On Jun 5, 1:33 pm, EMBALMER <Embal...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 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~~
> ---------------------------------------------
>
> 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 ...
>
> read more =BB
the thing drydem (Walter) must ask himself is, why must criticism of
China, whether over its handling of the Earthquake destruction, or
anything else, be juxtaposed and compared with similar bad government
choices and decisions in other countries? Doesn't the Chinese govt
deserve to be analyzed and, yes, critiqued, without distorting the
story by bringing up Bush, Katrina, or for that matter, any other govt
or foreign tragedy? What's the goal? To excuse bad choices in one
place, by one govt, by bad choices in another? That's ridiculous. It
might make Walter feel better, but it certainly doesn't make the
victims of the CCP's poor response and clumsy handling any better.
It's a tact common to CCP spokespeople and CCP apologists everywhere -
fend of criticism by comparing yourself to [fill in the blank]. The
Chinese people deserve better.
|
