Two different disasters, two different parts of the world. In each, nature had a part, but man-made engineering failures created catastrophic results. And in each, the response has been the same. New Orleanians, nearing three years of wondering whether any official body will ever hold accountable the federal officials who made the decisions leading to the "design and construction flaws" -- the Corps' own words -- in the floodwall structures that collapsed will recognize their situation in thisWashington Post dispatch from China:
Tears of grief and anger mixed with smoke from ritual fires lighted on the ruins of Xinjian Primary School on Sunday, as hundreds of parents commemorated the deaths of their children and pleaded for the government to punish those responsible for the building's collapse in last month's earthquake.
But for the parents, placing blame is a complex matter. Most of the dozens of schools that collapsed in the quake, killing an estimated 9,000 children, were built more than a decade ago, with multiple layers of government and private companies involved in their construction. And although government officials have announced investigations, they have emphasized the need to look for lessons learned, not the pursuit of wrongdoers.
Add in the fact that, in New Orleans, the construction stretched over four decades, under administrations of both parties, and you have the same eerie silence. And more than a hundred thousand citizens of the city still can't come home, because there's no place for them to live.
1) New Orleans is a heavily pedestrian city. Narrow streets, buildings close together, traditional urban layout. Vehicles come second. People come first. They use public transportation. The streetcars are not a tourist gimmick.
2) New Orleans metro area is essentially an island in the classic geographical sense, 30 miles away from nearest community not subject to storm surge flooding. Anyone attempting to leave by walking would have quite a hike ahead of them. Hint: "I'm Walking To New Orleans" song is about a NO native missing the city so much he's willing to risk his life walking across 30 miles of causeway over open water or more than 30 miles of elevated roadway over unpopulated swamp to get back home.
3) The federal government has known for many years, at least since the mid 1980's, that because of the size and scope of the challenge, New Orleans required federal help caring for their large pedestrian population in a storm surge. It doesn't take 20 years to resurrect regional passenger light rail, well-stocked vertical evacuation centers, and adequate levees.
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If not simple because New Orleans is an American city, it certainly deserved better considering its 300 years of essential economic, cultural, and militarily strategic contributions to this nation. Its treatment in 2005 was and is criminal.
Why is the Army Corps of Engineers involved in these projects at all?
I thought the purpose of the ACE was to throw bridges across rivers while under enemy fire so our troops could cross over. Quick and dirty, just get it done. Not massive civilian projects that have to be safe and ecologically responsible (old army bases are notorious for being toxic waste sites).
This is one place where I'd like to see private companies take over. If. If, if, if, contracts were awarded competitively and contractors were liable for fines and/or prison for cutting corners with materials or workmanship. And I say this being from Chicago and remembering how every summer they'd have to close the Dan Ryan expressway and redo the shoddy work from the previous year (plus overweight trucks etc -- corruption at all levels).
We recently had some work done on the new Bay Bridge out here. The contractor came in early and within budget, and people were begging him to run for governor! We are hungry -- starved -- for an end to corruption, incompetence and indifference.
You should read John Barry's book, Rising Tide, for a good narrative of how we got here.
Combat engineers do the bridge under fire thing. The Corps of Engineers is a primarily civilian branch of the Department of the Army.
The Corps does let lowest-bid contracts. They probably use incentive/disincentive contracts to encourage contractor performance. They have inspectors and specifications. Their system probably works pretty well most of the time. They just did it wrong this time. They don't have any checks or balances on their own work, so nobody knows where the ticking timebomb might be. You should be worried about whether it's you that will be harmed the next time they do it wrong.
No, the USACE USED TO let lowest-bid contracts.
For a real eye-opener into how the Bush-Cheney-Republican USACE operates, google Pentagon Whistle-blower Bunnatine Hayes Greenhouse.
Key concepts: Halliburton, no-bid longterm contracts, corporate cronyism and conflicts of interest like the world has never seen.
Of course, they conveniently forget that it was the Dems in the State and Local governments who really failed the people of NOLA..
But, once again, why let rational and logical facts get in the way of a good hysterical and illogical rant that has NO BASIS in reality...
On a more personal note.. Mr Shearer?? What can I do to get an autographed picture of Mr Burns, suitable for framing? :D
Michale.....
Who told them to use the wrong design storm?
Who told them to use the wrong elevation datum?
Who told them to use the wrong benchmarks?
Who told them to use unsuitable materials in the levee construction?
Who told them to ignore the results of ther own tests (tests which predicted the precise failure mode of many breaches)?
Who told them to ignore their own geotechnical procedures (and use average soil strength values, instead of favoring the weakest values)?
And if you think that the State & Local governments did not have a say in all of the items you mentioned, you really don't know how things work..
The simple fact is, the State & Local governments share the majority of the blame for failure to prepare their populace and for their (lack of) first response.
It's really THAT simple..
Michale.....
Just think how well the rest of us can benefit if John McCain is elected and continues the domestic policies of W that allowed that to happen. It'll be a brave new world -- that'll be much more like the fearful old world. Yes. Under McCain, all of our country may become as free and open to opportunity as the Deep South was to American Blacks between 1890 and 1940.
However, the recent Congressional election replacing the our retiring longstanding Republican Representative (Baker) with a Democrat (Cazayoux) , illustrates the area's high level of bipartisan dissatisfaction with Bush and his fellow R's. And it's the first time in many yrs that seat didn't go to the R's.
So, I wouldn't count us in the ranks of the solid red, yet. Purple, at best.
For every single non-distaster predicted should we deploy record-breaking responses such as was done here?
Worst-case predictions said 60,000 would die if NOLA ever flooded. 1000 died.
The fact is, there is nothing Bush could have done to make you happy with Katrina.
And of course, in the aftermath, we have a Dem-controlled government. They propose the measures to Bush, and Bush signs or vetos. So if you are unhappy with Katrina response in teh week following the emergency, why don't you cite the particular plans to help Katrina that Bush has vetoed. Otehrwise, blame congress. And in a way, you need to blame the region (leaders, citizens, businesses). There have been other areas just as powerfully decimated, and 3 years later they were back in business.
All of this comes from the book "Disaster: Hurricane Katrina the the failure of Homeland Security" by Chris Cooper and Rob Block.
Does he even know about the man-made disaster in New Orleans that was The Federal Flood?!! What has he said about that issue? Never again would mean that the US would 'cowboy up' and get to work rebuilding this great City of New Orleans and the other adjacent areas in Parishes affected by man-made failure with more urgency . Has McCain addressed this distinction? Will he?
I am just one New Orleanian, of many, wondering about whether Senators McCain, Obama and Clinton know this and how they plan to respond to the fact of The Federal Flood. Will Governor Jindal pull McCain aside today and advise Senator McCain of what really caused, and is causing, the damage here? Never again would mean that greater efforts would be made to address the housing, mental-health and crime issues that are at crisis levels and happening now. Never again would mean that we would stop the bleeding in this wonderful, but damaged city.
McCain and Obama should step up and agree to the proposed You-Tube/Google forum in New Orleans on September 18, 2008. New Orleanians and the citizens of this great country have done much to rebuild New Orleans. How will the Senators propose to aid this effort if elected to be President?
If there is going to be a city there, an analysis needs to be made of the river flow, the storm protection issues, optimal sedimentary disposition. Rebuilding the whole damn city is just as stupid as building all of those properties on the ocean fronts in hurricane zones and expecting the taxpayers to rebuild them every time a storm wipes them out. Some parts of Nawlins MUST be sacrificed and I don't care if its Bourbon Street and the French Quarter.
This is just a huge waste of money and when you couple in the probably 50% that will go to line the pockets of the corrupt scum that make up every level of government in that part of the country it will accomplish nothing...other than being another public rip-off boondoggle like Iraq, the Gulf Coast properties, the World Trade Center, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Scum? I know it when I see it.
How is New Orleans a greater "abomination" against nature than a city like Phoenix?
The entire watershed? ...40% of the contiguous USA? ...parts of 31 states? ...all screwed?
The City is not sinking because we stopped letting the river flow through it. Unless you mean we stopped letting it flow down Canal Street. In the simplest possible terms, it's sinking because we are removing water from the sponge. We are drawing the groundwater out of the soil, the soil voids collapse and the entire soil column shrinks.
A couple hundred years ago, much of the city was swamp. I don't know what point you're making, or why it matters.
The River has not entered the City since 1849. Even the flood of 1927 subsided due to levee breaks elsewhere without flooding New Orleans. A few of the protected areas have been flooded by the River of the Gulf on occasion, but never so much of the CIty. Some areas had never been flooded before. Most of the flooding have been due to the Rain.
How would sacrificing some parts of the City, particularly the French Quarter have any affect on future flooding? The reason taxpayers in New Orleans expect taxpayers elsewhere to help them out is because of how much the Corps botched the job.
To which corrupt scum do you refer? From here, the most corrupt and scummiest seem to report for work in the White House.
New Orleans flooded because, in spite of warnings, plans and work in progress, Bush deeply cut money to rebuild & repair the levees, not once, but three times, so his rich friends can have a tax break.
Bush’s first budget introduced in February 2001 gave only half of what his own administration officials said was necessary to sustain the critical Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Project (SELA).
February 2002. This budget with a $390 million cut to the Army Corps. The administration provided just $5 million for maintaining and upgrading critical hurricane protection levees in New Orleans—one fifth of what government experts and Republican elected officials in Louisiana told the administration was needed. Likewise, the administration had been informed that SELA needed $80 million to keep its work moving at full speed, but the White House only proposed providing a quarter of that.
February 2, 2004. Bush released a budget with another massive cut. the SELA project needed $100 million to strengthen the levees, but the Bush administration offered $16.5 million. The ACOE needed $27 million to pay for hurricane protection upgrades around Lake Pontchartrain—but the White House pared that back to $3.9 million. This cut stopped work on the levee areas that gave way.
And hey, look, it's Hillary that was working on this legislation. And hey, look, this was April of 2005.
The adminstiration doesn't tell the corps what to work on. The corps tells the administration what is most important. The corps is given almost $20B each year--every year.. If the corps only spent $5M on the levees, do you really think that is Bush's fault?
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DEFDE133EF930A25757C0A9639C8B63
This is were the out poor of the American People gets lost in your reach for dependence of the Federal Government!
The Federal government is and has been responsible for building and maintaining the levees in New Orleans (not just in LA but in many places all across the country) and there is no one to blame but the Federal government. The Feds and the Corp of Engineers LITERALLY destroyed New Orleans. This is not an opinion this is a fact.
This is why we desperately need a 8/29 commission. We need to get the facts out to the American people.
Plus ask yourself, would you of stayed in the 9th ward if a cat 5 hurricane was coming: no
Also Housing Projects are also federally administrated home of the 1980 Crack Wars in many American Cities
Mostly, what was left in New Orleans were the poor who did not have the money to leave. If it makes you feel better you can make them the scapegoat, but it was the Federal Governments "lack of zeal" that murdered the people of New Orleans and destroyed the city. Those are provable facts.
The State and local government will not win awards, but changing the subject will not work. Not now not ever...
Really??? It takes money to get up and leave???
Trust me it doesn't...
Watch.......
I just left, walked down to get my paper and walked back to finish this post.
Guess what?? It didn't cost me a penny!!
I live in Florida. Evac routes plainly marked, as I am sure they are in LA... If there was a hurricane that was the threat that Katrina was, you can bet that I wouldn't let a little thing like no money stop me from getting the hell outta dodge..
But then again, I am not the type who expects the government to do everything for me, up to and including wiping my arse..
But that's probably just me...
Michale...
We MUST demand a 8/29 Investigation of what happened, but more importantly of what NEEDS to be done to protect American citizens from another MAN MADE DISASTER.
God Bess New Orleans.
And John McCain has the audacity to stand (was it today or yesterday?) in New Orleans and tout the virtues of "small government"!!!!! Amazingly, I heard applause in response. Do you think the clappers were imports from outside the city?
I think Jinadl bought those people with him from Baton Rouge. It looked like he was running for Mayor of Kenner rather than President.
"A bit too much f***ing perspective," to quote David St. Hubbins.
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