A little harsh on the corps.

[Electrophil]

An article today on how civilian engineers are rating the LA levees and the Army Corps.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060601/...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Now I know nothing about civil engineering, and won't even try to pretend I do. But I think this is just a little harsh against the Army Corps of engineers. Wasn't Katrina the 2nd strongest storm to hit our shores in written history? You develop a city below sea level, well??

This sounds to me like a civilian consulting firm wanting a government contract.

I think you're right. The Corps is subservient to its political civilian masters in terms of funding and I doubt they had an unlimited budget to do their ultimate best. So some compromises had to be made, which resulted in a more hopeful assessment of "worst case scenarios". Unfortunately, Mother Nature decided to outperform their worst expectations. Now everyone knows better, and hopefully they'll rebuild accordingly.

And even so, folks will eventually forget and again choose to cut maintenance funding so that in time we'll have a replay of a similar disaster.

[bwb3]

A contibuting factor?

The research, reported in the journal Nature, is based on new satellite radar data for the three years before Katrina struck in 2005. The data show that some areas are sinking four or five times faster than the rest of the city. And that, experts say, can be deadly................

For years, scientists figured the city on average was sinking about one-fifth of an inch a year based on 100 measurements of the region, Dixon said. The new data from 150,000 measurements taken from space finds that about 10 percent to 20 percent of the region had yearly subsidence in the inch-a-year range, he said. As the ground in those areas sinks, protection from levees also falls, scientists and engineers said.

Gene

[lhopp77]

I notice it is reported that New Orleans NOW has a first responder and evacuation plan that includes using the school buses and evacuating the nursing homes. Also, to stock pile water and other emergency needs as well as very early use of NG assets and a mandatory evacution policy.

Seems that these are just a few of the things that should have been in place prior to Katrina. Things that definitely fall under the local and state government.

Lee

I already posted about the emergency plans which were implemented. Here's part of the article I linked to in this post.

As has been reported, when the Superdome was established as a shelter of last resort on the weekend before Katrina hit, the Louisiana National Guard sent several hundred soldiers there who were trained in policing and crowd control. They also, as rarely noted, stocked huge quantities of combat rations, also known as Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), and water, both of which were never in short supply, according to Maj. Ed Bush, who was inside the Dome the whole time.

Dressler said that about 2,000 other troops, MREs and water were stationed at armories and schools around the city, mini-versions of what the Guard had set up in the Dome. They had about 50 high-water vehicles available, and two dozen boats. Some satellite sites and equipment would later be put out of business by flooding. Elsewhere in the state and around the country, another 6,000 troops were standing by.

As these preparations were underway, National Guard helicopters dispersed out of state away from the storm, which was standard operating procedure. Like the Coast Guard (also running by a detailed playbook), they later circled south behind Katrina and followed the storm into the city. Thus there were up to 64 National Guard helicopters that began rescue operations, as well as critical reconnaissance that revealed more details of the breached levees, arriving Monday afternoon and into the evening. Because of high winds, it literally was impossible for help to arrive any sooner.

The main operations headquarters for the National Guard was at the Jackson Barracks in the hard-hit Ninth Ward, which began flooding after nearby levees breached early Monday, a critical fact that wasn't clear at many levels of government until the next day. In one of those ironies of military operations, this crisis may have ended up saving lives. Most of the staff was local, with three liaison officers from the National Guard Bureau in Washington. Long before they had aerial recon, Guard commanders knew by 9:00am that their city was in deep trouble, with water about 20 feet deep around the barracks. (This was about the time that TV anchors were reporting the city had "dodged a bullet".)

They contacted the National Guard Bureau in Washington via satellite phone for more help. That led officials at the national level to call a noon teleconference among all 52 state guard commanders, who got a laundry list of what the locals needed. The result was that more helicopter search and rescue teams began arriving late Monday from as far away as Wisconsin, close behind the original batch, mostly local, that tracked the storm in.

The procedure ran under a system known as EMACs (Emergency Management Assistance Compacts), a mutual aid pact among states. The conference call became a daily routine that was New Orleans' primary lifeline to outside aid. It bypassed local officials and the fouled-up federal chain of command that led to much publicized infighting among the Governor, FEMA and the White House. According to the Senate Select Committee on Katrina, "This process quickly resulted in the largest National Guard deployment in U.S. history, with 50,000 troops and supporting equipment arriving from 49 states and four territories within two weeks. These forces participated in every aspect of emergency response, from medical care to law enforcement and debris removal..." the report said. All from the Superdome.

read the whole article

[lhopp77]

Capitol Hill Watch | Senate Finance Committee Hearing Focuses on Care of Sick, Infirm During Hurricane Katrina
[Feb 01, 2006]
Inadequate government plans and a lack of response during Hurricane Katrina led to the deaths of dozens of elderly New Orleans residents and left many nursing home and hospital patients without necessary care, members of the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee said on Tuesday, the New York Times reports. In the second day of hearings on the issue, officials from Louisiana, New Orleans and the Louisiana Nursing Home Association testified they had no "coordinated or tested plan" to evacuate nursing home and hospital patients, the elderly, and low-income residents from the city in the event of an emergency. As a result, many nursing home and hospital patients remained without electricity, fuel, air conditioning or adequate food for days after the hurricane. "How could such a thing happen? Why were so many left behind?" committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) asked. Johnny Bradberry, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, said, "The real truth is Katrina moved faster than we did. All of us on the local, state and the federal levels were overwhelmed, undermined and outmuscled by Mother Nature." Prior to the hearing, Bradberry told Senate staff that, although he signed an agreement in April 2005 under which the department promised to take responsibility for the evacuation of the elderly in the event of an emergency, he had taken no action to meet the terms of the agreement. "We had no plans in place," he said.

Additional Issues
Only 21% of New Orleans nursing homes were evacuated prior to the hurricane, in part because, according to one witness, the facilities would not receive reimbursement for the cost of evacuation in the event that the hurricane missed the city. In addition, according to an e-mail exchange two days prior the hurricane, a Louisiana official declined an offer by an HHS official to help with "patient movement/evacuation or anything else" (Lipton,
New York Times, 2/1).

Lee