> 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 crashing 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 shipping
> 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 reported seeing the barge smash through the levee. His report
> 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 ships 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 report, 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 transportation, 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 transportation," but it did not, and
> the flood claimed the buses.
>
> Moreover, the city was responsible for establishing 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 reported 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 »