Today's Washington Post and New York Times pause in the media's obsession with FEMA to return to the source of the problem that plagued New Orleans in the wake of Katrina: why the floodwall on the 17th St. Canal failed. Oddly, the Times, which front-pages a story of "design flaws" in the wall and a National Science Foundation inquiry into its failure, doesn't mention the comments of Ivor van Heerden of LSU's Hurricane Center that is at the center of the Post story:
... with the help of complex computer models and stark visual evidence, scientists and engineers at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center have concluded that Katrina's surges did not come close to overtopping those barriers. That would make faulty design, inadequate construction or some combination of the two the likely cause of the breaching of the floodwalls along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals -- and the flooding of most of New Orleans.
Neither article touches on why the Corps was still filling sandbags on the Wednesday after Katrina's landfall, if sandbags were the primary idea for filling the breach in the floodwall.
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