Finding the Devil in New Orleans

[xoxoxoBruce]

Robertson doesn't speak for any real Christians.
My boss is in the Air Force Reserve. He's been called up to go to New Orleans.....next Tuesday afternoon.

[Undertoad]

Just want to make sure tw didn't miss my two engineering-folks links in the other NO thread

Engineering News-Record article on Thursday

2003 Civil Engineering Magazine article

[Undertoad]

In a letter on fark.com, a New Orleans farker (who weathered the storm OK) posted a long message. He noted that they learned on the day of the hurricane that some neighborhoods were flooding... not due to levee breaks, but because the pumps in those neighborhoods were NOT RUNNING.

The pump operators evacuated.

The pumps could not be operated unmanned, because they would overheat.

Just another data point in tw's search for "design for failure".

[Undertoad]

Same thing, nola.com article via fark:

KATRINA PUTS END TO LULL
STORM'S WESTWARD PATH PUTS N.O. ON EDGE
Saturday, August 27, 2005
By Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer
Hurricane Katrina gained strength and took aim at the Gulf Coast on Friday night, with a path forecast to hit southeast Louisiana on Monday as a Category 4 storm with top winds of 132 mph.

National Hurricane Center forecasters were predicting landfall in lower Plaquemines Parish.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco declared a state of emergency late Friday, making it easier to implement emergency procedures, including evacuations, if necessary.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said he will make a decision about evacuations and other emergency procedures today about noon.

According to the farker who posted this, Nagin's actual decision came 24 hours later.

On Friday night, Nagin said he was alarmed about the storm's potential path and the lack of time to fully prepare for such a large storm.

"This storm really scares me," he said. He said city officials would not be able to make a decision about evacuations and other emergency measures until today, giving residents scant time to prepare. The state plan calls for evacuation plans to be put in place 50 hours before a storm hits. "That's why I'm trying to stress to everyone now to get prepared," Nagin said.

As the category 4 hurricane bears down on the city, the Mayor's alarm is still focused on bureaucracy. The actual evac order came with less than 50 hours to get out.

J'accuse.

[tw]

xoxoxoBruce also provided this link to a Scientific American article of October 2001:
Drowning New Orleans

The SciAm article added one additional fact. A storm surge is reduced about one foot for every mile of marshland. Wide marshland between a city and the ocean is essential to the preservation of human life during such storms. The article makes it clear how much of that marshland around New Orleans has been lost and how fast it is disappearing. None of these articles provides sufficient information to make judgments on what is and is not a good solution. But they do provide executive summaries of many possible solutions. Solutions do exist. They are expensive or we could let nature do more of the work.

For New Orleans to survive, the protection must be layers including more than one line of levees. Is it worth it? Free market economics more than government welfare should be the determining factor.

A problem with New Orleans is that it will only keep sinking. It’s the nature of that geology. Makes no sense to keep rebuilding in land that is already 10 and 14 feet below sea level and will only keep sinking. Literally everything in those sections must be razed and rebuilt. Rebuilding there only guarantees loss of life. Land where the buildings would stay mostly above the next flood are the sections of New Orleans to be preserved - if logic thought is the determining factor. Most of that land is on the Mississippi River side including the French Quarter, Superdome, etc. Most of New Orleans and Jefferson parish on the Lake Pontchartrain side should be surrendered to marshland. Or now that the land is so deep, maybe it could only be lake.

All of which only asks questions months from now. The real question is why so many died at the hands of the US government; well after the storm had passed. Four days for the 400 trucks of food and water to arrive? That is nothing more than criminal neglect.

[wolf]

They rebuild every single goddamn year up along the Delaware where it always floods in Bucks County. They finish construction just in time to be wiped out in the next year's floods. I have every reason to expect that the New Orleans experience will be quite similar.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

In a letter on fark.com, a New Orleans farker (who weathered the storm OK) posted a long message. He noted that they learned on the day of the hurricane that some neighborhoods were flooding... not due to levee breaks, but because the pumps in those neighborhoods were NOT RUNNING.

The pump operators evacuated.

The pumps could not be operated unmanned, because they would overheat.

Just another data point in tw's search for "design for failure".

Why do I have an image of Homer Simpson's toy bird tapping his keyboard?

[tw]

This is classic when MBAs run operations. This is what happens when top management does not come from where the work gets done AND when his boss is a classic MBA:

from the NY Times of 5 September 2005
After Failures, Government Officials Play Blame Game
"Why did it happen? Who needs to be fired?" asked Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, south of New Orleans.

Far from deferring to state or local officials, FEMA asserted its authority and made things worse, Mr. Broussard complained on "Meet the Press."

When Wal-Mart sent three trailer trucks loaded with water, FEMA officials turned them away, he said. Agency workers prevented the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and on Saturday they cut the parish's emergency communications line, leading the sheriff to restore it and post armed guards to protect it from FEMA, Mr. Broussard said.

...
Ms. Bottcher was one of several officials yesterday who said she believed FEMA had interfered with the delivery of aid, including offers from the mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, and the governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson.

Adam Sharp, a spokesman for Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, said the problem was not who was in command. FEMA repeatedly held up assistance that could have been critical, he said.

"FEMA has just been very slow to make these decisions," Mr. Sharp said.

In a clear slap at Mr. Chertoff and the FEMA director, Michael D. Brown, Governor Blanco announced Saturday that she had hired James Lee Witt, the director of FEMA during the Clinton administration, to advise her on the recovery.

Nearly every emergency worker told agonizing stories of communications failures, some of them most likely fatal to victims. Police officers called Senator Landrieu's Washington office because they could not reach commanders on the ground in New Orleans, Mr. Sharp said.

Dr. Ross Judice, chief medical officer for a large ambulance company, recounted how on Tuesday, unable to find out when helicopters would land to pick up critically ill patients at the Superdome, he walked outside and discovered that two helicopters, donated by an oil services company, had been waiting in the parking lot.

I am not posting these details for American cellar dwellers. If they don't understand how bad this president really is by now, then they clearly would praise the devil. Only a fool or the naive, at this point, would be the 50% of Americans who feel this president did a good job. These posts are mostly for the benefit of those outside the US who really don't receive these details. That Nightline interview is repeatedly cited for those who did not see Ted Koppel grill Michael Brown, Director of FEMA, and a political hack of George Jr, mental midget president.

After three days of no water, then people start dying. FEMA provided no food and water to tens of thousands in the Superdome and Convention Center for four days. No wonder this same president also did not bother to go after bin Laden. And yet about 50% of Americans still think the mental midget is doing a good job. Those outside of America really need to understand what is going on in this country. Worry about the extremism that has so distorted perception.

Mr. Chertoff said he recognized that the local government's capacity to respond to the disaster was severely compromised by the hurricane and flood.

"What happened here was that essentially, the demolishment of that state and local infrastructure, and I think that really caused the cascading series of breakdowns," he said.

But Mayor Nagin said the root of the breakdown was the failure of the federal government to deliver relief supplies and personnel quickly.

"They kept promising and saying things would happen," he said. "I was getting excited and telling people that. They kept making promises and promises."

One promotes spin that is so effective. The second talks about the product - bottom line - the purpose of a responsible government response that did not happen.

The George Jr administration knows aid is not most important. Be best at spin. Same spin that lies about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Same spin that should even have citizen of China worried for their security. Same spin that justified an illegal Pearl Harbor attack on a sovereign nation - and 70% of Americans said it was good.

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

The pumps could not be operated unmanned, because they would overheat.

Not true.

If the pumps were not running, it has nothing to do with them being unmanned or "overheating", according to my friend currently staying with me who lives in NO and works on the pumps. It is most likely a power issue, more than anything.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

If the pumps were not running, it has nothing to do with them being unmanned or "overheating", according to my friend currently staying with me who lives in NO and works on the pumps. It is most likely a power issue, more than anything.

Kitsune's post is also what I had been hearing from other sources. But I did not respond. I did not have sufficient supporting information to post a reply.

One rumor is that the electrical supply was not installed to survive a storm. Since the Corp of Engineers was so cost controlled, their 'cost controlled' design was forced to fall back on a backup system - local generators. However I also heard funds had not been provided to maintain those generators. Some did not function.

These are rumors which is why I did not post them. What I have posted here is rumors to demonstrate what should not be posted as fact until better information is obtained.

Meanwhile, it does not matter. There were not enough pumps anyway. In a previous storm of only 5 inches rain, the pumps could not keep up. No way would pumps handle rain from a category 4 hurricane and some small levee breaches.

[Kitsune]

One rumor is that the electrical supply was not installed to survive a storm.

My friend confirms this, saying many of the pumps that aren't running do not have backup power. He notes that most of them have underground power or generators that run on natural gas, but those that do have generators don't have enough generator power to run all the pumps at any given station. While watching CNN coverage, he was able to point out many of the pumps in the overhead footage and show that many of them are still running -- CNN even pointed out generator smoke and outflow from some of them pumping stations.

There were not enough pumps anyway.

More importantly, it doesn't matter when a levee breaks and the water that is pumped out comes right back in.

[busterb]

I'm alive and well. No power or phone, most of roofing gone. Think when the service was ripped from house, 110 went to ground and toasted phones and all things that were pluged in. See "ya" soon? BB

Oh, Busterb! You're alive YEA!!!!!!!! I'm so sorry about your roof! How are you getting online? Is there any way we can help you out??

YEA! I'm so glad you're OK!

[wolf]

Yay buster!! Hope things get put back together for you right quick!

[xoxoxoBruce]

That's a big relief.