Katrina A Year Later

[cromagnum]

So goes American history... Didn't the Adam's take different sides on the trial of the British soldiers who committed "The Boston Masacre?"  One would (I think Sam) go on to embellish the act to the rallying cry in American history... The other would get the soldiers off the rap...

 

Any help CroMag?... And no throwing snowballs, you belligerent Bostonian!

 

 

758375[/snapback]

two boston massacre links and the one in the earlier conversation where it wouldn't show the page.2 bostons first and the last will be the fubared one.

http

http://www.bostonmassacre.net/gazette/index.htm

http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/winter96/massacre.html

 

Missing link Structural? I haven't read it , to tired, have a goodnight EII.

http://wizbangblog.com/2006/08/28/the-katr...-you-to-see.php

[ExiledInIllinois]

Hey EII and UCONN and any other interested poster I found a history channel link ON THE LEVEES and whatnot.

http://www.history.com/shows.do?episodeld=...68action=detail

757490[/snapback]

 

Not sure which one you are referring to... Found the one in the encyclo about NOLA and the levees through the search feature????

 

 

It says:

 

...New Orleans is surrounded by water, and much of the metropolitan region lies below sea level. A complex system of levees, dikes, seawalls, canals, and pumps, built and maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,..."

 

I would beg to differ that actual Corps employees are doing the day to day maint... Probably has been passed down... And to me that is a prob (my job as a grunt and laborer)...

 

Things are often passed down to contractors that are supposed to take care of the day to day... The Corps still maintains the major and pays all the bills for major repairs. For example, contract staff run the Chicago harbor lock, the USACE still picks up the tab for all major work... That being said... The training that one would receive (say as a dam operator... Kinda the same for earthen dams-levees) is propably non-existant for contract staff... Not too major here (my area)... But spotting a sand boil along the toe of the dam or levee during a routine walk is kinda important... Of course I over simplified it...

 

Here is a post: Notice the red...

 

Why no direct link to the Corps???? Because there are no Corps grunts on the ground... Things kinda get lost??? In NOLA, it is compounded by layers of gov't... Other places it can be private contractors.

 

The purple part is where people like me come in... Yet, they want to phase us out and create more layers...

 

Levee leaks reported to S&WB a year ago

Lakeview residents' complaints fell between the cracks

November 18, 2005

 

 

A year ago Beth LeBlanc and her neighbors on Bellaire Drive had a problem no one could seem to fix. Their yards, which swept to the base of the 17th Street Canal levee, kept filling with water. Then on Aug. 29, as Hurricane Katrina moved out of the area, that levee collapsed and tumbled into their homes, allowing Lake Pontchartrain and a world of misery to pour into the city.

 

Now the residents of Bellaire Drive have questions.

 

"We called Sewerage & Water Board, and one of their guys tested the water and said it was coming from the canal," LeBlanc recalled. "They sent repair crews out. They tore up sidewalks and driveways. Things got better, but it never got dry.

 

"So I keep wondering why no one ever came out to ask about it. No one from the Corps of Engineers. No one from the Levee Board. Sewerage & Water Board never came back."

 

The corps wonders as well.

 

"If someone had told us there was lake water on the outside of that levee -- or any levee -- it would have been a red flag to us, and we would have been out there, without question," said Jerry Colletti, operations manager for completed works at the corps' New Orleans office.

 

"We have nothing on that, nothing at all. That's something we should have been told about."

 

But investigators on forensic engineering teams probing the failures said they aren't surprised the corps didn't know about that leak -- or about numerous other leaks and problems with the levees that residents reported to them. That ignorance reflects a minefield of twisted bureaucratic jurisdictions, poor levee maintenance, missed opportunities and suspect engineering they say likely contributed to the costliest natural disaster in American history.

 

Interviews with Bellaire Drive residents, officials at the corps and engineers who investigated the breaks, as well as an investigation of Sewerage & Water Board work reports, paint a picture of a disaster that was bound to happen.

 

"Certainly, that kind of leaking is a warning sign that should have raised alarms, that something was wrong with an important component of the hurricane protection in the city," said J. David Rogers of the University of Missouri, a noted forensic engineer with a specialty on levees and floodwalls who led an inspection of the levee failures.

 

"But, sad to say," he said, "I'm not surprised if it was missed." He said most of those on the forensic teams investigating the levee failures "do not know who has responsibility for what in New Orleans. That's just the opposite for the rest of the country where levees and dams and such are concerned.

 

"The residents were right to be concerned."

 

'Coming from the canal'

 

They became concerned around Thanksgiving of last year, when LeBlanc's yard at 6780 Bellaire began to look like a wading pool. Her house is about 100 yards south of what would become the breach that flooded much of New Orleans.

 

"It was at least 6 inches deep the entire length of the yard -- 80 feet from the front to the levee in the back," said LeBlanc, who was left with half a house after the levee break. "At first we thought it was a broken pipe, so we called Sewerage & Water.

 

"The man in a truck that said 'Environmental' tested the water, and said it wasn't (drinking water or sewage), he said it was coming from the canal behind the levee."

 

The water spilled over into the yard of Pete and Mignon Marcello, her neighbors to the north. All that remains of their home is the concrete chain wall.

 

"I don't think they ever found anything," Mignon Marcello said of the S&WB search. "Eventually they just left."

 

During the next nine months, the yard became less wet, but it never fully dried. "If I went into my yard, especially in the back, my shoes got muddy, because it was always damp and moist," LeBlanc said. "This was as late as the week Katrina hit."

 

During the months LeBlanc was fighting the battle of the flooding lawn, neighbor Gary Breedlove, 6810 Bellaire, was noticing other changes on the block. A construction company demolished two old homes at 6818 and 6820 Bellaire -- which would be the center of the breech -- in the process uprooting several large oak trees adjacent to the levee. "They pulled them right out of the ground, roots and all," he said. "They were clearing the property for some type of building, I assumed."

 

Then, two weeks before Katrina visited, Breedlove felt his townhouse shaking as a pile-driving crew at the site began laying the foundation for a new building.

 

"They were pounding away and the ground really shook," he said. "I'm sure the levee shook, too. It was right before Katrina. But I didn't really think about it then."

 

LeBlanc, still fighting a soggy lawn when officials ordered the city evacuated, also didn't make a connection.

 

"Honestly, I never thought that much about it -- until that levee broke," she said. "Then I began to wonder if it was a warning sign."

 

Rogers and other geotechnical engineers who have investigated the breaks said it probably was.

 

"The catastrophic nature of the floodwall failures indicate this was a systemic problem, something that had been building for some time," Rogers said of the 17th Street Canal. "It tells us that, in all probability, these levees and the soil under the floodwall were already saturated before Katrina came along. This report of saturated yards only adds weight to that."

 

Water surfacing on LeBlanc's lawn could well have originated under the area that later failed, engineers said. In the weak, highly organic soils that compose the levee and support the floodwall, decomposition and settlement can create a maze of small cavities that become channels for water to migrate from the canals, channels that can run for hundreds of yards before surfacing. Not only does this saturate and further weaken soils, but it also can result in erosion and larger openings.

 

Signs ignored

 

It was a clear sign something was amiss, engineers said.

 

"If anyone thought there was water coming from that canal and turning up in yards, you'd want the (corps) to know about it right away," said Billy Prochaska, a geotechnical engineer who is on a state team investigating the failures. "That's a given."

 

Colletti said there is a system in place for quick action on such reports among the three agencies with direct responsibility: the Corps of Engineers, the Orleans Levee Board and the state Department of Transportation and Development. "If any one of us gets such a report, we inform the other two, and we move on it," he said. "I checked with (the other agencies) on this report, and neither has a record of it.

 

"I can only assume the Sewerage & Water Board dropped the ball."

 

Sewerage & Water Board officials did not respond to requests for interviews, but work reports show crews were called to 6780 Bellaire Drive on Dec. 7, 2004, and again Feb. 8, 2005, searching for what they suspected was a break in a 6-inch water main. No break was found, but a crew did find "water running in trench," according to the report. The history of the S&WB efforts end with the crew stating, "Need environmental to find source of problem," referring to the environmental section, which tests the composition of the water to help figure out its source by determining if it is drinking water, sewerage or lake water.

 

While LeBlanc and Marcello are unsure of the exact date, they remember a worker from the environmental section coming out. The S&WB could not produce records from its environmental section to determine the outcome of that request, or to say if the agency turned over its findings to the Levee Board or the corps.

 

It wasn't the first leak they missed, investigators said.

 

Bob Bea, a University of California-Berkeley engineering professor who helped lead a National Science Academy investigation of the levee failures, said his team received numerous calls from homeowners along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals who claimed they had reported leaks, flooded yards or sand boils -- indications of water running under the surface -- to authorities after hurricanes, but never heard back from anyone. Bea said his team did not investigate any of the claims.

 

"Some of them said they contacted the Sewerage & Water Board, most contacted the Levee Board, but in all cases, no one even came out to investigate," Bea said. "These are all signs that something is wrong. In the case of the sand boils, that something is seriously wrong. It means your system is stressed.

 

"That levee may look strong and green, it may look benign, but these leaks, and boils, are signs that there are flaws imbedded in it you're not aware of, and when that system is stressed, it will go."

 

Because of the number of agencies involved, Bea, Rogers and other investigators said they are not necessarily shocked that the signs did not generate action on the part of the controlling authorities.

 

"It could have been serious, it could have been nothing, but as an engineer, any time you have water show up near the toe of a levee, you would at least want to monitor it," Rogers said. "But there's this complicated system of agencies in charge there you don't see anywhere else. Partially it's because you have so many levees built by so many different entities. You have layers of bureaucracy."

 

Blurring the lines

 

Nowhere is that more evident than along the canals that flooded the city. While the London Avenue and 17th Street canals originally were dug to help turn swamps into neighborhoods and drain rainwater from the city's streets, they have long since become the object of conflicting bureaucratic interests.

 

The Sewerage & Water Board, created in 1899, has always had authority to maintain the canals for drainage. But after the Mississippi River flood of 1927, the Orleans Levee District and its controlling board was given the responsibility of preventing the city from flooding, which meant building and maintaining levees and floodwalls -- including those that guarded the drainage canals.

 

Then, in 1965, Congress authorized the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project, making the Corps of Engineers responsible for preventing the canals from flooding the city in the event of a hurricane.

 

That has led to some very finely drawn jurisdictional lines.

 

For instance, because the corps is responsible for hurricane protection, it was charged with designing and supervising construction of the floodwalls to prevent the canals from overflowing during storms. The corps strictly regulates any activities that take place inside the canals between the floodwalls. Even work by the Sewerage & Water Board must pass regulatory muster of the corps, Colletti said.

 

But protecting the structural integrity of the levee the corps depends on to support those floodwalls is largely in the hands of the Levee District. The Levee District is in charge of policing the condition of the levees, as well as the permitting system that regulates what landowners adjacent to the levee and floodwalls can do within 250 feet of the levee.

 

This covers several activities that engineers say could weaken a levee by opening channels for water to run through the porous soils under the floodwalls and levees, such as digging holes for swimming pools, driving pilings for buildings, clearing that involves pulling trees from the ground -- or allowing trees with potentially damaging root systems to grow too close to the levee.

 

Bea said the New Orleans rights-of-way were often clogged with trees and shrubs, signifying a lack of "rigorous maintenance" that probably contributed to the failures.

 

But Colletti, who has spent much of his 28 years at the corps dealing with such permit applications, said he cannot remember denying a permit, or seeing a request from the Levee District to deny one.

 

Once a year the corps does a visual inspection of the levee systems with Levee District personnel, usually in May or June, at the beginning of hurricane season. If they saw anything that concerned them last spring -- such as the soggy lawns at 6780 and 6804 Bellaire, or the new construction just down the block, or the large trees and numerous smaller shrubs that were growing near the toe of the levee -- there was no report made, Colletti said.

 

"You have to wonder -- especially after what happened -- how could they miss all this?" LeBlanc asked, standing in the ruins of her Bellaire Drive home.

 

Several investigators had the same question.

 

"We had no single, competent group who was charged with making this system work properly," Bea said, a comment repeated by many of his colleagues who have inspected the failures. "We had a diffusion of responsibilities, we had a confusion of those responsibilities, and the system appeared benign when it was warning us it was ready to fail.

 

"You often find that things like this could only have happened because people were not looking for it."

 

 

Things can get overlooked mighty quickly... And the reluctancy to fix them gets pushed to the back burner in the quest to make more money (or save contract costs) for the contactor...

 

Again, ya it is my job (sorry for the soapbox and rant)... I (we) get paid by the hour to be here 24/7/365... There is no way around it... You are there to do a job (being daily maint or inspection)... EVERYTHING is included, no matter what it is... Even cleaning the toilets we flush to machine shop repairs to computer needs... Done all in house... Things are changing fast to save a buck though.

 

You can pay me now or you can always pay me later...

 

[ExiledInIllinois]

Oh...

 

This is an absolute stunning article that I found (above)... It is so obvious what went wrong in places.

 

That is why Katrina seemed to not harm NOLA at first... After the fact and the "snoballing" is what did it in.

 

But, people don't want to hear that... The events that followed are more compelling.

 

Wasn't there a dam break in the 60's in CA that had similar warning signs?

[UConn James]

Things can get overlooked mighty quickly... And the reluctancy to fix them gets pushed to the back burner in the quest to make more money (or save contract costs) for the contactor...

 

Again, ya it is my job (sorry for the soapbox and rant)... I (we) get paid by the hour to be here 24/7/365... There is no way around it... You are there to do a job (being daily maint or inspection)... EVERYTHING is included, no matter what it is... Even cleaning the toilets we flush to machine shop repairs to computer needs... Done all in house... Things are changing fast to save a buck though.

 

Thanks for the link and the highlighting.

 

But....but....but.... the illuminati here on PPP tell us that private businesses (inc. contractors) always have our bestest interests at heart. Government BAD!!

 

You can pay me now or you can always pay me later...

 

Correction: You can pay now, or you can pay x10,000 later.

[ExiledInIllinois]

Thanks for the link and the highlighting.

 

But....but....but.... the illuminati here on PPP tell us that private businesses (inc. contractors) always have our bestest interests at heart. Government BAD!!

Correction: You can pay now, or you can pay x10,000 later.

758408[/snapback]

 

In this case there was a lot of government and that was bad... A lot of daily dirty work was most likely done by both with a government looking over them.

 

One goverment entity over stuff like this is the best.

 

There is no bottom line in business like this... The job has to be down on a daily basis... and that is it.

 

Just imagine if it was private... The city would have flooded years ago... There is no money in maintaining.

 

Chicago lock is one of the biggest sh*t holes on the river... Think they care when the Corps is gonna end up paying anyway?... Do you think they care how much pride they take in keeping the place up to snuff... Why? The corporation is only concerned with what they have to do... There lies the prob in stuff like this.

 

Inherently governmental... I mean, inherently ONE governemental.

 

[UConn James]

One goverment entity over stuff like this is the best.

 

There is no bottom line in business like this... The job has to be down on a daily basis... and that is it.

 

Just imagine if it was private... The city would have flooded years ago... There is no money in maintaining.

758430[/snapback]

 

Your initial generalization was what I was discussing, not NOLA's clusterf--k three-tier system.

 

Who wants to spend $2B over 20 years to maintain? I mean, come on. It's just these big mowers, looking at sand, investigating leakage.... Maintaining just isn't sexy enough to devote real dollars to, even when the alternative is paying $110B to fix everything b/c trees weren't cut down, etc. You need to get Paris Hilton a job there so everyone can see how important it is! "The Levee Life"!

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

Your initial generalization was what I was discussing, not NOLA's clusterf--k three-tier system.

 

Who wants to spend $2B over 20 years to maintain? I mean, come on. It's just these big mowers, looking at sand, investigating leakage.... Maintaining just isn't sexy enough to devote real dollars to, even when the alternative is paying $110B to fix everything b/c trees weren't cut down, etc. You need to get Paris Hilton a job there so everyone can see how important it is! "The Levee Life"!

758461[/snapback]

 

But given our legislative process, it's easier to justify paying $110B in a year to fix something that breaks than it is paying $40B over 20 years to keep it working, for the simple reason that the people that make the budgetary decisions for the most part don't know sh-- about anything. The risk analysis in budget legislation is akin to the risk analysis in the Space Shuttle program: "Well...this (O-ring blow-by, or levee maintenance) didn't cause a problem last time, so it shouldn't cause a problem this time...so we can probably get away with cutting funding."

[UConn James]

But given our legislative process, it's easier to justify paying $110B in a year to fix something that breaks than it is paying $40B over 20 years to keep it working, for the simple reason that the people that make the budgetary decisions for the most part don't know sh-- about anything.  The risk analysis in budget legislation is akin to the risk analysis in the Space Shuttle program: "Well...this (O-ring blow-by, or levee maintenance) didn't cause a problem last time, so it shouldn't cause a problem this time...so we can probably get away with cutting funding."

758551[/snapback]

 

The $110B I'm guessing is just for getting the basics back up and running. Not computed is the loss of property value, vehicles, people's material things, works of art, etc. for which that figure is chump change. And then most important and incalculable thing, people's lives.

 

If they'd only put as much time and money in maintaining as they currently are in the Blame Game....

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

The $110B I'm guessing is just for getting the basics back up and running. Not computed is the loss of property value, vehicles, people's material things, works of art, etc. for which that figure is chump change. And then most important and incalculable thing, people's lives.

 

If they'd only put as much time and money in maintaining as they currently are in the Blame Game....

758590[/snapback]

 

You're right...it'll probably be closer to $200B, when all is said and done.

 

But that's the way the system works: it's easier to justify spending lots of money at once to fix what breaks than spending less money over time to keep it from breaking in the first place. (Actually, it's less "the system" than it is the American psyche). I'm sure you see the same thing where you work, I know the public healt system in this country's designed around it, most of the government works that way (BIA's doing just that right now, NASA is an excellent example as always, so's USACE judging by everything EII and my sister-in-law tell me.) No one will ever put enough money into maintenance as long as maintenance is scorned upon by American society.

[ExiledInIllinois]

Your initial generalization was what I was discussing, not NOLA's clusterf--k three-tier system.

 

Who wants to spend $2B over 20 years to maintain? I mean, come on. It's just these big mowers, looking at sand, investigating leakage.... Maintaining just isn't sexy enough to devote real dollars to, even when the alternative is paying $110B to fix everything b/c trees weren't cut down, etc. You need to get Paris Hilton a job there so everyone can see how important it is! "The Levee Life"!

758461[/snapback]

 

You said it!

 

Some of the fellas went down to LA/MS to do QA work and help out... They would say levee inspections were a joke. Inspections would consist of riding the levee and never getting out of the truck (non-USACE employees)... Another common problem would be the contractor wanting to rip out the trees instead of stumping them (leaving the root system intact).

 

It is is just a shame that it got this far.

 

The piece I use above even shows how people living around the levees have become so desensitized to their enviornment... Becoming complacent and comfortable living next to something that should require constant maint.

 

Yet, don't misunderstand me and think I am faulting them.

 

I think of the difference between what a submarine and commercial airplane look from the inside... There are reasons why the submarine keeps all the pipes and workings exposed and the airliner has its whole interior covered in plastic.

 

Levees, IMO, are no different... Start a beautification process hindering basic mechanical maintainence you will slowly run into trouble in the long run. There has to be a utilitarian approach to these engineered environments.