for the Mississippi, Not the Gulf
In an earlier September 2 story the Journal noted that in Louisiana,
coastal wetlands provide some shelter from surging seawater, but more
than one million acres of coastal wetlands have been lost since 1930 due
to development and construction of levees and canals. For every square
mile of wetland lost, storm surges rise by one foot.
"Moreover, the levees in New Orleans were built to keep the city from
being flooded by the Mississippi, but instead caused it to fall below
sea level. Now the Gulf of Mexico has moved into the city," says the
Journal.
As the hurricane rolled into New Orleans, scores of boats broke free or
sank. In the Industrial Canal, the gush of water broke a barge from its
moorings. It isn't known whose barge it was. The huge steel hull became
a water-borne missile. It hurtled into the canal's eastern flood wall
just north of the major street passing through the Lower Ninth Ward,
leading officials to theorize that the errant barge triggered the
500-foot breach. Water poured into the neighborhood.
When the storm was over, the barge was resting inside the hole. "Based
on what I know and what I saw, the Lower Ninth Ward, Chalmette, St.
Bernard, their flooding was instantaneous," said Col. Rich Wagenaar of
the Army Corps.
It didn't help that the Mississippi River, which runs along the southern
border of these neighborhoods, rose 11 feet between Sunday and Monday
mornings. Coastal experts say that could have worsened flooding by
limiting the water's escape route.
As the water roaring out of the Industrial Canal turned the streets of
eastern New Orleans into rivers, the same areas were hit from the other
side by the storm surge coming off Lake Borgne. Engineers say the
estimated 20-foot surge also appeared to overflow levees just north of
St. Bernard Parish. Shrimp boats were dumped in a marshy section between
Lake Borgne and the city.
Responsibilities Unfulfilled
The city of New Orleans issued a "Comprehensive Emergency Management
Plan" for hurricanes well before Katrina arrived. The city accepted the
responsibility for issuing a warning, ordering and managing evacuation,
arranging for buses for those without any other trans****tation, setting
up and maintaining shelters, and other critical duties.
As one editorialist wrote, "Given the corruption in municipal agencies -
one not necessarily cynical Louisiana politician (Billy Tauzin) said
some time ago that "Half of Louisiana is under water and the other half
is under indictment" - it was inevitable that a picture of
responsibilities unfulfilled would emerge after a storm like Katrina."
Among the city's self-proclaimed responsibilities was the job of the
mayor to order an evacuation 48 hours before the hurricane came ashore,
not 24, hours, as Mayor Nagin did; the New Orleans Regional Transit
Authority was meant to "position supervisors and dispatch evacuation
buses" to evacuate at least some of the "100,000 citizens of New Orleans
[who] do not have means of personal trans****tation," but it did not, and
the flood claimed the buses.
Moreover, the city was responsible for establi****ng shelters
co-ordinated with "food and supply distribution sites" which the
American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and others were to provision, but
the city did not.
Both agencies provided the supplies but as Fox cable News correspondent
Major Garret revealed, they were barred by local authorities from
delivering them to those stranded in the city at places such as the
Superdome who most needed them in the immediate aftermath of the storm.
As the Journal re****ted on September 2, city officials appear to have
been well aware of their responsibilities. As late Aug. 1, officials
close to the planning confirmed to the New Orleans Times-Picayune that
the transit authority had developed plans to use its own buses, school
buses, and even trains to move refugees from the city when disaster
struck.
Failed Execution of the Plan
Part of its "Future Plans" section, for example, concerns the levees. It
also includes discussion of "the preparation of a post-disaster plan
that will identify programs and actions that will reduce of eliminate
the exposure of human life and property to natural hazards."
In 9,000 words, there are only four references to the Federal Emergency
Management Agency. Nowhere, not even in a section on catastrophic
events, do the words "Department of Homeland Security" appear.
The city declared that its hurricane preparedness procedures were
"designed to deal with the anticipation of a direct hit from a major
hurricane." Such a hurricane hit, and New Orleans was not prepared. The
first questions that legislators in Wa****ngton and in Baton Rouge should
be asking are simple: Why didn't the buses run? Why were people left to
starve? Where did all those dollars go?
What the Journal re****ted showed the immense magnitude of the disaster
and explained what created a catastrophe beyond anything most people in
New Orleans anticipated. The real cause of the tragedy lay in the
history of the city's below sea level location – a fact that can be
traced back to the city's founding.
The attempts to prevent the Mississippi from rising over its banks and
flooding the area has been a recurring problem, as have the
miscalculations surrounding the ability of the dikes to deal with storms
even less severe than Hurricane Katrina.
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