Levees in New Orleans 13

[livingston]

After Hurricane Katrina hit Lousiana, more destruction is occurring because of levee failures around the city. Does this mean the factor of safety was too low, they were old, what? They seem to be failing at the purpose for which they were designed. Please explain.

 

[Structr]

On CNN News, it was mentioned that the failure of the Feds to move quickly was due to the fact that 80% of the population voted Democratic.
Next time a Democratic-leaning state gets hit by a disaster, tornado, hurricane or otherwise, maybe they should change the name of their state to Iraq!

 

[CajunCenturion]

Structr - CNN said that? 80% voted democratic? That's especially surprising since President Bush carried Louisiana in both 2000 and 2004.

Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[BillPSU]

The slow response has probably much more to do with the size of the the logistics to protect the 250,000 refugees. If an meal ready to eat (MRE) weighs 2 lbs. and you need 750,000 per day. There would have to be 38 truckloads of MRE's delivered daily. Water say 1 gallon a day, would require 150 truckloads a day. Now some of the roads are impassible. The supplies are staged where? How do you unload and deliver 190 truckload of supplies, daily? Now include tents, fuel, medical supplies, and all the other supplies needed to help these people you have some idea of the logistical nightmare.

This also assumes that the number of refugees is 250,000 and all the other people providing services brought their own supplies.

Now do I think the support role was performed well? NO.
People at the state government, city government, FEMA I believe under estimated the size and severity of the disaster. The sites chosen to house the refugees the Astro Dome and the San Antonio site are still inadequate to house the number of people and are too distant from the site. Lack of competent leadership is the real cause of the lack of response for the people in the gulf coast.

 

[Structr]

Cajun- CNN stated 80% of the population voted Democratic (I failed to mention that). If Bush carried the state, probably because the voting machines were rigged anyway (sarcasm)

"Lack of competent leadership is the real cause of the lack of response for the people in the gulf coast."

...Instead of 8 minutes to respond, this time it took GeeDub 3 days??? <ducking>

 

[Structr]

Cajun- sorry, my dyslexia acting up again. 80% of NO, not Louisiana.
I can't wait to hear what Bill Maher has to say about all this.

 

[BitTwiddler]

Zapster wrote:

"So instead of focusing on the pork of the Transportation Bill, you should look at this in the full context of the State being financial rip-off by the Feds."

I have never been to Alaska and I know very little about your state politics. However, I fail to see how wasting resources by building a $220+ million dollar bridge to an island with only 50 inhabitants is going to improve the "general welfare" of either the USA or the citizens of Alaska.

The combined cost of Chairman Young's two bridge projects is about $450 million. If those two "porkjects" are cancelled, that money could be used to send a refund of about $692 to all of the 650,000 or so citizens of Alaska. A family of four would get about $2770.

If a referendum was held, do you think that the good people of Alaska would choose the refund or the two bridges? Congress is supposed to think in these terms instead of trying to supersize the amount of pork for their district.

Our leaders should stop viewing the public treasury as a bank they can rob once a year. It appears that the most powerful politicians are the ones that care the least about the public good.

This country has amazing resources of talent and money but our elected representatives are misallocating them in an almost criminal manner. Their behavior reminds me of the theory of "conspicuous consumption", which states that people will intentionally waste resources by buying frivolous luxury goods to signal to potential mates that they are high status individuals. Unfortunately, our leaders are doing this at the expense of the taxpayers.

Even the richest country in the world cannot afford to continue to waste its resources indefinitely. Our leaders are elected to Congress to serve the entire country. They have failed miserably.

Don Young is the chairman of the Infrastructure committee. In early August a law named after "safety" and his wife was passed which spent $24 billion in pork on civil engineering projects, including a bridge named Don Young's Way. In late August, the most disastrous civil engineering failure in American history killed hundreds if not thousands of people.

Will you hold him responsible for his decisions in the next election or will you vote to keep him?

The best civil engineers in the world are useless if they are controlled by the most inept politicians on the planet.

 

[gwolf]

It's really sad to hear all of this; looking as I do from the European perspective. Americans were supposed to have left all of those European social/political/tax/corruption issues behind.

Welcome back to the "Old World" gentlemen.

If it's any consolation, we are having very similar arguments and resentment about the EU and Brussels - or the fledgling "United States of Europe" as I like to think of it.

If you create a very large honey pot, the largest bears will fight their way to it and take it for themselves.

:-(

 

[HgTX]

"Americans were supposed to have left all of those European social/political/tax/corruption issues behind."

Where'd you hear that??


And a belated response to someone else:
"I see the levees as being successful if they allow evacuation of the area. Without the levees, there's no telling what that body count could be."

Without the levees, there wouldn't have been a city there to begin with to provide the body count.

Funny thing about levees. The higher they are, the higher the water can rise on the other side before there's a problem. But if there's a breach and the water does come pouring in, then it's the level on the wrong side that gets to rise that much higher, and the flooding is that much worse. Once the lake stopped rising and started to come back down, the water in New Orleans was actually higher than that in the lake.

Hg

Eng-Tips guidelines: faq731-376

 

[gwolf]

>"Americans were supposed to have left all of those European social/political/tax/corruption issues behind." Where'd you hear that??

American history, the founding of the constitution, Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith, Abraham Lincoln et-al. Maybe you didn't study history at school.

 

[HgTX]

Maybe you didn't study history, or ever pick up a newspaper. Writing down some ideals on parchment doesn't make them happen, and blind jingoistic idealism does nothing to solve real problems.

Blacks in this country couldn't vote until 1870. Women couldn't vote until 1920. There has ALWAYS been a division of haves and have-nots, and nothing in anything you cite was ever intended to eliminate that; it's only communist and socialist countries that have really tried for social and economi equality across the board, "all men are created equal" notwithstanding. Political corruption has ALWAYS been part of this country's history, or didn't your history books cover such amusements as Tammany Hall or the Harding or Nixon administrations?

Get real.

Hg

Eng-Tips guidelines: faq731-376

 

[Slugger926]

I was told by an inside source than the cost to build NO to Hurricane 5 level is $100 million rather than the 2.5 billion being thrown out by the media. COnditioning for lots of pork????

Also, they probably won't do anything that doesn't meet the 1-20 cost to benifit ration the govt. has. THey used to have a 1-1 cost to benifit ratio on projects, but not since Bush 1 was president. So lots of stuff should have been done under Clinton during good times rather than taxing, and building????

 

[BillPSU]

Slugger you are rather gullible if you believe the $100 million dollar number. Think about it. Add 20 ft to the top of the levee and increase the width or the base by 30-40ft. That approximately 60,000 cubic yards per mile of fill. The fill would also have to be brought into New Orleans. Then also buy the right of way to construct the levee. There are 350 miles of levees in New Orleans.

The $2.5 billion estimate was from a senior project manager of the Corps of Engineers. There was a proposed study to be done for the levees and the study was going to cost $430 million. Money was cut from the Corp budget and the study has never been started. The links that follow gives some of the details about the levees.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0902_050902_katrina_levees_2.html

http://www.publichealth.hurricane.lsu.edu/

Adobe%20files%20for%20webpage/LevitanHurrVulnBR&NO.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/national/nationalspecial/01levee.html

 

[EddyC]

I know someone who feels that a city shouldn't have been built in a low lying area between 2 waterways and that the resulting disaster is the responsibility of those who built and live within New Orleans and not upon the US taxpayer. I'm not necessarily in agreement with this view but I can understand the logic. Such logic can also be applied to San Francisco and other areas of the USA.

 

[jmw]

OK, let me expose my ignorance and ask why the pumps don't have power?

I'd have thought that failure analysis should have asked what happens if the levees break and how valuable are the pumps then?

If they are valuable in this circumstance then why do they not have emergency power i.e. shouldn't they be self contained and in protected bunds to stop the installation flooding out?

WHo's responsibility is it to install, maintain and manage the flood defences for New Orleans? Is it the fedral government's or local state or city? If either of the latter then there are surely some local politicians pretty glad GW's in power because his fault or not, the way the press are laying into him he will be the scapegoat; and it seems from the coverage that the press are well on the way to laying all the blame at his door. An enquiry will be too late once the press have done their worst and whatever it says will be considered niether side will be happy.



JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[rb1957]

let me expose my ignorance too ...

i'm willing to bet that the pumps are only usefull if the levees are intact, ie pumping water to the other side of the levee.

as for who's responsible ... you can see the fingers pointing already. basically i think of the levees like insurance (or the armed forces), invaluable when you need it, but a money pit when you don't. and if you don't need it NOW, then you don't spend money on it.

 

[JTreglio]

I don't think cities are "sited" so much as they grow up in regions where they are needed. Clearly a port city was going to be located near the mouth of the Mississippi river, and it was going to grow, in this case into the fifth largest port in the world. While the initial siting decision might not have been the best possible, one must also remember that there has been a substantial degradation of the natural protections for the city, largely by overdevelopment and loss of the wetlands.

Jim Treglio
Molecular Metallurgy, Inc.

 

[CajunCenturion]

rb1957 is correct. In this case, the pumps were useless because it was a Lake Ponchartrain levee (via the canal) that was breached, and the pumps push the water into the lake.

==> Who's responsibility is it to install, maintain and manage the flood defences for New Orleans?
That depends on who you ask, and when you ask. The levees were originally built just after WWII in the late 1940's and after Hurricane Betsy (category 4) in 1965, a 10-year federal project was approved to build up the levess. Every administration and congress since then has gradually eroded funds form the US Army Corps of Engineers, and now, 40 years later, the 10 year project was about roughly 75-80% complete before Katrina. The low water mark (no pun intended) was in 1995 when President Clinton refused all federal monies for the Corps, stating that flooding concerns were strictly local issues. He was talked out of that position, but at late as 1999, President Clinton cut the Corp's budget request for southeaster Louisiana flooding control projects in half. President Bush turned an equally blind eye to warnings of New Orlenas vulnerability. No one president or political party is to blame for the complancy that put New Orleans in the position it is now. This is the result of 40 years of bi-partisan neglect.

With respect to this particular disaster, there is plenty of blame to go around between Mayor Nagin, Governor Blanco, and President Bush for the preparations, or lack thereof, in the days and hours prior to landfall, and even more damning, the lack of coordinated and timely response thereafter. They all screwed up.

I also think the major news networks, especially FOX and CNN, both reporting live from downtown New Orleans, need to accept some degree of responsibility because in the first few hours after Katrina moved north of New Orleans, they were all reporting that New Orleans had been spared, that the storm had turned east at the last minute and that New Orleans again dodged a bullet. They were reporting that this was not "the big one". But I'll bet you'll never hear them say that.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[owg]

I am not sure if this link has been posted already. It is a remarkably accurate account of what happened in New Orleans. However the article was published in 2004

http://cryptome.org/nola-breach.htm

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[bioengr82]

CajunCenturion wrote:

"I also think the major news networks, especially FOX and CNN, both reporting live from downtown New Orleans, need to accept some degree of responsibility..."


What?! How is reporting what had happened at that moment wrong or somehow shift some blame on them for ANYTHING? That was the current state of affairs and they reported it correctly. Are you honestly faulting them for not predicting the future correctly?

 

[CajunCenturion]

bioengr82 - In the network's zeal to be first, they neglected to get all the facts. Even without the levee breach several hours laters, the entirety of St. Bernard Parish was under water, as was a great deal of Jefferson Parish. Only Orleans parish was affected by the levee breach. The levee breach had no effect on any area outside of Orleans Parish.

THEY WERE WRONG!! It wasn't a matter of not predicting the future, then were very wrong about the present. The levee breach made it worse, but it was already far more devasting than the press was leading people to believe.

Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein