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Comments: 486 +- Your Rights Online: Federal Judge Says Corps of Engineers Liable For Katrina Damage on Friday November 20, @08:11AM
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timothy
on Friday November 20, @08:11AM
from the too-bad-a-judge-didn't-do-the-engineering dept.
from the too-bad-a-judge-didn't-do-the-engineering dept.
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Hugh Pickens writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that a federal judge has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers — and thus the US government — is liable for a big chunk of the damage caused when hurricane Katrina pushed ashore on August 29, 2005 by failing to stop the natural widening of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet canal (aka Mr. Go) causing it to eventually bump up against the shore of Lake Borgne, on the city's east side. 'It is the court's opinion that the negligence of the corps, in this instance by failing to maintain the MR-GO properly, was not policy, but insouciance, myopia, and shortsightedness,' wrote US District Court Judge Stanwood Duval. Judge Duval said he believed it was the failure to shore up the outlet that 'doomed the channel to grow to two to three times its design width' allowing waves on Lake Borgne to enter the Mr. Go and travel into the east side of the city, battering the levees to a degree to which they were not designed. 'One of the greatest catastrophes in the history of the US' was both predictable and preventable, testified veteran Louisiana geologist Sherwood Gagliano, a former Corps consultant."
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Remember, kids... (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't the only necessary ingredients of a functional society; but engineers(in concert with scientists) are your best hope of pulling nature's teeth before it can bite you in the ass.
Pay no attention! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Pay no attention! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Pay no attention! (Score:5, Informative)
Its paranoia, but partially justified paranoia. In 1927 they did blow the levee to prevent economic damage to New Orleans (and causing a flash flood that killed several people south of the city).
They did it once? why not do it again? The circumstances were different, and it wouldn't work this time. And the water wouldn't have anywhere to go. The "rich" french quarter was "saved" by being the oldest part of the city, built on dry land before the levees and higher than the rest of the city. Its a ridiculous notion, and not correct, but sometimes ridiculous things happen.
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Finger pointing (Score:5, Insightful)
I've read in several disparate sources that the Corps repeatedly informed the powers-that-be in Louisiana and New Orleans that the levies were insufficient but were regularly ignored.
Predictable... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Predictable... (Score:4, Insightful)
They did not build the city next to the gulf and below water. Open a history book, this is a man made disaster, we humans have moved the Gulf to New Orleans and sunk the city. Its what happend when you destroy thousands of square miles of wetlands to allow a couple more ships per day up the Mississippi and ignore why people built New Orleans so far inland (it was to the Gulf originally as Baton Rouge is now.)
I'd mod you up...
For a supposed bunch of intelligent people, most of you readers on Slashdot seem to know nothing of history, nor of engineered malfeasance.
But you're a douche.
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This is total BS (Score:5, Insightful)
The same Army Core of Engineers recommended for years the levies be reinforced. There is no reason to think doing so would not have avoided the flooding problems. The people there failed to make the investment. Its the local government there that is responsible and nobody else.
What we have here is a professional organization said the situation was unsafe and recommended a fix. The customer did not elect to implement the fix. Then when things went wrong the customer is trying to blame that organization for not having recommended something else.
Its total crap.
Sue the Pope next (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Living below sea level is stupid. However, living below sea level behind a levee designed specifically to make that area habitable, which has been doing exactly that for years and years now is considerably less stupid.
Does "individual responsibility" require near-Cartesian levels of doubt in every possible piece of infrastructure?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Appealing to "individual responsibility" is fun and all; but senseless if perspective is not kept. Living below sea level is stupid. However, living below sea level behind a levee designed specifically to make that area habitable, which has been doing exactly that for years and years now is considerably less stupid. Does "individual responsibility" require near-Cartesian levels of doubt in every possible piece of infrastructure?
The levee could not handle a Category 3 hurricane. Category 3 hurricanes which hit that area are periodic events that happen from time to time; they are absolutely inevitable. So you have a city below sea level protected by a barrier which cannot possibly handle an event that you know with certainty will one day happen. Additionally, all those years that passed without it happening were ample opportunity to reinforce the levee and otherwise to prepare for that eventuality. This did not happen. This alone would dissuade me from living there because the result is absolutely predictable. It's only a question of when.
What do you call it when people make themselves available for preventable disasters that are easy to foresee? Usually the word "stupid" is used to describe actions like this. "Stupid" is also used to describe people who need a politician or other official to tell them when something is a bad idea because they've lost their common sense and have replaced it with various authority figures. So without a government mandate or official inquiry they, acting on their own, would not seriously question the integrity of the levees or the tremendous risk they were taking. That sheeplike dependency, that inability to independently question and reason, explains not only why New Orleans was such a terrible diaster but also most of American politics and government expansion.
If you want to do something constructive, don't feel sorry for them or make excuses for them. Those sentiments are probably meant well but they accomplish nothing. They have no power to prevent a future disaster. If you want to do something, use this as an example for why there is no substitute for thinking for yourself and assessing your own risks. Let it represent why there is no substitute for those things, that all kinds of preventable harm is caused by the failure to value those things. The (minority of) people who understand this got out of New Orleans a long time ago and wouldn't have considered moving back without substantial improvements to the inadequate levee. The rest were surprised by the inevitable, which is like choosing to be a victim.
So yes, individual responsibility was a big factor here. It's not about doubting everything to an absurd degree. It's about knowing the situation you're in and putting yourself into a different situation if it's an invitation to disaster. But the folks who were hit hardest were not thinkers. They didn't think about their situation or compare it to other situations or evaluate risks. They had no such awareness. They just did their daily thing without a second thought and were surprised when something happened. That's the real message here.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
The levees in New Orleans were not ever designed to make a Category 3+ storm survivable, and they've always been in a TERRIBLE state of repair (anyone who's actually been the the area could tell you that water constantly seeped through them in several places). New Orleans floods during normal rainstorms. Anyone who thought they were safe there during a Hurricane doesn't deserve any pity.
Also, the money allocated to levee repair/upgrade was spent on things like off-ramps for casinos and such by the local levee boards. This judge declaring the Corps. to be responsible while ignoring the gross criminal negligence by state and local officials is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice I have ever seen.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
These very factors are why the smart and able people evacuated, like my family. AND these reasons are why home owner's insurance policies are now being written with much more stringent base flood elevation requirements. The number of homes in the worst hit areas are being raise 4 to 12 feet is impressive, now some of these folks will actually have a chance of not having their homes destroyed if another levee failure happens.
The lessons learned in New Orleans after Katrina are the lessons that folks who have lived along the coast of Florida and elsewhere have known for a while. Hurricanes come and they blow shit over and make water rise up to crazy heights. So if you want your stuff to make it through you need to build your house up about the storm surge height and add some extra strapping to your roof and walls to keep them from blowing away.
Having grown up in Florida, lived in New Orleans for 3 years up to Katrina, and now being back in New Orleans again I have only modest levels of sympathy for the folks who lost everything, seeing as I lost a good deal myself. But I was properly insured, evacuated as advised and knew what to expect from 21 years of hurricanes in Florida. The anger needs to be directed at the incompetent local government that didn't take care of its own. Nagin waited too long to order the evacuation and, instead of using the city's fleets of public and school buses to get people out he had everyone go to the Superdome and people died en masse because of his and other local politician's incompetence. And yet he got re-elected because he and the idiot populi blamed the federal government rather than pointing the finger where it rightfully belonged.
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Re:They WERE designed to resist Cat3 storms (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, let's get this right... If you contract me to do some work on your roof and it leaks -- it's your own damn fault for choosing to live in an area where it rains?
I like it!
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
One can legitimately assert that this bit of engineering shouldn't have been their job; but it has been for some decades now and they've never been absolved of it. Why would anybody not want them to be accountable for doing their job properly?
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Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
It's because the ACoE DIDN'T fuck up. They'd been calling for upgrades since the 60's and couldn't ever get the funding! The secondary problem was the lack of maintenance. The dollars for maintaining the existing levies did exist but the LOCAL, as in not the ACoE, boards kept rejecting the maintenance requests and spending the money on other projects. Such as golf courses and on/off ramps.
So in this case the analogy of roofs and rain, as presented, is broken. It's more like you told the roofing contractor you wanted a lightweight roof and the contractor said you should really have one made of tiles. You say you don't want to pay for that so build the cheap. The contractor builds the cheap one, tells you again that it's insufficient for the storms you get in your area and then keeps coming back to your house asking to do upgrades and repairs...which you refuse to allow even when the contractor is willing to pay for it.
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Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually yes. Eventually those shingles will wear and be damaged and it'll rain again and it'll leak again. Move to the desert if this arrangement bothers you. Its not the governments responsibility to control weather, raise land to above sea level, plug faults, super glue cliffs together by the ocean, fireproof trees or quench volcanos. If you choose to live where there are naturally dangerous occurrences and they occur , It isn't my fault, it isn't the governments fault, it isn't even the insurance companys fault , it's yours.
To further look into this, It isn't the governments job to make you safe against anything but invasion (what a fine f**king mess that is) and various sundry constitutional duties. If you really want to know what the states liability is, then read your states constitution. The rest is in your hands. Live in a flood zone? Build on stilts and take the elevator up. Live in a quake zone? Build a single story in the wide open. Live on a volcano? Buy some barbeque sauce , Einstein.
Unless my semen had something to do with your birth and it was my responsibility to teach you how to get along in life, everything else is your responsibility.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
While I agree that trying inhabit the New Orleans area is rather stupid, this ruling was pretty specific about this particular canal's design and maintenance. Apparently residents and city officials have been complaining about this thing since a 1965 hurricane that did a miniature version of what Katerina did and have been begging the Corp to change the canal to prevent exactly what happened.
That's what I got from some extensive radio news coverage yesterday.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
Particularly, in the two years immediately before Katrina, a huge amount of the Corps budget ($2-300 milllion, IIRC) was switched to funding the occupation of Iraq because, since it was already Army money, it could be switched without permission of Congress. Which puts the blame squarely on the Adminstration, rather than the Corps of Engineers. And also shows how silly it is to have what is basically a civil job being done by the Army.
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Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mmm. I think if you check the New Orleans flood map, you'll find that the hardest hit districts were the ones with the lowest social mobility. If you're born there, and can't afford to move anywhere else, then should you be damned for your "decision" to be poor? [cityofno.com]
Perhaps the State has no responsibility to act for the benefit of its citizens, but if not, then what is its purpose?
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Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
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Moving (Score:5, Insightful)
Mmm. I think if you check the New Orleans flood map, you'll find that the hardest hit districts were the ones with the lowest social mobility. If you're born there, and can't afford to move anywhere else, then should you be damned for your "decision" to be poor?
Very, very few people in the US are so poor they cannot move elsewhere. Yes it's harder for those without means but it's not remotely impossible. I grew up in a family that was poor as church mice when I was little. We could have moved if we felt the need. Saying you can't move because you are poor is demonstrably untrue most of the time. Nobody promises you it will be easy but it most definitely is possible.
Perhaps the State has no responsibility to act for the benefit of its citizens, but if not, then what is its purpose?
Of course its job it to act for the benefit of the citizens but ONLY for those things the citizens can't do themselves. There is hardly an able bodied or able minded adult person in this country who could not pick up and move to another location within the US if they set their mind to it. They don't need the government's help to do that in most cases.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Can't afford to move indeed. Even Bag Ladies move. If you decided to stay in squalor after being born there. You pretty much decided to be poor. You decided not to be educated. You decided not to try to better yourself. All this because you gave up because you were born poor.Poor you, sit on a government pity pot.
Silly ass.
You are being sarcastic, right?
Cause if you're serious, I'll assume you delivered yourself by C-Section. After carefully choosing appropriate parents, of course.
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Fuck Yeah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck the poor, the weak and the helpless!
They've nobody and nothing to blame but themselves!
That's the spirit.
Silly ass-O.
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Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
You pretty much decided to be poor. You decided not to be educated. You decided not to try to better yourself.
This is the great conservative myth, born in the 1970's under the auspices of Barry Goldwater and popularized by Ronald Reagan.
People don't decide to be poor. No one wakes up in the morning and says "I want to lose all my money and become broke". But the statistics don't lie: Either the vast majority of children of poor people are lazy, stupid, and unmotivated while the vast majority of children of wealthier people are smart, hardworking, and motivated, or there's some other factor at work.
For instance, in private colleges and universities it is not uncommon to find children from wealthy families who have a hard time writing at a 6th grade level. Explain that via personal decision-making. In your typical Best Buy you can and will find people who with a bit of training could have become darn good developers and admins, but the best they can manage is working overtime for the Geek Squad to make ends meet. Explain that via personal decision-making. Or for that matter, explain someone who works at my company answering customer service calls while earning a 2-year degree in web development, got that degree, and still is answering the phones for a living.
Even in Horatio Adler stories, being smart and motivated wasn't enough. The hero usually needed quite a bit of luck, and a benefactor of some kind.
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Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Conservative myth? And you're quoting fiction literature?
I was born poor, buddy. I watched poor friends decide not to try. I watched poor friends use their resources to get ahead as I did. I made the effort to stay in school. I made the effort to further my education while they decided to party and turn into welfare leeching drunks. You can quote all the liberal regurgitation you want in place of actual knowledge, and it won't make it anything but Democratic campaign vote buying points. If this is truely what you believe, you can be a Democratic dressing room fluffer. At least you picked a career that pays better than writing html. (which by the way was his fault for choosing a shakey career. Why not just take your college money to Vegas instead of finding something that actually pays?)
If you spent a bunch of money on education and the industry you prepared for tanks, start over again. Just don't remain inert crying in your beer and accepting poverty. Even in the 90's average career changes had changed to every 6 years down from 10 in the 80s and 12 in the 70s.
Did you have something better to do? Feeling sorry for yourself is a low paying job.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's complicated.
In my case, for example, my parents were both from very poor farmer families.
They moved to the city, studied at night after work to finish high-school and slowly progressed up to what's essentially lower middle class. Even so, they choose to only have one child (me) because they knew they couldn't afford to have their kids go through university if they had more than one - I still remember that when I was 8 I had to sleep in the sofa in the living room in an apartment and the paint would peel from the walls due to humidity and improper construction.
For myself, it so happens that I'm good with intellectual endeavors so I managed to go through High-School and University without needing any extra (paid) tutoring. Now, 15 years past the end of my education and 3 countries later, my income is in the top 10% of the country where I live (UK) in, roughly 7 times the average around here. Compared to where I came from, my income is probably 20+ times the average income there.
A lot of my success is my own doing (the intellectual abilities, the taking the risks of changing jobs, employment styles and countries) but all of that is based on my parents choices:
- Their choice of moving to the city.
- Their choice of furthering their education.
- Their choice of only having one kid.
- Their choice of pushing me to go through University instead of putting me to work when I was 16.
not to mention the values they taught me, some of which came from my grandparents.
Had my parents not made those choices they did or taught me the values they taught me, my own skills and abilities might not have been enough to make me go much further beyond just another poor peasant.
In the end, a bright kid with unlucky, dumb, inept or just plain screwed-up parents (say a single-mother junkie) will be way much more likely to end up in a life of poverty than a dumb kid with reliable, educated and wealthy parents.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
To be clear, I myself am doing extremely well professionally compared to others my age. I'm not any of the people I mentioned in my previous post. I'm not sorry for myself in the least: I'm raking it in and worrying more about how to properly invest the savings than how to make ends meet.
How poor were you born? Seriously. Did your family ever survive via government assistance? Did you ever move frequently because your parent/guardian couldn't pay the rent? Was there a time when largest meal of the day was your government-supported school lunch? Believe me, I know what poor looks like: I never lived it, but I spent a lot of time with kids in all of these circumstances.
I'm not saying people can't overcome their circumstances. I'm saying they're the exception, not the rule, and that the answer of "they're stupid and lazy" seems to me to be a massive oversimplification.
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Do they even realize it (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who knowingly decided to live below sea level bear no responsibility?
They probably didn't even know they were below sea level. What is your town's elevation? Hell, Cahokia IL is smack in the middle of the midwest and it's only 400 feet above sea level.
And a lot of people, especially the poor, don't have much of a choice where they live. If you were talking about the rich people in California who build mansions where they can slide off a cliff, or in a wooded area that was prone to wildfires you would be right. If someone's home Kansas gets blown away by a tornado do you blame them because they live in Kansas? If someone's house in Japan gets destroyed in an earthquake do you blame them for living in Japan? If someone in Florida's house is destroyed by a hurricane do you blame them just because they live in Florida? There aren't many places on earth that are immune from natural disasters. But the disaster in N.O. was caused by the Corps of Engineer's incompetence. It's scary; I have friends in the St Louis area. I just saw in the paper yesterday that the levees in Alton, IL are in bad shape. I hope the one in Caholia is good, I have friends there. When the hundred year flood hit in the nineties, the Mississippi was at the top of the levee there.
Blaming the victim is despicable, and that's just what you're doing. The government reassured these people and they believed the gov. Who's to blame, the liar or the one who believes the lies?
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Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
You, like most people, are overlooking a few facts here. New Orleans used to be well inland and above sea level. A long series of environmentally disastrous policies lowered the water table, removed natural barriers, concentrated storm surges, and generally guaranteed that NO was a disaster waiting to happen.
Unfortunately the government and Army Corps aren't legally liable for severe technical malpractice and rank stupidity. This suit slips through a loophole in the legal immunity the government gave the Corps.
New Orleans could be saved. And the cost of abandoning a major city is immense, far more than building better hurricane defenses. Building better hurricane walls will cost far more than restoring wetlands, allowing the water table to recover, and re-engineering the waterways. Of course, the best/cheapest solution is probably the one least likely to be selected by our broken political process.
And the cheapest solution of all (short-term) is to blame the victim and do nothing. It's worked really well so far.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
I just got off work, and I'm just to tired to do the search that I ought to do. Anyone can google if they care to.
The retaining walls in New Orleans failed in exactly two places. No more, and no less. In precisely those two places, the N.O. water and sewer department had disturbed the wall, years earlier. They lifted the panels out of the wall, and out of the prepared soil in which they had been planted. After making alterations to these panels, they were lifted back into place, and set back on the very same groung, without any work being done to the ground.
Some people who have never been around a construction site may need to ask around, or research, but I'll tell you what you'll find. Lifting a fencepost, a wall, or anything out of the ground, breaks built up adhesion. In fact, adhesion is going to lift great gobs of dirt along with whatever you are lifting. When you put that fencepost, or panel, or whatever BACK into the hole, you will have voids. Voids are conducive to water flow.
And, those two panels that failed, did so BECAUSE water had percolated UNDER them, removing all the loosened soil under and around the panels. Once all the loose soil was gone, water flow increased, washing out more and more stabilized earth.
Eventually, the walls collapsed when several panels were left without any support.
Bottom line? That judge is full of shit. The New Orleans water and sewer department caused the city to flood. Katrina was not the primary cause, nor were the Corps of Engineers. Water and sewer fools who had no idea what they were doing, took it upon themselves to tamper with vital infrastructure, without consulting the Corps.
I'm going to bed. If I'm barraged with challenges, maybe I'll find the pertinent reports for everyone when I get up. But, I'm sure that SOMEONE can find the news articles as well as the reports.
Have fun!
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
60% of the population of the Netherlands live below sea level. Are they all stupid too?
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Re:What? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
60% of the population of the Netherlands live below sea level. Are they all stupid too?
No, but they all have their fingers stuck in dikes.
Send the Army Corps of Engineers to the Netherlands. All the folks that live below sea level will move, real fast.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't tend to pray that hurricanes decide to change direction to avoid them... So I say no.
Location. Location. Location.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
no but they at least know how to build levee's and dam's
I dunno, build levee's and dam's what?
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, their government does that.
Oh wait.
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Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
They get a lot of hurricanes in the Netherlands, huh?
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Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also many experts (including the Army Corps of Engineers) were saying to replace the NO levees back in the 1960s. New data (1960 data) suggested that the levees could fail if a cat 3 or greater storm hit. new Orleans did not want it done, the construction would get in way of the partying (ie money coming in).
I saw that on the history channel. Why wasn't that footage brought in?
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Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
There have also been any number of stories published about the Army Corps of Engineers' analyses of the New Orleans levee system over the past decade. The Corps sent a good number of reports to Congress, predicting most of what actually happened during Katrina. This included pinpointing all the actual points of failure. They submitted proposals for maintenance and enhancements. Congress pretty much turned them all down.
So yes, the Army Corps of Engineering was "responsible", in the obvious sense that they understood the situation quite well, knew what had to be done, and didn't do it. They didn't do it because they were denied the funding.
The Dutch situation is an interesting comparison. A similar storm devastated Holland in 1953, breaching the dikes and flooding most of the area below sea level. Their response was a huge project to improve their system so it wouldn't happen again. An interesting aspect of this was that their engineers got together with Japanese engineers, because Japan is the country with the most people living below sea level, and they had a lot of useful experience with dikes and levees. The result was greatly improved technology in both countries. Japan's situation is even worse: Millions of people live below sea level in the Tokyo-Yokohama metro area, they're in a major earthquake zone, and they have frequent hurricanes (or typhoons if you prefer). If you're into natural disasters, the history of this area makes for some interesting reading.
The US government tends to take a different approach, more like "We're the most advanced society in the world, and we don't have anything to learn from the rest of you turkeys." Their attitude towards New Orleans has also been pretty clear, along the lines of what others have said here: "That's what you get for living in a flood zone." I.e., "Tough luck, suckers."
But the American population keeps voting for them, so what happened must be what most Americans want, right?
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop posting AC & I could be bothered to respond to you.
But you did respond...
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
funding for the flood control project essentially dried up
I think that one deserves a rim shot [instantrimshot.com].
But yes, one of the many causes of Hurricane Katrina was short-termism and a "cut government spending" ideology that led to underfunding of essential maintenance of levees, bridges and other not-so-glamorous infrastructure in many parts of the country.
Re:This was known for some time (Score:4, Insightful)
It also makes the entire state of Louisiana look stupid for not declaring an emergency (Federal gov't can't send in the national guard without the state's say so) or forcing an evacuation, even though they are the ones who should have best known that anything above a category 3 would put the city underwater.
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Re:This was known for some time (Score:5, Informative)
Ah. So, back in the 1990's, when Clinton was running things, and the design wasn't any better and local engineers were saying the same things, that was different? I see. It's different because of your politics, not because of reality. The levees weren't built to withstand a Katrina. That reality goes back well before Bush. Of course you know that, and you're a troll.
Your heros on the left could have spent money to change the levee construction for years and years before Katrina hit. Why didn't they? Well? Did they somehow know that years later, Bush would come into office with pre-existing, poorly built protections around a city that had spent decades making the problem worse - and they were somehow pre-blaming Bush for later political advantage? Sounds about right.
Also, it's Bush's fault that your coffee wasn't very good this morning, and that the traffic lights in your area aren't synchronized very well.
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