The Levee Breaches and the Response to the Breaches: A Detailed Analysis

These two issues are incredibly important stories that have largely been ignored by the mainstream press.

Gee, I wonder why?

Because these are two important articles, I am copying them whole. I apologize for the length, but they are worth the read. Another reason for copying them whole is that these stories do not exist as single articles but are lumped together with many other articles on one huge page.

The first article is about the response to the flooding, the second article is what caused the levee breaches.

Alarm sounded too late as N.O. swamped
Slow response left city. in lurch

By John McQuaid
Staff writer

Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans with a double blow when it made landfall Aug. 29. First, storm surge waters from the east rapidly swamped St. Bernard Parish and eastern New Orleans before the eye of the storm had passed the city about 9 a.m. Within hours, surge waters collapsed city canal floodwalls and began to "fill the bowl," while top officials continued to operate for a full day under the mistaken belief that the danger had passed.

A rough reconstruction of the flooding based on anecdotal accounts, interviews and computer modeling shows that the huge scale of the overlapping floods - one fast, one slow - should have been clear to some officials by mid-afternoon Monday, when city representatives confirmed that the 17th Street Canal floodwall had been breached.

At that point areas to the east were submerged from the earlier flooding, trapping thousands, while gradually rising waters stretched from the Lakefront across to Mid-City and almost to the Central Business District.

Federal officials have referred to the levee breaches as a separate and much later event from the flooding to the east, and said that they were unaware of the gravity of the problem until Tuesday, suggesting valuable response time was lost.

"It was midday Tuesday that I became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the (17th Street Canal) gap and that essentially the lake was going to start to drain into the city. I think that second catastrophe really caught everybody by surprise," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Sunday, adding that he thought the breach had occurred Monday night or Tuesday morning. By that time, flooding from at least one of the two breached canals already had been under way all day Monday, evidence shows.

Oy. Pathetic. How could he be so misinformed?

Even on Tuesday, as still-rising waters covered most of New Orleans, FEMA official Bill Lokey sounded a reassuring note in a Baton Rouge briefing.

"I don't want to alarm everybody that, you know, New Orleans is filling up like a bowl," Lokey said. "That's just not happening."

Simply outrageous! Was he lying or clueless?

Once a levee or floodwall is breached by a hurricane storm surge, engineers say, it often widens and cannot quickly be sealed. Storm surge waters in Lake Pontchartrain may take a day or more to subside, so they keep pouring into the city - most of which lies below sea level - until the levels inside and outside the levee are equal.

Experts familiar with the hurricane risks in the New Orleans area said they were stunned that no one had conveyed the information about the breaches or made clear to upper-level officials the grave risk they posed, or made an effort to warn residents about the threat after storm winds subsided Monday afternoon.

"I'm shocked. I don't understand why the response wasn't instantaneous," said Louisiana State University geology professor Greg Stone, who studies coastal storm surge dynamics.

Exactly. This is very fishy that the response was so delayed. Can you say "let it happen on purpose"?

"They should have been monitoring this and informed people all the way to the top, (and) then they should have warned people," said Ivor Van Heerden, who uses computer models at the LSU Hurricane Center to study storm surges and provided officials in the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness headquarters with data indicating the potential for flooding that could result from Katrina.

The storm approached the coast early Monday, the easterly winds from its northern quadrant pumping a rising surge into the marshy Lake Borgne area east of St. Bernard. There, two hurricane levees come together into a large V-shape. Storm surge researchers say that point acts as a giant funnel: Water pouring into the confined area rises up - perhaps as much as 20 feet in this case - and is funneled between the levees all the way into New Orleans.

The water likely topped the levees along the north side adjacent to eastern New Orleans, which average only 14 or 15 feet, according to the Army Corps of Engineers' New Orleans project manager Al Naomi.

The surge reached the Industrial Canal before dawn and quickly overflowed on both sides, the canal lockmaster reported to the Corps. At some point not long afterward, Corps officials believe a barge broke loose and crashed through the floodwall, opening a breach that accelerated flooding into the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish.

Okay-- why the fuck wasn't the barge secured better? Shouldn't they have taken better precautions knowing a major storm was coming? Moreover, they mention the lockmaster, indicating the canal had locks. Were the locks closed before the storm?

The floodwaters moved quickly.

By around 8 a.m., authorities reported rising water on both sides of the Industrial Canal, in St. Bernard and eastern New Orleans. The Coast Guard reported sighting residents on rooftops in the Upper Ninth Ward. "Water is inundating everywhere," in St. Bernard, Parish Council Chairman Joey DiFatta said.

At 9 a.m., there was 6 to 8 feet of water in the Lower 9th Ward, state officials said. Less than two hours later, most of St. Bernard was a lake 10 feet deep. "We know people were up in the attics hollering for help," state Sen. Walter Boasso, R-Arabi, said that morning. By 11 a.m., water was covering Interstate 10 at a low point near the high-rise over the Industrial Canal.

Sometime Monday morning, the 17th Street Canal levee burst when storm surge waters pressed against it and possibly topped it, Corps officials said. Col. Richard P. Wagenaar, the corps's site commander at 17th Street, told The Washington Post that a police officer called him Monday morning to tell him about it. He told the Post he couldn't get to the site.

So what EXACTLY was the Corps doing that day? Their response is reminiscent of the NORAD response on 9/11.

Naomi said he thinks the breach occurred in the mid- or late-morning after the hurricane's eye had passed east of the city. By that time, north winds would have pushed storm surge water in Lake Pontchartrain south against the hurricane levees and into the canals. Then the wind shifted to the west.

"As I remember it the worst of the storm had passed when we got word the floodwall had collapsed," he said. "It could have been when we were experiencing westerly winds in the aftermath of the storm, which would have been pushing water against it."

Naomi and other Corps officials say they think the water in the canal topped the levee on the Orleans Parish side, weakening its structure on the interior side and causing its collapse. However, Van Heerden said he does not believe the water was high enough in the lake to top the 14-foot wall and that the pressure caused a "catastrophic structural failure."

Why the disagreement over whether the canal topped? "catastrophic structural failure"? Where have I heard that before?

It's unclear when floodwalls in the London Avenue canal were breached, but Naomi said it may have been about the same time.

Once the floodwalls failed, water - then at about 8 feet or higher in the lake - began to pour into New Orleans from the west, beginning the full-scale nightmare emergency managers and other officials most feared. At 10 a.m., reporters from The Times-Picayune saw water rising over I-10 where it dips beneath the railway trestle south and east of the canal.

So the levees must have been breached shortly before this?

Naomi said that he thinks Corps officials had communicated the information about the breaches to the Baton Rouge Office of Emergency Preparedness.

Well they damn well should have!

"It was disseminated. It went to our OEP in Baton Rouge, to the state, FEMA, the Corps," Naomi said. "The people in the field knew it. The people here (in Corps offices) in Louisiana and Mississippi knew it. I don't know how communication worked in those agencies."

Officials at the OEP could not be reached for comment. New Orleans officials were also aware of the 17th Street Canal breach and publicly confirmed it at 2 p.m.

Why the over 4 hour delay beforte confirming?

Around the same time, The Times-Picayune reported 4 feet of water in one Lakeview neighborhood.

An hour later, Terry Ebbert, head of New Orleans' emergency operations, listed Treme and Lakeview as among the areas hardest hit by the flooding. Ebbert said there would be casualties because many people were calling emergency workers saying they were trapped on rooftops, in trees and attics. In some cases, he said, authorities lost contact with people pleading for help.

As the day wore on, the flood crept east and south and made its way across the city, penetrating neighborhood after neighborhood.

At 3 p.m. Times-Picayune reporters found it was knee-deep under the Jefferson Davis overpass near Xavier University. A Mid-City couple stranded there said their home was surrounded by 5 feet of water. An hour later, the I-10 dip under the railroad overpass was under 15 feet of water.

George Saucier, the CEO of Lindy Boggs Medical Center south of City Park, told The Times-Picayune that water from the 17th Street breach had flowed into Bayou St. John and overflowed its banks, then followed streets like sluices on its way south, where it was starting to flood the hospital's basement.

By late afternoon, people stranded on I-10 near the Industrial Canal could see residents on rooftops stretching across Lower 9th Ward.

As night fell Monday, many outside of New Orleans breathed a sigh of relief believing the city had been largely spared the worse.

Why??? And why weren't the breaches patched up immediately?

But thousands were stranded from the Lower Ninth Ward, across St. Bernard and south to the east bank of Plaquemines Parish. And waters continued to rise overnight throughout central New Orleans. By dawn, they stretched all the way from east to west and into Uptown, and were coursing through the Central Business District. As TV helicopters flew over the city and beamed out pictures of the flooding, the extent of the catastrophe was clear.

That flooding would complicate evacuation efforts in New Orleans for days.

Part two, the breaches:

Corps trying to find reasons for collapse
Barge may have caused breach in floodwall

By John McQuaid
Washington bureau

WASHINGTON - A loose barge may have caused a large breach in the east side of the Industrial Canal floodwall that accelerated Hurricane Katrina's rising floodwaters in the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish, Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi said Monday.

Who owned the barge and why wasn't it secured better?????

Naomi said the barge was found on the land side of the floodwall, leading corps officials to believe it could have crashed through the wall and sent a huge amount of water - which was already pouring over the top of the wall - into the neighborhoods immediately downriver.

"We have some pictures that show this very large barge inside the protected area. It had to go through the breach," Naomi said. "The opening is a little bit wider than the barge itself. One would think it's the barge that did it."

Reminiscient of the hole in the Pentagon argument.

If it did strike the floodwall, Naomi said, the barge would have "precipitated a tremendous collapse" that would have quickly flooded the Lower Ninth Ward and then St. Bernard Parish. The breach is "ultimately in my opinion what got (St. Bernard) Parish flooded," Naomi said.

They seem top be implying that a hole knocked in the wall by the barge would cause a huge collapse bigger than the initial damage by the barge. But was there was a "tremendous" collapse or was the hole just slightly bigger than the barge?

There are two large breaks in the floodwall, said Ivor Van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, who did an aerial survey of flood damage Sunday. The larger of the two, possibly caused by the barge, is about 800 feet long. The second is 500 feet.

An 800 foot breach caused by a barge? How long is the barge? I thought the opening was just wider than the barge. Is the barge 800 feet long? And what caused the second breach???

The areas adjacent to the Industrial Canal were among the first to flood Monday morning. Katrina's storm surge pumped water from the east into a V-shaped area between St. Bernard and eastern New Orleans hurricane protection levees, then funneled it up the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway into the Industrial Canal.

There the water spilled over the levee, flooding eastern New Orleans, and overtopping the Industrial Canal walls before the floodwall was breached, Naomi said. The Corps got a report from the Industrial Canal's lock master before dawn that water was pouring over both sides of the waterway. Reports from people in the area at the time indicate that the flood waters rose very quickly starting around 8 a.m.

Naomi also said it's too soon to tell how the 17th Street Canal and London Avenue Canal levees were breached, causing the catastrophic flooding in New Orleans.

So THESE are the key collapses.

Corps officials have said the levees - concrete walls rising out of a low concrete and earthen base - probably collapsed after water flowed over them and scoured the interior side, weakening the structure.

This was the official story intially (NPR had a piece on this).

But some data indicate Katrina's storm surge may have been too low in that part of Lake Pontchartrain to overtop the levees, researchers say.

Nothing to see here folks, move along, move along.

Van Heerden said that preliminary data indicated the storm surge along the west side of Lake Pontchartrain and along the causeway reached about 8.5 feet. The levee heights in the canals are about 14 feet.

Joannes Westerink, a hydrologic engineer at the University of Notre Dame who is working on a computer model of Katrina's flooding of New Orleans, agreed the storm surge in the lake was weaker than expected and may not have been high enough to top the levees.

"I would doubt it too," Westerink said of the overtopping scenario. He said that typically a storm surge has wave action on top of it that accounts for 2 feet, then wave crests can reach higher, although waves tend to be small in a canal.

"A very wild guess, I'd say you've got a couple of feet over the surge, so that's 11 feet. That would not be enough to top it," he said.

Yep. nothing to see here folks, move along, move along.

Westerink cautioned that he didn't know enough about the specifics of the storm surge in that area, wind velocities or other factors to be definitive.

Oh, well that's a relief, isn't it? Wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea here.

Naomi said Corps officials believe Katrina's winds, coming from the north as the eye moved east of New Orleans, probably caused a buildup of surge along the lakefront and in the canals not recorded at gauges in the center or west of the lake. Then as the hurricane moved north and the winds shifted to the west, they put pressure on the levee walls and led to the collapse. The breaches occurred on the eastern sides of both the 17th Street and London Avenue canals.

There was some evidence of scouring on the eastern side of the 17th Street canal breach, he said, one factor in the Corps theory that the levees were topped.

But Naomi said no one knows what caused the levees to fail and that it might have been a structural flaw.

No one knows would seem to be the key point here.

"I don't think it is necessarily a design issue. There's miles and miles of other floodwall that did not collapse," he said. "There may be some localized issue maybe in a foundation that caused the problem, (something) that we were not aware of. There will be an autopsy. We may find one reason for one canal, another reason for another canal. Just because they both broke doesn't mean it was the same reason. It could be three or four different reasons that all produced the same result."

Of curse, no one mentions the possibility of sabotage.

Naomi said that there were small pontoon barges in the 17th Street canal to the north of the Hammond Highway Bridge. They are still unaccounted for. There were no barges in the London Avenue canal. He discounted the possibility that one or more of them could have caused the 17th Street canal breach.

"The barges were used mainly as a platform for workers to stand on," he said. "Some of them are not much bigger than a couple of desks put together. It would depend on the velocity . . . But it would be very difficult for those barges to get to that location. It's possible, but I don't think so."

Leonardo Ramirez, a construction worker and Metairie resident who lives on the Jefferson Parish side of the levee near the breached area, said that he thought he heard a barge hitting the levee early Monday, although he did not see it happen. "At quarter to six in the morning, we heard a huge bang, and then we heard another," he said. "It was so loud. It scared us."

It couldn't have been an explosion, could it have? Would a small pontoon barge make such a loud bang? Certainly, a concrete wall simply breaking from water pressure shouldn't make a large bang! A cracking noise perhaps, but a bang?

Note one, here is what the New York Times had to say about this over a week ago. That article had nothing about the barge or the fact that the storm surge didn't top the levee wall. They did note that the part that blew on the 17th street levee was recently renovated. Oddly, the NOLA.com article says nothing about this.

Note two, here is a story suggesting the levees WERE blown.

There are three critical issues here:
1) what caused the levees to blow (was it really the storm?)?
2) why was the response to the blown levees so sluggish and why was there no attempt early on to repair the breaches before the flooding got too bad?
3) would someone benefit from the levees being blown and NOLA flooding?

Conclusions:
1) it is not quite clear that the levees went out from the storm. One levee may have gotten blown by a unmoored barge (was it left there intentionally?). It is not at all clear why the key 17th street levee went out. There are plenty of rumors that explosives were used (see note two above).
2) there is NO explanation for this at all yet, and this seems to be such a crtitical point. Very suspicious.
3) there are more and more reasons to think that certain "elites" wanted the poor black neighborhoods in NOLA to flood, in order to clean out the residents and allow complete rebuilding. Lots and lots of money is going to be used to rebuild NOLA, fortunes will be made. Who suffers in all this? The poor people of NOLA who lost their homes and all their possessions, at least for now. The people who have lost loved ones in the flooding. The insurance companies in the short-term and insurees in the long-term. Taxpayers at every level (but of course taxes hit poor and middle class the worst). Who benefits? The rich, as usual. Bush cronies.

Bush will take a hit to his reputation, but that is really his and his handlers fault.

I don't buy the FEMA incompetence/miscommunication excuse for a single second.

Bottom line is that the catastrophic flooding in New Orleans stinks to high heaven. There is MUCH more going on here than a natural disaster.