As the picture shows, the levees were crap. The near-miss by Katrina was less severe than the Category 3 they were allegedly designed for. I started on a rant, but I'll leave it to the qualified people.
More money could have made a difference, but in the short term it would not have -- the money wasn't earmarked for the precise problem they had, because they didn't realize they had it.
The floodwall on the 17th Street Canal levee was destined to fail long before it reached its maximum design load of 14 feet of water because the Army Corps of Engineers underestimated the weak soil layers 10 to 25 feet below the levee, the state's forensic levee investigation team concluded in a report to be released this week.
That miscalculation was so obvious and fundamental, investigators said, they "could not fathom" how the design team of engineers from the corps, local firm Eustis Engineering and the national firm Modjeski and Masters could have missed what is being termed the costliest engineering mistake in American history.
It's worth reading the whole article, even though it doesn't explain how the engineers got the wrong answers. I had assumed it was a bureaucratic issue -- that qualified engineers never looked at the project in the first place -- but I was wrong. Still, I wonder how much time and experience the inspectors had.
The army says the levees were build as designed, some witnesses say they weren't, but if they were, then the design must have been flawed, because the levees didn't hold the amount of water they were supposed to.
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syntheid
no subject
Date: 2006-01-21 05:28 pm (UTC)http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1133336859287360.xml
More money could have made a difference, but in the short term it would not have -- the money wasn't earmarked for the precise problem they had, because they didn't realize they had it.
The floodwall on the 17th Street Canal levee was destined to fail long before it reached its maximum design load of 14 feet of water because the Army Corps of Engineers underestimated the weak soil layers 10 to 25 feet below the levee, the state's forensic levee investigation team concluded in a report to be released this week.
That miscalculation was so obvious and fundamental, investigators said, they "could not fathom" how the design team of engineers from the corps, local firm Eustis Engineering and the national firm Modjeski and Masters could have missed what is being termed the costliest engineering mistake in American history.
It's worth reading the whole article, even though it doesn't explain how the engineers got the wrong answers. I had assumed it was a bureaucratic issue -- that qualified engineers never looked at the project in the first place -- but I was wrong. Still, I wonder how much time and experience the inspectors had.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-21 08:56 pm (UTC)http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1512890/11032005/id_0.jhtml
and
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10454903/
The army says the levees were build as designed, some witnesses say they weren't, but if they were, then the design must have been flawed, because the levees didn't hold the amount of water they were supposed to.