In a series of (unnecessarily belligerent) comments, lefty serial-agitator jukeboxgrad raised a number of questions—phrased, as is the wont of hyper-partisans like he, in a bizarre combination of accusation and heavily-linked assertion masquerading as settled fact—about the NOLA levee breaches.
Now, I’ve never pretended to have all the answers about Katrina and its aftermath—in fact, one of the reasons I’ve been writing these posts investigating the combined response to the storm is so that I can better understand what went right and what went wrong—and I’ve certainly never claimed to be an expert on the New Orleans levee system; which is why it’s a wonder to me that jukeboxgrad even cares what I think with respect to those breaches. But evidently he does, or else he wouldn’t have gotten so upset with my brief response in the comments (as mitigating factors for “delays” in repair, I cited potential confusion over terminology, logistical difficulties caused by physical conditions, and the breakdown of communications on the ground—all of which jukeboxgrad rejected out of hand), so I set out to investigate his claims and find answers to his questions (both of which I’ll combine and paraphrase for purposes of brevity):
If the levees broke on Monday, and there were widespread reports about those breaches—which were breaches, and not simply overtopping—why did it take so long to plug the gaps (48 hours later “not a single shovel of sand or other fill material had yet been dumped into the 17th Street breach”*). After all, helicopters were flying rescue missions on Monday—and because the hurricane had been downgraded to a tropical storm*—presumably material and manpower could likewise have made it to the levee breaches at that time. Therefore, the delay is the result of either malfeasance or ineptitude.
My first attempt to address these “concerns” led me to cite this New York Times article, which jukeboxgrad summarily dismissed as excuse-making that didn’t say anything about confusion between breaches and overtopping. I’ll let you decide if his characterization is accurate:
Until engineers can repair breaks in the huge levees that separate New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain, the city will essentially be an arm of the Gulf of Mexico, subject to the ebb and flow of the tides.
And because the tidal pull widens the breaks, experts said yesterday, that will make it all the harder to repair them – the first step in restoring the inundated city to normal.
Last night [Tuesday, Aug 30], even as engineers scrambled to figure out ways to plug a levee breach on the 17th Street Canal, Mayor Ray Nagin, in an interview on WWL-TV, said the waters in neighborhoods east of the breach were rising so fast they might cause the nearby pumping station to fail.
“We’ve been living in this bowl,” said Shea Penland, a coastal geologist who has studied storm threats to Louisiana for years. “And then Katrina broke channels into the bowl and the bowl filled. And now the bowl is connected to the Gulf of Mexico. We are going to have to close those inlets and then pump it dry.”
John Hall, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, said last night that the corps and other agencies were “in a great frenzy” to figure out how to plug the 300-foot gap along the 17th Street Canal.
The narrow canal, which is used to drain water pumped out of the eternally soggy city, is not accessible by barge, in part because a newly built low bridge and hurricane barrier sits 700 feet down the canal toward the lake end.
“We can’t get at it,” Mr. Hall said.
Mr. Hall said that the levee failed as the surge from the storm swept in through Lake Pontchartrain, actually a broad inlet off the gulf, and began sloshing over the vertical steel and concrete wall and the earthen berm behind it.
“Once it got over, it began to scour down at the base of that flood wall on the protected side,” he said.
The rising waters in the canal pushed in on the high part of the retaining wall while water cascading over the top ate away at the base, Mr. Hall said, adding: “The effect is like a high-low tackle in football. You hit the head and feet at the same time from opposite directions, and it goes down.”
Another problem is that whatever is done to block the breach must not also block the canal itself, because that would impede the pumping of the floodwaters.
Federal officials are seeking help from agencies and private contractors that might be able to supply heavy cranes and other equipment.
The levees, which provide a tenuous barrier between the city and the waters that surround most of it, have long had weak spots and were not designed to withstand the full force of a storm like Hurricane Katrina.
The other failure occurred along the Industrial Canal, an 80-year-old channel that had been identified as a weak spot in computer simulations of storm surges from hypothetical hurricanes.
S. Jeffress Williams, a United States Geological Survey scientist with long experience in Louisiana, said repairing the levees would require “a large volume of as dense, as heavy material as you can get, applied quickly.”
“Where you get the material and how you get the equipment up there is going to be a real problem,” he went on. “If you don’t keep it going, it is just going to erode away. You have to have a persistent and constant feed until it is done.”
Dr. Penland, the director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said it was impossible to say how long it would take to repair the levees and pump the city dry.
New Orleans has 22 pumping stations that need to work nearly continuously to discharge normal storm runoff and seepage. But they are notoriously fickle. Efforts to add backup power generators to keep them all running during blackouts have been delayed by a lack of federal money.
“Pumping the water out – that’s a lot of water,” Dr. Penland said. “When the pumping systems are in good shape, it can rain an inch an hour for about four to six hours and the pumps can keep pace. More than that, the city floods.”
Clearly, at least some of the breaching combined overtopping with backflow—suggesting that confusion over what was at fault for flooding is hardly as farfetched as jukeboxgrad would have us believe, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the storm, when much of what was being reported was based on scant reporting trickling in that was quite difficult to substantiate (as we’ll see later).
Meanwhile, delays in getting to work on repairing the levees were, as the experts cited in the Times article point out, largely the result of logistical difficulties, the chaos from the flooding, and the communication outage—a conclusion reiterated in this WSJ piece by Joe Hagan and Joseph T. Hallian, “Why Levee Breaches In New Orleans Were Late-Breaking News” –which, in addition to hightlighting the confusion and chaos on the ground likewise examines how the breaches came to be reported, and attempts to shed some light on why the response jukeboxgrad argues was criminally slow to materialize proceeded as it did:
On Sunday, Sept. 4, Tim Russert of NBC’s “Meet the Press” asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to explain President Bush’s statement that the government couldn’t have anticipated breaches in levees in New Orleans.
Mr. Chertoff talked about news coverage. “Well, I think if you look at what actually happened, I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers, and I saw headlines, ‘New Orleans Dodged The Bullet,’ “ he said. “Because if you recall, the storm moved to the east and then continued on and appeared to pass with considerable damage but nothing worse. It was on Tuesday that the levee—may have been overnight Monday to Tuesday—that the levee started to break.”
But now it is known that major levee breaks occurred much earlier than that, starting in the morning of Monday, Aug. 29, the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall. Even as the storm veered off and many observers felt a sense of relief, the Industrial Canal levee in eastern New Orleans was giving way, and a rush of water swiftly submerged much of the Lower Ninth Ward and areas nearby, trapping thousands of people on rooftops and in attics. The 17th Street Canal levee also was breached early Monday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers now believes, resulting in a slower-rising flood over a larger area.
Yet it wasn’t until Tuesday that most people across the country, apparently including Mr. Chertoff, realized that any levees at all had been breached. Did media outlets get it wrong, as Mr. Chertoff claimed? Some did, some didn’t.
A look at news reports of the events of Aug. 29 paints a picture of confusion, miscommunication and conflicting information among some government officials and news media. Several major news outlets, including Viacom Inc.’s CBS network and National Public Radio reported the breaking of the Industrial Canal and flooding on Monday, although not all of the reports acknowledged the extent of the devastation. The Wall Street Journal reported the Industrial Canal breach but no others.
The New Orleans office of the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning at 8:14 a.m. Monday, saying “a levee breach occurred along the industrial canal at Tennessee Street. 3 to 8 feet of water is expected due to the breach.” The media largely ignored it. The NWS’s source of information was ham-radio transmissions by the Orleans Levee Board, a city-state agency. The 8:14 warning was the last one the local office issued before its communications were cut off. The statement was repeated only once more, at 10:52 a.m., by the National Weather Service office in Mobile, Ala.
Yet some government officials certainly appeared aware of a breach and said so on network television. At 7:33 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 29, Gov. Kathleen B. Blanco said on NBC, “I believe the water has breached the levee system, and is—is coming in.”
In its Aug. 29 online edition, the New Orleans Times-Picayune first reported a breach in the 17th Street Canal levee at 2 p.m., citing City Hall officials. No other major news outlets picked up that report. The newspaper’s Web site also reported massive flooding near the Industrial Canal, writing that city officials “fielded at least 100 calls from people in distress in the Lower 9th Ward and eastern New Orleans.” At about 2:30, it reported that the Industrial Canal had been breached, citing a National Weather Service report.
But in the hours immediately following the storm, some news organizations seemed to play down the damage in New Orleans. Introducing “World News Tonight” on Aug. 29, anchor Charles Gibson said: “In New Orleans, entire neighborhoods are underwater, but the levees held. The nightmare scenario of an entire city underwater did not happen.” A spokeswoman for ABC, a unit of Walt Disney Co., had no comment.
Officials with the U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers said last week that one canal breach came to the attention of corps personnel early Monday, Aug. 29 and another by midday. But the “fog of war” and “massive logistical problems with communications in the hours after the storm hit” created some confusion, said John Rickey, a spokesman for the corps.
No major newspaper printed a headline that literally said New Orleans “dodged a bullet,” as Mr. Chertoff claimed. But some did say the city had escaped a direct hit—which was true, but misleading—while others focused on the levees along the Mississippi River. Meanwhile, it was the levees along canals extending south from Lake Pontchartrain that gave way.
[…]
Confusion over the difference between a breach of a levee and a mere overrun may also be to blame. Locals have long known that an actual break in a levee would mean catastrophic and irreversible damage. But if flooding was only the result of water sloshing over the top of a levee, combined with 12 inches of rainfall and possible storm surges, then the situation could have been far less serious.
Some National Weather Service statements on Aug. 29 described levees in the Orleans and St. Bernard parishes as “overtopped.” On its Aug. 29 “World News Tonight” broadcast, ABC News showed a computer-generated model of water pouring over a levee, but not breaking it. The wind-lashed correspondent in New Orleans, Jeffrey Kaufman, said, “It was simply the volume of rain that left many areas under water. … This was not the apocalyptic hurricane that many had feared.”
All in all, the communication breakdown, the size of the affected area, the confusion over which levees broke and which were merely overtopped, and the flooding itself—every single one of these factors contributed to the difficulty involved in pinning down the problems in the early stages. From there, figuring out how actually to accomplish the work—getting the equipment and the material into the area—created new problems and challenges requiring non-tradional solutions, something that could only be assessed once the damaged areas were identified and inspected. The 17th Street canal breach, it turns out, was not accessible by barge, so even getting to it was a challenge; as was finding and having transported in from areas outside the storm’s path the material necessary to fix the breaches.
Couple all this with a local government that proved woefully unprepared, and you have the makings of the kind of disaster which is slowly being brought under control. From the Corner (via Ray Smith):
As a retired structural engineer who has done exhaustive work on bulk liquids retention structures, including dams, dykes and levees; also having audited engineering schematics on the New Orleans levees in the 1994-1996 era, rest assured that federal officials were properly concerned about that situation. The problem was that they were the only ones. We bucked and kicked local officials for years throughout the entire project. The municipality demanded the money, and received millions, but repeatedly, they had more pressing uses for expenditures. The optimal, shear-sloped design for the levee reinforcement was approved in 1995. I tell you truly that in my 40-year career as an engineer, the local authorities in our New Orleans levee project take the prize in the area of callous disregard and their bungling remains notorious to this day. Truly, it was scandalous. Consequently, I find it hard to cast a major portion of blame for this disaster on any other entity than the local representatives of those unfortunate people in New Orleans. The truth is, at least the last three mayors of New Orleans are grossly negligent and in dereliction of duty in regards to repeatedly skimming federal funds allocated for their levee fortification.
Allan McIsaac
On “Hannity and Colmes” Monday, an Army CoE spokesman with 30 years experience noted that the biggest problem facing NO was that a Cat 4 Hurricane ran over a levee system designed to control a Cat 3 Hurricane or below. And no amount of money would have fixed that problem.
Asked what it would take to build the kind of system that would defend against a Cat 5 hurricane, he responded that, under optimal conditions (expediting the project and giving unlimited funds), they might be able to have something done in 10 years.
So. Why did the levees fail?
You tell me.
****
update: From the comments, a pair of responses from military members I’d like to highlight. First, here’s Jeff S:
Jeff, having fixed more than a few levees (during and after floods), what you posted here rings true.
From what I’ve read until now has suggested that at least one flood control structure was breached by overtopping. Whether that breaching was scour, mutually opposed hydraulic forces, or simple cavitation is immaterial. There was simply too much water. The location of the breaches is what took everyone by surprise.
Fixing a breech is anything but simple, even under ideal circumstance. Been there, done that. I’m amazed that it happened so fast. I have to wonder if the Corps Of Engineers drew out truckloads of coinage, freshly minted by the Treasury department, and used that to plug the hole. Anything else would be at least as expensive.
As for the “fog of war”….if the Levee Board was using Amateur Radio operators (“ham radio”, volunteers who provide emergency radio communications, check out http://www.arrl.net), commercial communications were
either down or overloaded. That alone indicates that the situation was bad, which is hardly surprising in the middle of a category 4 hurricane.That the NWS accepted the Amateur Radio transmission as the basis for flood warnings confirms that the situation was bad. The NWS can and does accept observer reports, but the agency prefers to get independent confirmation of the reports where possible. Quoting the source indicates that they either didn’t have the time to get that confirmation, or couldn’t contact anyone else.
But, more importantly, any disaster response is generally chaotic, especially when you have multiple jurisdictions involved. By all indications, the Levee Board responsible for the levees that protected New
Orleans and other communities was a state board, not controlled by any one community.But if the authority of the board was limited to operating and maintaining the levees (including addressing breaches), then they likely had little to no control of the emergency response agencies in the area. Instead, they likely have a cooperative role in disaster planning and response, with interagency coorperation limited to reports and requests for assistance (possibly a mutual aid agreement of sorts).
In other words, there were multiple jurisdictions dealing with the same problem in the same geographic area. The old saw, “Too many cooks spoil the broth”, may apply here.
And that’s if most of the local authorities actually have their act together in the first place. Confusion at the top level (which appears to be the case) only translates downward into more confusion.
So I’d say that this is a reasonable summary of what we know so far.
[my emphasis]
And, more briefly, from rto trainer:
The simple reason that the levees weren’t repaired faster is that it was going to take heavy equipment and specialized materials.
Shovels, as jukeboxgrad suggested, weren’t going to be able to do the job; every shovelful would simply wash away and not remain in the breach.
That’s why they used helicopters to drop in the 3000 pound sandbags.
Men with shovels would likely have been washed away as well in the continuing erosion.
It’s not a mater of doing it fast. It’s a matter of doing it right.
Thanks, guys.
I’ll continue to update as more information becomes available.
****
update 2: From B Moe:
I had time to crunch a few numbers finally.
A 200’ levee breach would require about 15,000 cubic yards of fill material to patch. The 3000 pound number on helicopter drops indicates they could haul about 1.5 yards per trip, which means it would take roughly 10,000 helicopter trips, not counting waste from the inexact nature of placement a helicopter would bring. I suspect dump trucks were used instead, as it
would only take about 1500 dump truck loads. Considering you also have to clear a path, find the fill material and load the trucks… anyone who knows what they are talking about should be amazed at how fast they actually patched it, I know I am.[Follow up: Before I get accused of being an idiot, I just realized I forgot in my haste to allow for the fact the levee is sloped on the sides, and should have divided by two. So my numbers on total loads are twice what they should be, still an impressive feat.]
So, to answer jukeboxgrad’s questions as succinctly as possible: yes, there were breaches on Monday, yes there was some confusion over that fact; but no, there was no “delay” in addressing the problem beyond that created by the flooding and the devastation of the infrastructure, so far as I can tell.
Because of BUSH, you freaking chimpanzee moron! Don’t you recognize that everything. is. his. fault.
TW “hospital”, where my imminent self-righteousness-fueled apoplectic stroke (because of the SUFFERING) will soon take me
The simple reason that the levees weren’t repaired faster is that it was going to take heavy equipment and specialized materials.
Shovels, as jukeboxgrad suggested weren’t going to be able to do the job; every shovelfull would simply wash away and not remain in the breach.
That’s why they used helicopters to drop in the 3000 pound sandbags.
Men with shovels would likely have been washed away as well in the continuing erosion.
It’s not a mater of doing it fast. It’s a matter of doing it right.
Now, now, Robert. Jeff’s not, as you suggested, a “chimpanzee moron.”
He’s a chimpanzee moron APOLOGIST!!!
Jeff, having fixed more than a few levees (during and after floods), what you posted here rings true.
From what I’ve read until now has suggested that at least one flood control structure was breached by overtopping. Whether that breaching was scour, mutually opposed hydraulic forces, or simple cavitation is immaterial. There was simply too much water. The location of the breaches is what took everyone by surprise.
Fixing a breech is anything but simple, even under ideal circumstance. Been there, done that. I’m amazed that it happened so fast. I have to wonder if the Corps Of Engineers drew out truckloads of coinage, freshly minted by the Treasury department, and used that to plug the hole. Anything else would be at least as expensive.
As for the “fog of war”….if the Levee Board was using Amateur Radio operators (“ham radio”, volunteers who provide emergency radio communications, check out http://www.arrl.net), commercial communications were either down or overloaded. That alone indicates that the situation was bad, which is hardly surprising in the middle of a category 4 hurricane.
That the NWS accepted the Amateur Radio transmission as the basis for flood warnings confirms that the situation was bad. The NWS can and does accept observer reports, but the agency prefers to get independent confirmation of the reports where possible. Quoting the source indicates that they either didn’t have the time to get that confirmation, or couldn’t contact anyone else.
But, more importantly, any disaster response is generally chaotic, especially when you have multiple jurisdictions involved. By all indications, the Levee Board responsible for the levees that protected New Orleans and other communities was a state board, not controlled by any one community.
But if the authority of the board was limited to operating and maintaining the levees (including addressing breaches), then they likely had little to no control of the emergency response agencies in the area. Instead, they likely have a cooperative role in disaster planning and response, with interagency coorperation limited to reports and requests for assistance (possibly a mutual aid agreement of sorts).
In other words, there were multiple jurisdictions dealing with the same problem in the same geographic area. The old saw, “Too many cooks spoil the broth”, may apply here.
And that’s if most of the local authorities actually have their act together in the first place. Confusion at the top level (which appears to be the case) only translates downward into more confusion.
So I’d say that this is a reasonable summary of what we know so far.
What I want to know is what the federal government is going to do about this?
Why didn’t Bush oversee the training of these workers?
Why didn’t Bush send in the National Guard? Doesn’t he care about poor people?
What’s wrong with this country when something like this can happen?
Shame.
“The truth is, at least the last three mayors of New Orleans are grossly negligent and in dereliction of duty in regards to repeatedly skimming federal funds allocated for their levee fortification. Allan McIsaac.”
Oh yeah, Baby, gimme summathat walkin’ money!
Great job, Jeff. It jibes with everything I know of the city.
The poor Ninth Ward. It’s a true community, a neighborhood in a big city. The people there speak as if they are from Brooklyn, some say because the ethnic population mix is similar. They are called “Yats” because of their habit of greeting each other with “Hey, man, where ya at?”
Another bit of perspective, one 3000 lb. helicopter load is about what two pickup trucks could haul. The main levee breach (the only one I remember the dimensions of) was 200’ long, and the “patch” would need to be 20-25’ high and 40-60’ wide.
Democrats and all other fantastical thinkers are the new Third World Nation of our nation. Logistics and logic count for NOTHING. Facts count for NOTHING. However, magical aircraft carriers that can circle the globe in 24 hours are expected, magic wands that build massive walls of sand that can hold back the tides (the TIDES, for God’s sake!!!) and build them in 24 hours, and semi-trucks that can clear downed trees while hauling in heavy loads of supplies, without needing gas for 500 miles are supposed to be the norm. Next thing you know, the Democrats will be worshiping fire and fearing the moon.
Moreover, thousands of selfless individuals who put their own health and lives on the line to help these folks are all lumped together as racists, and forgotten by the selfish race-pimping politicians. A pox on every ungrateful one of them. Personal responsibility is a threat to Democrat’s status-quo, and so they drag more and more folks into the bowl of NOLA fantasy-thinking in order to garner power and position. A special, warm place in hell awaits them.
I’ve lived in better third-world nations than the one the Democrats would have us become.
Better batten down the hatches, folks, because it’s going to be a very bumpy ride ahead. From an article in this morning’s wall street journal (subscription required):
The money quotes:
If the Wall St. Journal – hardly a bastion of left-wing opinion – has got access to FEMA communications during the past two weeks, then other newspapers will have obtained such documents as well. Expect a flood of stories detailing specific failures of the administration in the coming weeks. So long as blame can be assigned to the Federal government, it will drown out any attempts to assign blame to the local and state governments.
If this were an isolated case, I would agree with those who state that the Katrina disaster response won’t hurt the Republican party come November 2006. But the public has been growing more and more disillusioned with the Republicans over the past two years over perceived and real failures. Unless something significant happens to reverse this trend, the public will be ready for a change in 2006, even if the Democrats just dress up their current “turn the U.S. into Europe” platform in new language. The period of 2006-2008 will be a long string of congressional investigations into the administration – into Iraq, Gitmo, Abu Gharib, and whatever other scandals the Democrats can dig up – keeping the real and perceived failures of the administration in the headlines until the 2008 elections and guaranteeing a Democratic victory, to the detriment of the nation and its future.
JBG’s Approach just might have worked.
EVERBODY is blaming the JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS!
All say the LEVYS FAILED.
Due to your amazing output lately, I’m going to be forced to demand that FEMA replace my scroll wheel.
I’m a little baffled at JBG’s insistence that helicopters be diverted from S&R missions to futile dumping of loosely-assembled patching materials into levee breaches. It’s a racist, baby-killing set of priorities.
Bumper: if only Mel and Sissy had shown up with some sandbags, things might have worked out much better. It’s a shame that this selected administration didn’t see fit to call up these vital emergency response teams.
For sure.
There wasn’t enough funding apparently to maintain them levees. About 30% of what was asked for. The rest was apparently diverted to the War on Iraq, forgetting that if you take out the delta of the greatest river system of the country you take out major infrastructure – like the oil infrastructure that Bush had gone to Iraq to fill.
Therefor it is logical that the blame for the levees breaking must settle on Bush’s padded shoulders. Impeach Bush already!
Did anybody else see that gnat flying around?
Wadard, that claim was debunked long ago.
Tom Ault’s supposed “money quotes” simply aren’t. The delays in finding buses for evacuation cannot be rationally laid at FEMA’s feet as that was not initially FEMA’s responsibility.
While Bush has been talking up the chimera of terror he has neglected planning a response to a successful strike by the very thing he is propogating in Iraq. Can’t deny there aren’t terrorists in Iraq. Now. Where they gonna go after? There will be many Iraqi’s migrating to America after the war. You can’t take their oil and deny them citizenship, there will be deals. Anyway, happens after every war. How many sleepers?
That is the point you miss while arguing over why levees broke.
Fuck. That is so bad. The good news is that Bush’s appointee, Michael Brown HAS LEFT THE BUILDING.
Brown: The best thing I can do now is stay out the way and let people get on with the job or something like that.
TW: clear. Thank you TW.
Robin, the following says FEMA, not the locals.
How come there aren’t any locals have that have been forced to resign, or have they?
TW: answer. The TW speaks!
See, Wadard, September 3rd comes after August 28th which was when Katrina made landfall.
And a Cat IV hurricane does not, as yet, have stealth capability.
I can blame Bush for the length of time the corpses floated around the water. But it’s the incompetence and inaction of Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco that put them there.
____________________________________
and, Slart, there’s an off chance that God is a Mel Gibson fan … maybe Jeff can tap into his area of expertise and figure out what we’re in store for based on Mel Gibson’s filmography.
If it’s Bird on a Wire, I’m moving to Cuba.
FEMA’s primary responsibility was to prepare for the evetuality. They fucked up a long time before Katrina hit. Straight between the eyes. They fucked up when Bush appointed the head of an equestrian club for 10 years to head the country’s primary emergency services – as payback for running his campaign. It fucked up because Bush didn’t take the role seriously. OK now I am being gratuitious …
tw: told. You’ve just been
Why does Wadard hate poor black children?
Why are we going to listen to such a racist?
Why does Wadard support censorship?
Are you going to listen to such a fascist?
Wadard = Racist
Wadard = Pro-Censorship
I suspect Wadard is a far-right Neocon paid for by Karl Rove.
Wadard is COINTELPRO. Why is Wadard trying to surpress our rights?
That’s funny. I am talking about the restructuring of FEMA, and the brain, skills, experience flight.
Now you got it. It’s both their faults. Impeach Bush, Blanco and Nagin for good measure. They all failed you.
But by not apportioning the blame that Bush, Brown and FEMA all deserve, particuarly because Brown was Bush’s man, then you are endorsing the vulnerability that this Admin has exposed the country to internally, all the while inflaming the external circumstances that may lead to a second catastrophic terrorist attack on home soil.
TW: mass. critical
How come there aren’t any locals have that have been forced to resign, or have they?
Isn’t it a little early for that? I’m sure many people will first wait and see how much they can get away with by blaming FEMA for their own cock-ups.
The city didn’t follow it’s own emergency plans. Busses were available for evaction before the storm, but weren’t used. Amtrak made a train available before the storm for evacuations that wasn’t used. State officials blocked the Red Cross and The Salvation Army from entering. Blanco refused to sign over the Guard, and on and on and on. Nagin himself has lately become increasingly vocal about the state’s response.
Jeff, when did the levees break? This seems to be a simple and important question.
A couple of days ago Jack Kelly wrote “the levee broke Tuesday morning.” You wrote a post citing Kelly approvingly (although you didn’t quote that exact passage), and instead of correcting his mistake, you suggested he was right, by saying “on Tuesday as the levees were breaking.” One or more of your commenters made the same false claim. Robin Roberts said “Wednesday was the day after the levees failed.”
Then someone came along and pointed out that you, Kelly and Roberts were wrong. But instead of saying “thank you for the correction, which is corroborated by a new WSJ report,” you suggested that “reports of levee breaches on Monday” were due to “some confusion over terminology.”
Yesterday WSJ wrote (in the article you have now cited at length) “major levee breaks occurred much earlier than that, starting in the morning of Monday … the 17th Street Canal levee also was breached early Monday.”
You and WSJ point out correctly that on 8/29, there were various people (like Charles Gibson) who were confused about all this (and apparently Chertoff was paying too much attention to Charles Gibson, who was getting it wrong, and not enough attention to the National Weather Service, which was getting it right). Two weeks later, there’s no excuse for that confusion.
JB’s main point was never “why did it take so long to begin fixing the levees” (although that’s still a good question, since it appears that roughly 4 days elapsed, from the time the storm cleared to the time that a serious repair effort was underway). His main point was “why are people like Kelly, Goldstein and Roberts still suggesting that levees didn’t break until Tuesday.” That’s still a good question.
Maybe the upshot of all this is that you simply weren’t willing to believe it was true until you read it in the WSJ. Although you still can’t quite manage to admit your mistake. Or to admit that you banned someone for pointing out your mistake.
Being a civil engineer, I’m keenly aware of the shortcomings in our infrastructure – check out the American Society of Civil Engineers’ latest report card: [url=”http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/index.cfm” target=”_blank”]
Let’s just say that you have to jump through a few hoops to get funding earmarked for public works and infrastructure projects. When you get it, you best use it, because someone has recognized the importance of the project (at this point, I’ll spare you my pork-barrel rant). Shame on anyone responsible for mis-appropriation of funds (i.e. theivery) at the local level.
Considering the vast amount of substandard facilities that are out there nationwide, it is a little unfair to point out that the levee system in NOLA was underdesigned – it was a statistically reasonable solution, but certainly not foolproof. There are several systems out there “on the brink” if a particular scenario were to occur. One example is if Denver’s water supply system if subjected to a prolonged drought. One proposed solution would require big bank for “The Big Straw”: [/url]http://www.bbcresearch.com/viewpoint/viewpoint2004/drought.html). Sounds like a silly, expensive idea right now… but someday the rain will pause for a while.
Thanks, Jeff for the thorough summary of the levee issue. The MSM clearly was looking for the storm surge to inundate the City – they hadn’t done their homework.
FEMA’s primary responsibility was to prepare for the evetuality
That’s factually and legally incorrect.
The Stafford Act which created FEMA assigns the agency the role of backup to and supplier to the state and local officials AFTER a disaster.
There’s only so much that FEMA can anticipate and preposition. For instance, given that New Orleans’ own emergency response plan makes the MAYOR responsible for evacuating people – and given that he had over 1000 buses in the local are he *could* have used for that purpose – to insist that FEMA have buses rounded up and waiting before the storm is absurd.
Moreover, you cannot preposition supplies or people too close to the potentially-affected area or you risk the possibility of having them destroyed. Assuming, that is, that you have a magic ball that tells you exactly WHERE that storm was going to hit and how HARD and with what RESULTS.
Could we guess that Katrina would do major damage? Sure. But you know, I keep looking at Mississippi and the other states who had their shit together and I notice that they are working with FEMA just fine.
It’s Louisiana and New Orleans that were ill prepared, unwilling either to yield control OR to take charge in meaning ful ways, and who had plans worth exactly ZERO … who are in deep water.
Cause, meet effect.
Wadard, Speaking as a ‘Merkin, I think Australian perspectives matter more regarding issues of shark nets and long, very long, dog fences … thanks for your concern over the managerial and retention
But, here’s something to consider
New Director Of Readiness, Response And Recovery Directorate Appointed At FEMA
Release Date: July 1, 2002Release Number: HQ-02-098
Nothing says ‘Partisn Patronage’ like putting in place a person who, after 32 years of military service, including among his assignments directing a major reorganization of 1,000 staff from 15 disparate entities and directing training, logistics support and personnel preparations for the mobilization of 62,000 guardsmen for Operation Desert Storm.
Damn you, Allbaugh –
hiring people with bona fides!!!
DAMN YOU
John R. “Jack†D’Araujo, Jr. = Hitler
Wad—We are all refreshed and challenged by your unique point of view. If I throw a stick, will you leave?
Because asshats keep making excuses for them in order to score political points against Bushitler?
The New Orleans Levee Board supposedly owns a private jet, paid for with government money. Perhaps someone could verify this.
Every levee the Board is responsible for can be reached by walking.
The earliest announcement that I saw was that a levee had FAILED at 1500 hrs. Monday. Overtopping should have happened earlier in the day since it could take a few hours to breech one.
I also remember hearing that attempts to repair the breech (at least one) failed until the water levels in the lake and in the city equalized. That makes sense since that would give slack water in the breech, making it much easier to plug.
I would also note that earthen dams such as we have in California and elsewhere are subject to the same failure mechanism of overtopping water eating the dam material. Concrete is better but not still not perfect unless the foundation is solid rock.
If I throw a stick, will you leave?
Throw it towards Cuba, and it’s a sure bet he will.
Why do I give two shits about an (Fidel lovin)Australians opinion on this?
I have great news everyone: Mother Sheehan is on her way to NOLA.
Surely, the waters will buckle beneath the force of her absolute moral authority.
I admire Wadards tenacity at sticking to the ‘stealing oil’ meme. That he is now adding the deals will be made and this will cause sleeper cells to be created in the states is, well it’s just damn inspiring.
The Aussies have a great one on there hands and probably don’t even know it.
In the spirit of leading Wadard toward actual data, I bring you the FEMA Senior Staff. Read, and enjoy.
I’ve dialed 911 at least 3 times this week and not once has George Bush answered the phone…
NOT ONCE!
In practice it hasn’t been quite that way, even. This makes it sounds like state and local officials are on their own entirely. There is a national pool of disaster-relief experts—but they are not government employees. They are the Red Cross and Salvation Army. The national plans rely on them to go in as soon as possible and provide shelter & food. The Red Cross does most of the damage assessment because they have the corps of trained volunteers who know how to do it. Then after the Red Cross and Salvation Army (and often times the local welfare offices, too) get immediate needs met, and people sorted out, FEMA comes in and writes checks for grants and/or loans for the rebuilding phase.
The Red Cross and Salvation Army are charitable organizations of mostly volunteers. When someone says “the feds didn’t come to help” the translation is really, “In my community we thought that other things were more important than disaster relief. So nobody volunteered to be trained to do disaster relief. People didn’t donate enough money to pay to bring the training courses to town. We didn’t raise money for training and preparedness. We don’t know what resources we have to evacuate our community, or to feed and shelter evacuees from elsewhere. We don’t know who and where the people are with special needs.” Maybe your community thought that raising money for cancer research was more important. Or mentoring at-risk youth. Or having a winning high-school football team. Maybe your community’s decisions were reasonable. But they were your community’s decisions, and they are the responsibility of your community. Not George Bush, or FEMA, or the Red Cross, or the Salvation Army, or any of those other far-away outsiders.
cathy
”…the 49% of Americans who have been complaining for five years about George W. Bush being a dictator are now vexed to the point of utter incoherence because for the last fortnight he has failed to do a sufficiently convincing impression of a dictator.”
http://www.two–four.net/weblog.php?id=P1878
The chimera of terror, Wadard? The chimera of terror? Why don’t you ask the families of the 3,000 people killed at the WTC, or for that matter, the families of any of the hundreds of people who have been killed by Islamic terrorists over the last thirty years what they think of the “chimera” of terror. Idiot. I hope you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time when one of your Aussie nutter-butter splodeydopes decides to bring the chimera of terror to a theater near you.
Heh. SW, “earth,” as in, you can run, but you can’t hide.
To address something mentioned earlier, should the government have diverted all available resources into plugging the breaches – abandoning rescue and other humanitarian efforts – the death toll would certainly have been much higher.
You can’t pour sand and rocks into an active levee breach with any effect: the new materials are immediately washed away. So to attempt to plug the holes while the water was still flowing would have been a wasted effort and at the expense of hundreds of people clinging to rooftops and debris who needed rescue.
For anyone to claim that the levee breaks should have been first priority is to avoid knowledge of basic fluid mechanics and logistical realities coupled with an incredibly callous disregard for human life.
Regarding the Levee Board, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro … some dead guy who had peacocks.
Hey, this is from a Canadian source … so this tale of N.O. corruption must be true *and* there’s the added benefit that the French are to blame.
There is one thing related to the timeliness about awareness of levee failure that has not had enough emphasis:
There are valid distinctions between when the levees were known to be ‘breached’
and
when a determination was made that those breaches couldn’t be repaired before the water leveled out.
If only Mel, Sissy, and about 4,000 sandbags been on stand-by. If only.
Jeff, to borrow JBG’s favorite phrase: Nice job.
The chimera of terror was the mytical beast which “killed” Austrialian tourists in Bali. However, thoese of us not drinking the neocon Kool-aid know that this was made up by Karl Rove and nobody was blown up in Bali (it was just a lie to blame the Islamists “terrorists” – who only want to practice their Religion of Peace).
“knowledge of basic fluid mechanics and logistical realities” = lies by Karl Rove.
Basic fluid mechanics has been disproven by every Humanities Department in the nation, it is a racist, sexist and oppreseive system created by the rich and capitalism.
Why haven’t we seen a headline such as: New Orleans Ends—Women, Minorities Hit Hardest
Naturally, the women would be Governor Blanco and Senator Landrieu.
Wadard, you just keep repeating the same falsehoods. FEMA never had responsibility for planning or executing New Orleans’ evacuation plan.
Further there was no reason for FEMA to plan to obtain a fleet of buses for a municipality that had approximately 2000 buses of its own already.
So your claim that FEMA screwed up is just another of your blatant lies.
I had time to crunch a few numbers finally.
A 200’ levee breach would require about 15,000 cubic yards of fill material to patch. The 3000 pound number on helicopter drops indicates they could haul about 1.5 yards per trip, which means it would take roughly 10,000 helicopter trips, not counting waste from the inexact nature of placement a helicopter would bring. I suspect dump trucks were used instead, as it would only take about 1500 dump truck loads. Considering you also have to clear a path, find the fill material and load the trucks… anyone who knows what they are talking about should be amazed at how fast they actually patched it, I know I am.
The only people who care about fluid mechanics are Halliburton stooges who only want to keep the OOOIIILLL flowing. Because of the VISCOSITY!
I wish I’d said that.
In an impressive display of respect for accuracy, I notice that no one here seems to mind that Jeff (like Kelly) was wrong when he suggested that levees didn’t break until Tuesday. And that Jeff promptly banned the first and only person who spoke up to point out his mistake, which is still unacknowledged by Jeff. Nice fact-based operation in place here.
Um, Tom, didja happen to notice that the entire goddamn post that you’re commenting on happens to be about those things?
Hypothesis 1: JBG got banned for pointing something out to Jeff.
Hypothesis 2: JBG got banned for being a tool.
I know which way I’m going, here.
Tom, what grade did your elementary school attempt to teach reading?
In a way this reminds me of Gitmo. A huge fuss is being raised in an attempt to construct a narrative that is intended to arrive at a predetermined outcome. The signature ™ rant: George Bush is the worst president ever, George Bush doesn’t care about the poor, blah, blah, blah.
Jukeboxgrad:
And just what exactly is this supposed to mean? That nothing was being done in the background? The logistics to solve a problem of this magnitude under conditions at hand are staggering.
First you have to come up with a plan that suits the problem- a massive breach that is flowing huge amounts of water.
This means that whatever you dump into the breach has to have enough mass that it won’t be washed away. This means you’ve got to round up some really heavy stuff under the worst possible conditions, and get it to the jobsite smack dab in the middle of a lake in the middle of a 3 state disaster area. Where do you suppose the 3000 # sandbags with special rigging to allow transport and drop by helo came from? I’ll bet they didn’t buy them at Home Depot. Home many do you suppose it took to fill such a huge void?
It also means you have to come up with some hi lift helicopters and all the special rigging required to lift these heavy objects and release them into the breach. We just finished setting some high voltage transmission towers here in my neck of the woods with some Sikorsky sky cranes. Damn they are cool, but the logistical support just to keep them in the air is staggering. It took them two days to fly in the helo, set up a support base for it, and get it ready to start setting towers. My recollection is that the helo burned ~6000 gallons of jet fuel per day.
To further complicate things, heavy lift helicopters are being commandeered for emergency rescue operations, that are given a higher priority.
Meanwhile the media talking heads drone on about the lack of progress. Are we done yet? Are we done yet?
And guess what? They did it. They figured out a way to plug the breach using good old fashioned ingenuity, highly specialized equipment, and lots of hard work. Given the circumstances, they did it pretty damn quick too. You would think that people would be praising the people involved that put this together and made it happen.
Instead we are beset with partisans trying to make an issue out of why the chronology emerging from a highly chaotic situation wasn’t perfect. I wonder if we will find water-logged copies of the Koran in Katrina’s debris?
Tom J —
I banned jukeboxgrad from posting because he kept acting like a dick to me and my commenters. As for how “promptly” I did it, I gave him 4 posts and a warning to change his tone. But I’m too busy and have been working too hard to take snarky pot shots. Sorry, just don’t want to do it anymore.
Anyway, my site was down all day yesterday, so I wasn’t able to comment until late last night on the levee break situation. Fact is, I DIDN’T KNOW that the levees had broken on Monday, because it wasn’t something I had paid a lot of attention to. From watching the News, I had learned gotten the idea they broke on Tuesday.
Had jukeboxgrad brought it to our attention without the implied insinuation (one that you follow up on, because everything is a conspiracy, I suppose) that we were trying to cover up facts, we would have looked into it, just as I did yesterday, and come to the very same conclusions I come to in this post.
You might want to turn this into something sinister, but I posted the links to jukeboxgrads 4 comments above, so it’s not like I’m trying to silence him. In fact, I turned those links (minus his snark) INTO A POST.
Yes, he was correct about the Monday breaches, and I as say, I didn’t know that. But does it prove anything that he thinks it proves (judging by the tone of his comments?) Well, that’s what I wanted to find out, because throughout this I’ve simply been trying to piece together what happened so that we can figure out what went wrong, why, when, and how.
But we have to limit our criticisms to things that could have been prevented based upon the laws of terrestrial physics.
Jukeboxgrad was welcomed to make his point. And now I’ve looked into it. Mabye it’s time YOU start concentrating on the substance and stop worrying about how or why jukeboxgrad was “punished” for being such a jerk.
A nice, informative primer on Levee Breach with illustrations!
—-
as for JBG, and TomJ, it’s worth considering whether there is any field of human endeavor for which their powerful intellect, limited experience, and honed googling ability is not well suited.
Um, Tom, didja happen to notice that the entire goddamn post that you’re commenting on happens to be about those things?
Yep, I was thinking the same thing.
What I can’t get over is that the Bush administration seems to be doing absolutely nothing to defend itself from all this outrageous bullshit. What’s up with that?
I am also noticing that the goalposts have been moved once again. It now seems that if BusHitler had not forced all those black people into poverty, they would have been rescued within an hour. This country has spent 6.6 TRILLION dollars on the war on poverty since the first salvo in the Johnson years, and all it seems to have done is doom the dreams of the founders. What a wonderful tribute to ignorance…
OT – I was just watching the Roberts hearing, and had a hard time not smashing my TV set on the off chance that Sen. Biden was actually inside of it. I hereby nominate him as a charter member of The Bunghole Hall of Fame. Maybe when Kennedy and Leahy die, we could even elevate him to Chief Bunghole. Lord knows, he works hard enough at it. I cannot believe the arrogance of that little twit. I hope I cool off before my wife gets home, because it’s going to be hard to make her understand that I ripped her head off before she was halfway through the door only because she was thje first person I’d seen since watching Jizzblob Biden. Oh well. back to work.
Before I get accused of being an idiot, I just realized I forgot in my haste to allow for the fact the levee is sloped on the sides, and should have divided by two. So my numbers on total loads are twice what they should be, still an impressive feat.
Moe,
You conspirin’ neocon bassard!
Either that or an overworked slave of the oppressors, I am never quite sure which.
Jeff, I really look forward to reading your posts every day. Your search for the truth reminds me of Bill Ardolino’s coverage of the Rathergate affair. You are doing a terrific job. Thank you.
Jeff,
I couldn’t help noticing the times of some of your posts. Are you one of those “freaks of nature” that acutally require no sleep?
You know, normal people waste about 1/3 of their lives snoring.
tw: ever, as in “Don’t you EVER sleep? Spooky.
I’ve forgotten what sleep feels like.
For the record: I agree that this was an issue of levees adequate for a Category 3 hurricane failing when a Category 4 hurricane overtopped them. Liberals blaming Bush or anybody else should be ashamed of themselves. They’re supposed to be the “reality based” community, not the “wishful thinking” community.
One thing I do want to correct people about, however: The state-level New Orleans Levee Board had nothing to do with maintenance of the levees that were overtopped. I’ve walked those levees in the past. Each and every one of them is marked with signs indicating that they are Federal Property, with the Army Corps of Engineer logo on the signs. Those levees have been a federal responsibility since the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, when it became obvious that managing flooding in the lower Mississippi Valley had to be a federal responsibility because otherwise you had one state trying to shove its floodwaters into another state and the end result being floodwater fights that ended up with entire states going underwater. The Pontchartrain levees are part of that floodwater management system, because the lake is part of the Bonne Carre Spillway, part of the massive Corps of Engineer floodwater management system intended to divert Mississippi floodwaters in the event of another Great Flood. The New Orleans levee board is basically a pork-barrel outfit intended to give jobs to supporters of the Governor, rather than having any real responsibilities. That said, the Levee Board does have the power to levy property taxes, and in recent years (after Bush cut the Corps budget) has stepped up to fund millions of dollars of repairs to the levees that were not funded in the Corps’ budget. But that had nothing to do with this particular issue, which was a simple one of levees being overwhelmed— since 1995 the levees have had millions of dollars of work done on them, and were in the best shape they’d ever been in within my adult life.
In other words: The failure of the levees was not caused by Bush, Clinton, or the local levee board. It was caused by the fact that they were Category 3 levees trying to hold back a Category 4 storm surge. The “blame game” is entirely inappropriate here… if we really want someone to “blame”, let’s go all the way back to 1966 and blame Lyndon Johnson, who only funded levees capable of withstanding a Category 3 storm when the current system was built in the aftermath of Hurricane Betsy. I’m sure that nobody really cares at this point, though.
– Badtux the Louisiana Penguin
While this discussion has been interesting and informative, I gotta say that as an engineer this just sums it up for me:
Excellent stuff as ever, Jeff.
One question remains, though: How did they fix the breaches? Sounds like it’d be fascinating reading.
re: levee-breaching and the ‘dodged a bullet’meme.
This might be a source of the ‘Dodged a Bullet’ meme in the media. fwiw – Jim Miklasweski also said that he’d seen accounts which used the phrase ‘dodged a bullet’ during a DoD briefing.
Here’s a contemporaneous account from N.O. and Louisiana from noted Bush-Friendly source, National Public Radio. {emphasis added}
and more on levee damage – same NPR interview – there’s a gob-smacking statement by the Colonel at the end of the quote:
indeed.
So, with regard to Michael Chertoff’s comment about ‘opening a newspaper’ and reading ‘dodged a bullet’. I took that as possibly being some sort of colloquial way, a way used by Colonels in the La. OHSEP, to describe a sentiment like this one:
Contrary to BadTux’s remarks, according to the Corps of Engineers, the local districts are responsible for maintaining the levees, not the Corps.
http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/pao/response/HURPROJ.asp?prj=lkpon1
There may be more to it, of course, so I wouldn’t consider this a definitive statement.
Still, did the locals own a private jet?
Otherwise, I largely agree with BadTux, it was just one bad hurricane, bad beyond budget.
As for Jeff posting at odd hours, I just assumed Satchmo was teething.
Sorry, I meant Satchel. I have my own sleep deprivation/New Orleans free word association problems.
Turing word: kind
“the entire goddamn post that you’re commenting on happens to be about those things”
Jeff’s post is long, so maybe I missed it. Show me the part where Jeff says “I was wrong and Kelly was wrong, the levees broke on Monday, not Tuesday, and the only person to point this out on the other thread is the person I banned.” (Jeff did finally get around to saying most of this later, in a comment and a second update, but it’s pretty remarkable how many reminders he needed.)
The other part I missed is the part where Jeff suggests that Kelly should run a correction, or apologizes for touting an article with such a fundamental error.
Most of Jeff’s post seems to be making the point that levees take a long time to fix, so it doesn’t matter much if they broke on Monday or Tuesday. He also makes the point, correctly, that early on some people were confused. All this strikes me as an effort to change the subject.
“The logistics to solve a problem of this magnitude under conditions at hand are staggering.”
Fixing a broken levee is a big job. (Thanks for your extended explanation of why, although we don’t really need that because no one has suggested otherwise.) All the more reason to get started without delay. It now appears that part of the delay was because Chertoff was getting his news from Charles Gibson instead of the National Weather Service.
“I gave him 4 posts and a warning to change his tone.”
Given that you’re a host who can’t seem to get through the day without throwing around genteel terms such as “stupid fuck” and “colossal cock tip,” I think you’re in a weak position to complain about tone.
“I DIDN’T KNOW that the levees had broken on Monday”
Anyone can make a mistake, but grownups clean up their mistakes readily, instead of waiting until they’re dragged kicking and screaming. Anyway, the correct information about the levees has long been easily available from numerous sources (yet another source is the NPR interview from 8/29, which Bumper just helpfully posted). Also, the claim that you simply made an innocent mistake looks bad in light of the fact that this particular misstatement has been a key part of White House spin right from the start.
“Had jukeboxgrad brought it to our attention without the implied insinuation”
His first post was relatively snark-free, especially in the context of what passes for civil discourse in your neighborhood. But instead of paying attention to the facts in that post (and being grateful for someone who did the research you couldn’t manage on your own), you attempted to sweep the facts aside with a vague, dismissive statement about “confusion over terminology.” In other words, you had a chance to behave like an adult and promptly acknowledge your error, and you blew it.
“it’s not like I’m trying to silence him”
That’s a classic: “Yes, I banned him, but it’s not like I’m trying to silence him.”
“does it prove anything that he thinks it proves”
He didn’t seem to be trying to prove anything, aside from pointing out that you and Kelly are careless (at best) about important facts, and resistant to correction. It seems to me that goal was met.
“throughout this I’ve simply been trying to piece together what happened so that we can figure out what went wrong, why, when, and how.”
If this is true, it’s hard to understand the way you reacted to important new information that you obviously needed: you did your best to squelch it.
“stop worrying about how or why jukeboxgrad was “punished†for being such a jerk”
That issue is relevant to the question of whether or not your blog is a waste of time. Banning people just because they disagree with you is bad enough. Banning people because they correctly point out your mistakes is even worse. This is an indicator of whether or not I’m likely to learn something here, or whether I’m just going to be fed misinformation (intentional or otherwise) that no one dares to correct.
By the way, you’ve been putting lots of words in his mouth. He never said the response was “criminally” slow. He also didn’t suggest that “material and manpower could likewise have made it to the levee breaches at that time [Monday afternoon].” You’re doing the straw-man thing.
You’re also somewhat misstating the 48 hours business. As the point was made by the person you’re supposedly paraphrasing, it wasn’t 48 hours from the time the levees were breached. It was 48 hours from the time that the storm cleared sufficiently for helicopters to fly (and this was roughly 12 hours after levees were breached). And just to be clear, it’s not that it took 2 days for work to start. It took 2 days before we saw a news report indicating that the head CoE guy for the area was admitting that work hadn’t even started yet. And it took another couple of days after that for work to start (about 4 days altogether, starting from the time the storm had cleared).
It’s not reasonable to expect to see heavy equipment in place on Monday afternoon fixing the breaches (you’re acting as if JB suggested this; he didn’t). But it is reasonable to expect that Chertoff/Brown would have been taking the breaches seriously as of Monday morning, when they were first reported. Unfortunately, Chertoff has given us reason to believe that he gets his news from the morning papers (perhaps delivered via stagecoach, and then read very very slowly), and therefore didn’t get around to taking the breaches seriously until Tuesday afternoon. That’s a serious delay, and you seem to be doing your best to gloss over it. This doesn’t help convince anyone that you’re simply “trying to piece together what happened.”
I don’t know if this answers your questions but it is relevant. Civil Engineering Magazine ran an article in June of 2003 called “The Creeping Storm” which has an interesting point about to what levels the levees were built. Note the bolded section.
The design of the original levees, which dates to the 1960s, was based on rudimentary storm modeling that, it is now realized, might underestimate the threat of a potential hurricane. Even if the modeling was adequate, however, the levees were designed to withstand only forces associated with a fast-moving hurricane that, according to the National Weather Service’s Saffir-Simpson scale, would be placed in category 3. If a lingering category 3 stormâ€â€or a stronger storm, say, category 4 or 5â€â€were to hit the city, much of New Orleans could find itself under more than 20 ft (6 m) of water.
http://www.pubs.asce.org/ceonline/ceonline03/0603feat.html
Whatever you say, Tom. Me, I’m going to spend my time looking into things the best I can as time permits. You’re free to spend your time pointing out how I’m not doing it to your satisfaction. Write additional long dissertations about it. Protest that I am obligated to take shit on my site from people like jukeboxgrad who come in swinging, then site the tone of my response as proof that I have no room to talk. Cycle of violence blah blah blah. You’re selling it well.
As to the straw man charge, the posts by jbg are LINKED. People can decide for themselves if I’ve captured the essence, tone, and implications of his questions. Now, I’m done having this metacommentary. Carry on yourself if you must.
We have different priorities, is all.
Regarding the state levee boards, they are responsible for maintaining the *non-Federal* levees. Such as, for example, the levees in Shreveport that protect a couple of neighborhoods against the possibility of the Red River flooding, or the smaller levees protecting farmers’ fields from various bayous overflowing. But the big Mississippi flood control projects, such as the Atchafalaya Basin levees, are 100% under the control of the Corps of Engineering as far as I know, the link you point to doesn’t say much different.
In reality, as we both know, the levee boards are mostly a dumping ground, spoils for the Governor’s supporters, and are quite corrupt. The last Board president in New Orleans (before the current one) basically was told to leave because he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of Levee Board money hiring private investigators to dig up dirt on critics of the levee board. If those dimwits had been left in charge of the big levees, New Orleans would have flooded decades ago, rather than when a Category 4 hurricane’s storm surge hit a levee system designed only to handle a Category 3 hurricane’s storm surge.
Reality was that the New Orleans levee system was in the best shape it’d been in for decades. It just got overwhelmed by a storm surge worse than what it’d been designed to handle, that’s all. Critics of Bush who blame the collapse of the levees on Bush are engaging in delusional thinking. While there are legitimate criticisms of Bush’s response to this disaster—he needed to be giving leadership on *TUESDAY*, rather than waiting until *FRIDAY*—the whole “the levees collapsed because Bush looted the levee money to fund Iraq” deal is completely and utterly ridiculous.
– Badtux the Louisiana Penguin
What the hell is “giving leadership?” Running around cuddling people? Striking a Firm, Resolved pose on an upside-down boat in the middle of some hurricane-wrecked place? Clutching at his hair and declaiming like Scarlett O’Hara “By God as my witness, I shall never allow another hurricane to ruffle these shores!” What?
What can I say, through all the hurricanes I’ve experienced in the past Lord knows the first thought in my brain is “where oh where is the president?” Jesus, people, is there something in the water in Louisiana? Can’t you people lead your own damn selves for a few days while the federal forces are making their way to you? When will you all get it through your heads that this country is not run from the top down?
The word of the day is “exasperated.” Also “out,” as in “I’m almost out of booze.”
Political Teen has video of Gov Blanco and her press secretary preparing for a televised interview. In it, Blanco is being a bit more candid about how she handled the troop situation than she probably wanted the cameraman to hear.
Ah… I love the smell of leadership in the morning.
Good bit from Bill Hobbs that debunks the Think Progress school bus debunking that tomorrow’s trolls will almost certainly begin dropping into the comments sections of rightwing blogs defending the FEMA response (more on that here).
Similarly, Bryan Preston debunks an attempted Media Matters debunking.
Again, official NO evac plan; official southeastern LA evac plan.
See also, National Review on Nagin, Blanco, and the evac plan.
“I’m going to spend my time looking into things the best I can as time permits”
Since you’re too busy to fact-check the misstatements you’re picking up from sources like Kelly, my unsolicited advice is that you refrain from stifling visitors who offer facts you should have found yourself.
“people like jukeboxgrad who come in swinging”
Even if his tone offended your tender sensibilities, that’s a poor excuse to dismiss the content he offered (and dismiss it is exactly what you tried to do), especially since he was right and you were wrong.
One more thing. Given that a couple of days ago you were full of fire and brimstone over allegedly poor journalism, it’s hard not to notice your apparent reluctance to hold Kelly accountable for his blatant misinformation (which seems to have been handed down in typical pecking-order style from Chertoff to Fox to Kelly to you to Robin Roberts). Your double-standard is showing.
This is like a slow boring dance, which is always the way it is with people like you.
First, did you bother to read the post you keep insisting I “hold Kelly accountable for”? Look at the part I highlighted. What does it have to do with the levees? What misstatements does it contain that I picked up from him? (I didn’t know the levees broke on Monday, as I noted earlier, but I didn’t pick up Tuesday from him; I picked it up from the live coverage I watched.) Did I excerpt his mention of the levees? Am I responsible for his errors? Do his errors over the precise day the levees breached (an error shared by a lot of people in the media, as I demonstrated in this post) somehow change the accuracy of Jason van Steenwyk’s testimony?
Further, what do the levee breaches have to do with FEMA? What does the Monday breach have to do with the response by the Army Corp of Engineers? The Bush Administration? Anything?
As for the rest: Listen, take your sanctimony somewhere else. I’ve noted why jbg was banned. Several times. I don’t have delicates sensibilities. Just a limited amount of time to sift through bullshit. If turning his content into a lengthy post on the subject, complete with links to his comments, is “dismissing it” (not sure how that works, precisely), then so be it. I guess I simply don’t take his (or your) point (though if you’re like the rest of your ideological brethren, it’s probably something as facile as suggesting that a chronological error unrelated to a story’s thesis somehow undercuts the truth of the rest of the story). Which, how sad.
But your consistent meta-analyses of how I’m answering things is nothing but a distraction.
Jeff G., you have the patience of Job. If I ever had enough traffic to attract such people, I’d ban them just out of spite. Cuz I’m that kind of guy. Hence my moniker.
“did you bother to read the post .. Look at the part I highlighted. What does it have to do with the levees?”
Did you bother to read my comments? I never accused you of directly quoting Kelly’s false statement (“the levee broke Tuesday morning”). I explicitly acknowledged that you didn’t (when I said “although you didn’t quote that exact passage”).
“What misstatements does it contain that I picked up from him?”
Until now I haven’t claimed that there are misstatements in the passage you quoted directly from Kelly. Now that you mention it, though, there is indeed a very obvious misstatement (in the text you borrowed from Kelly), that you have (so far) failed to notice or highlight. This time around I’ll let you do your own homework and figure out what it is.
“I didn’t pick up Tuesday from him; I picked it up from the live coverage I watched”
I never claimed I was sure where you picked up “Tuesday.” That’s why I said “misstatements you’re picking up from sources *like* Kelly” (emphasis added).
“Am I responsible for his errors?”
Not until you link approvingly to him without warning your readers (even after you know better) that his article contains bogus information.
Aside from that, you spent a lot of energy a few days ago heaping blame on Newsweek for allegedly poor journalism. When you’re highly sensitive to Newsweek’s alleged errors, but don’t lift a finger to criticize Kelly’s glaring error (even after you touted his article, and even after his errors have been pointed out to you), that conveys the impression you’re operating with a double standard.
“his errors over the precise day the levees breached”
The breaching of the levees is arguably the pivotal moment in the entire saga. Please don’t imply that getting this wrong (by roughly 24 hours) is a minor error. This “error” was at the heart of the original White House spin, which was essentially “noboby thought there was a real problem until Tuesday, when the levees broke.”
“an error shared by a lot of people in the media”
Yes, some in MSM got it wrong, in some cases because they were regurgitating White House spin (what a big surprise that the media would do that).
What’s interesting is that when MSM makes a mistake you don’t like, your response is “I’m outraged! Look at the bias!” But when MSM makes a mistake you do like, your response is “see? we all make mistakes sometime, what’s the big fuss about?” More double standard.
“Do his errors over the precise day the levees breached … somehow change the accuracy of Jason van Steenwyk’s testimony?”
Yes. If Kelly’s false claim (“the levee broke Tuesday morning”) wasn’t relevant to helping Jason sound credible, Kelly wouldn’t have mentioned it. He did mention it, because it is relevant.
“what do the levee breaches have to do with … “
The levee breaches have everything to do with everything (in this tragedy) because they are the immediate reason that New Orleans no longer exists.
“take your sanctimony somewhere else”
That’s a bit of a mixed message, since you just asked me ten questions. Maybe you’re not sure you really want to hear the answers.
“If turning his content into a lengthy post is “dismissing it†… “
Take another look at your first response to him. It was clearly an attempt to dismiss his facts, even though they were correct. You ultimately said more only after it was clear he wasn’t going to let you get away with it. That’s why I said “dismiss it is exactly what you *tried* to do” (emphasis added).
By the way, even after your lengthy post and lots of discussion, you still can’t bring yourself to say “Kelly was wrong and I’m calling on him to run a correction.” Given that you were very recently on a high horse about journalistic integrity, this is peculiar. I guess it’s OK when your guys do it.
“suggesting that a chronological error unrelated to a story’s thesis somehow undercuts the truth of the rest of the story”
The error is unrelated to the story’s thesis only if you believe that the levee breaches are unrelated to the fact that New Orleans was destroyed, and only if you believe that doctoring the timeline by 24 hours is a minor matter, rather than a matter of life or death for various people.
Here are some basics you might have overlooked. Water runs downhill. Once major levee breaches had occurred, it was inevitable that New Orleans would fill up like a bathtub (unless someone fixed the levees). That’s why there’s a big problem with Chertoff saying that it wasn’t until “midday Tuesday that [he] became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the gap and that essentially the lake was going to start to drain into the city.”
Anyone paying attention to the National Weather Service (does anyone on Chertoff’s staff bother to do that? I guess not) knew that the lake had already “start[ed] to drain into the city” as of 8:14 Monday morning (if not earlier, since there was also a levee-breach report at 3 am), which is obviously long before “midday Tuesday.” That’s why there was already major flooding over large areas of NO by midday Monday. This was right around the time that Bush was telling rich white people at the Pueblo El Mirage RV Resort and Country Club that he had just called Chertoff to discuss immigration. (Nice photo here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/images/20050829-5_p082905pm-0267-515h.html)
By the way, Chertoff’s riff about “aware of the fact … possibility of plugging the gap” is utter nonsense, because it suggests he had some reason to think there was already some effort underway to fix the breaches, which he was ostensibly trusting to make the problem go away. It seems he wants us to think that it was Tuesday afternoon that he finally realized that levee repair efforts weren’t working (as if he had been expecting the tooth fairy to show up and sprinkle magic dust over the broken levees). But until that time there were no meaningful levee repair efforts. It’s all pure spin, in other words.
I see the whingingest blowhard on the planet is still at it. Sometimes I wish blogs had a killfile capability.
Tom J has hectored me to publish a correction for Kelly’s error—as cited by jukeboxgrad—for days now. Indeed, that—along with his outrage that I banned jbg for asserting that such a correction needs to be noted (an incorrect assertion on his part, as I’ve noted)—has been his entire reason for commenting repeatedly and at excruciating length. Now, when directly confronted by me, his answer is that he hasn’t done any of what he’s repeatedly done. Even as he repeats the same demands he claims never to have demanded from me in the first place.
Then, to add to his strange behavior, he claims that the levee breach—not the topic of the post in question, indeed, not even dealt with in the post in question—is the “pivotal moment in the entire saga”—and so….what? Is he not commenting in a thread dedicated to examing the levee breach? Not that anything could have been done about the breach initially (as shown in this post)—and not that it’s at all obvious the Administration knew of the breach when many in the press still didn’t (some were reporting “breaches” as “overtopping”; communications were down; reports were often in conflict). But that is irrelevant. Tom J is arguing just for the sake of arguing—asserting his righteousness above that of spinmeisters like me who haven’t bothered to…uh, correct things he’s not asking me to correct (but is demanding that I correct. Or something.)
Then Tom recites recites the NWS, which, if he looks through the above post, he’ll find reported a number of different things—but again, so what? None of this has to do with FEMA, whose response was the ostensible topic of the post in question.
Then there’s this:
…which completely ignores the statements referenced in the above post about the logistics involved in repairing levees. Tom, like many of his progressive compatriots, is interested more than all else in appearances. Perception is reality. Nevermind that dumping sand into a breach before the proper equipment and material arrives and can be set up (w/o an infrastructure to support the efforts until roads were cleared and the storm died inland so that transport into NO could be coordinated and mobilized) is fruitless and, potentially to those doing it, dangerous; it has the happy effect that it looks like you are acting, that you care—and that is more important in Tom’s world than actually getting it right. Nothing is ever true until it’s narrative is shaped in hindsight.
Once again, Tom, you’ve made a total ass of yourself here with your attempts to switch attention away from the information contained in the post to my failings as a “journalist”—though, of course, you never claimed them to be my failings, but now that I mention it and blah blah blah.
You’re all over the map, Tom. And you continue to waste my time. Please, stop now.
I read this on a blog somewhere…
“By definition, major disasters are not manageable. If they were manageble they would be minor annoyances”. All we can do is learn from our mistakes and do better next time. We will definitely do better next time if there is less partisan bickering and finger pointing. Thanks for posting the expert opinions of some engineers. I have seen to much “Sean Penn” and not enough comment by people who know what they are talking about.
Well, dadgummit if the whole shebang is supposed to be in the laps of the Feds then based on this article,”, in my local paper today the citizens of the State of AZ should be suing the state for wasting all the money this must have cost. Because they don’t need to do this…the Feds will do it! Gee, what do you think made them go and spend all that money for and run all those silly exercises?
Gosh, I have a sinking feeling a few other states may have done this as well…the only one that saw the wisdom in not spending was LA…
Huh? You’re utterly incomprehensible. Next time try English. Maybe your comment is painfully opaque because it’s packed with so many distortions, obfuscations and straw men that they almost exceed the word count.
Life is short, so I’ll point out just one example: “Nevermind that dumping sand into a breach before the proper equipment and material arrives … “
I never suggested that Chertoff (or anyone else) should have been standing there with a shovel Monday afternoon. That’s not the problem. The problem is that it apparently took Chertoff until Tuesday to figure out what lots of folks knew early Monday morning: levees had broken. (Maybe Chertoff spent all day Monday pondering the discussion he had that morning with Bush, about immigration.)
It’s true that Chertoff wasn’t the only person who was confused and/or unconscious. Charles Gibson was too, for example. However, this is an extremely weak defense.
Anyway, you’re making strenuous efforts to miss the point. Whatever works for you, I guess. You’re also doing a great job of taking something simple and making it complicated. So here are the highlights, in a nutshell:
1) the levees broke early Monday, not Tuesday
2) this is an important fact
3) Kelly got this wrong and you got this wrong
4) you finally acknowledged your error, but only after making a highly revealing fuss (which included banning the first and only person who pointed out your error)
5) even though the truth is so obvious that you and WSJ have finally figured it out, Kelly still hasn’t corrected his error (although he did correct another glaring error, an error which you still seem to be blissfully unaware of; this other error of Kelly’s still stands uncorrected in the original version of his text that appears in your post from several days ago)
6) you still can’t bring yourself to acknowledge that Kelly should be held accountable for making a glaring error (“the levee broke Tuesday morning”) and still failing to correct it; this is also highly revealing
7) gettings facts straight is obviously not a high priority for you
“you continue to waste my time”
Only if you choose to read and/or respond. I see you’re attempting to invoke a RNC technique #5789: always try to make someone else responsible for the consequences of your own choices.
“stop”
If dealing with people who point out your mistakes and inconsistencies is too much trouble for you, you should follow in the footsteps of virtually every leading righty blogger: don’t allow comments.
Then again, you could always reach again for your handy “ban” button, which may or may not incite another lurker to further “hector” you.
So long as the Army CoE knew, who cares? So Chertoff was slow in learning. There was a lot going on and communication was screwy. What, he was supposed to deliver sandbags himself. It’s a non-issue
You can
1) use
2) numbers
3) to make it
4) appear
5) that you have a point;
6) but
7) we
8) know better. Oh, and the passive aggressive
9) shots at me?
10) they just make you look
11) small.
12) (incidentally, it’s funny how actually looking into levee situation, because I hadn’t before, and reporting what I found is “making a fuss,” whereas insisting for the
13) What? Thirteenth time that I didn’t correct a Kelly statement I didn’t use in my post
14) And banned the guy who brought “Monday” to my
15) attention for doing so in a way that
16) I found disagreeable
17)—that’s not “making a fuss.”
18) Glad you concluded by taking a shot at rightwing bloggers who “stifle dissent” but not wanting to have to listen to trolling scolds like you dump shit on their site over and over and over again. Because they should. Because people like you hurt
19) Your own cause
20) Be being so fucking condescending and insufferable.
21) Buh-Bye.
“So long as the Army CoE knew [that levees broke Monday morning], who cares [that Chertoff didn’t notice until Tuesday]?”
I think you’re just pretending to not be smart enough to figure out the answer on your own, but I’ll humor you.
If the only consequence of a broken levee was a broken levee, then only CoE would need to know. But broken levees quickly led to massive flooding, which in turn led to many other very serious consequences for many people. CoE was not even properly prepared to deal quickly with broken levees (even though this was their job), let alone all the consequences which would inevitably ensue as a result of broken levees (which was definitely not their job). In fact, the consequences which rapidly ensued, as a direct result of the broken levees, were so massive that they quickly overwhelmed local and state resources. Once these resources were swamped (literally), it was Chertoff’s job to back them up. He was slow to do this. This led to unnecessary suffering and death.
Once levees broke, it didn’t require an Einstein to understand that a major disaster was not just possible, but inevitable. It only required someone who was paying attention. Chertoff seems to not have been paying attention. This is a big problem.
“communication was screwy”
Only if you assume that Chertoff’s only source of information was watching Charles Gibson Monday night, or selectively reading certain passages from certain newspapers Tuesday morning. There were many reports of broken levees on Monday. NO City Hall announced it. The local paper announced it repeatedly on their web site. The National Weather Service announced it. The National Guard witnessed it. Your efforts to sweep all this under the rug are not impressive.
“There was a lot going on [on Monday]”
Yes, indeed, like Bush getting Chertoff on the phone to discuss immigration.
“What, he was supposed to deliver sandbags himself.”
It’s odd that you would trot out that particular straw man again, since I’ve explicitly pointed out that’s not what he was expected to do. What he was expected to do was promptly mobilize a wide array of federal resources that would be needed to deal with the inevitable consequences of breached levees. It took him an awfully long time to get serious about doing this. At least part of this delay was him simply not noticing, in a timely manner, that levees had broken. Hard thing not to notice, given that many reports were being issued by many sources.
“it’s funny how actually looking into levee situation, because I hadn’t before, and reporting what I found is “making a fuss,—
No. That wasn’t “making a fuss.” The “fuss” you made was when your error was pointed out, and you made a strenuous, sustained effort to push the correction aside. If you’ve already forgotten, your comment at 9/12, 1:11 am (in the earlier thread) would be a good place to start.
“I found disagreeable”
I have a feeling you’d be more effective if you figured out how to assess facts objectively even when you find the source disagreeable.
“insisting … that I didn’t correct a Kelly statement I didn’t use in my post”
You still have a hard time grasping that Kelly made (at least) two obvious errors. One of them you did indeed quote directly, and that error indeed still stands uncorrected in your post, and you seem to still not notice or care.
As for Kelly’s other error (“Tuesday”), it’s true that you didn’t quote this “Kelly statement” directly. But you supported it, by linking approvingly to his article, and by saying “on Tuesday as the levees were breaking.” And you still can’t bring yourself to say that Kelly should be held accountable for making this error and failing to correct it.
As I said, you’ve made it clear that getting facts straight simply isn’t a high priority for you.
Sigh.
Fine. You’ve spun your tale. We all appreciate it. People can read the post, your numerous responses, the comments, and decide for themselves.