HumidCity

Remember the promises to rebuild infrastructure, promises that three years later remain unfulfilled.

Remember us in your thoughts as Gustav and Hanna approach.

7AM CDT — KATRINA MAKES LANDFALL AS A CATEGORY 4 HURRICANE [CNN]

7:30 AM CDT — BUSH ADMINISTRATION NOTIFIED OF THE LEVEE BREACH: The administration finds out that a levee in New Orleans was breached. On this day, 28 “government agencies, from local Louisiana parishes to the White House, [reported that] that New Orleans levees” were breached. [AP]

8AM CDT — MAYOR NAGIN REPORTS THAT WATER IS FLOWING OVER LEVEE: “I’ve gotten reports this morning that there is already water coming over some of the levee systems. In the lower ninth ward, we’ve had one of our pumping stations to stop operating, so we will have significant flooding, it is just a matter of how much.” [NBC’s “Today Show”]

11:13 AM CDT - WHITE HOUSE CIRCULATES INTERNAL MEMO ABOUT LEVEE BREACH: “Flooding is significant throughout the region and a levee in New Orleans has reportedly been breached sending 6-8 feet of water throughout the 9th ward area of the city.” [AP]

MORNING — BROWN WARNS BUSH ABOUT THE POTENTIAL DEVASTATION OF KATRINA: In a briefing, Brown warned Bush, “This is, to put it mildly, the big one, I think.” He also voiced concerns that the government may not have the capacity to “respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe” and that the Superdome was ill-equipped to be a refuge of last resort. [AP]

MORNING — MAYFIELD WARNS BUSH ABOUT THE TOPPING OF THE LEVEES: In the same briefing, Max Mayfield, National Hurricane Center Director, warns, “This is a category 5 hurricane, very similar to Hurricane Andrew in the maximum intensity, but there’s a big big difference. This hurricane is much larger than Andrew ever was. I also want to make absolutely clear to everyone that the greatest potential for large loss of lives is still in the coastal areas from the storm surge. … I don’t think anyone can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not, but there’s obviously a very very grave concern.” [AP]

MORNING — BUSH CALLS SECRETARY CHERTOFF TO DISCUSS IMMIGRATION: “I spoke to Mike Chertoff today — he’s the head of the Department of Homeland Security. I knew people would want me to discuss this issue [immigration], so we got us an airplane on — a telephone on Air Force One, so I called him. I said, are you working with the governor? He said, you bet we are.” [White House]

MORNING — BUSH SHARES BIRTHDAY CAKE PHOTO-OP WITH SEN. JOHN MCCAIN [White House]

11AM CDT — MICHAEL BROWN FINALLY REQUESTS THAT DHS DISPATCH 1,000 EMPLOYEES TO REGION, GIVES THEM TWO DAYS TO ARRIVE: “Brown’s memo to Chertoff described Katrina as ‘this near catastrophic event’ but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, ‘Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities.’” [AP]

LATE MORNING — LEVEE BREACHED: “A large section of the vital 17th Street Canal levee, where it connects to the brand new ‘hurricane proof’ Old Hammond Highway bridge, gave way late Monday morning in Bucktown after Katrina’s fiercest winds were well north.” [Times-Picayune]

11AM CDT — BUSH VISITS ARIZONA RESORT TO PROMOTE MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “This new bill I signed says, if you’re a senior and you like the way things are today, you’re in good shape, don’t change. But, by the way, there’s a lot of different options for you. And we’re here to talk about what that means to our seniors.” [White House]

4:30PM CDT — BUSH TRAVELS TO CALIFORNIA SENIOR CENTER TO DISCUSS MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “We’ve got some folks up here who are concerned about their Social Security or Medicare. Joan Geist is with us. … I could tell — she was looking at me when I first walked in the room to meet her, she was wondering whether or not old George W. is going to take away her Social Security check.” [White House]

8PM CDT — RUMSFELD ATTENDS SAN DIEGO PADRES BASEBALL GAME: Rumsfeld “joined Padres President John Moores in the owner’s box…at Petco Park.” [Editor & Publisher]

8PM CDT — GOV. BLANCO AGAIN REQUESTS ASSISTANCE FROM BUSH: “Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you’ve got.” [Newsweek]

LATE PM — BUSH GOES TO BED WITHOUT ACTING ON BLANCO’S REQUESTS [Newsweek]

To see the full Think Progress Katrina Timeline, click here.

The video shows why we all need the 8/29 Investigation - a truly independent and complete analysis of the Katrina levee failures on August 29, 2005. Best if done by NOON THURSDAY JUNE 5.

Help launch Levees.Org to the top of the YouTube charts!

Want to do more? You can also:

1. Register at YouTube and rate the video.

2. View and rate our other videos on YouTube.

Help spread the word. Help show why New Orleans and people nationwide deserve the 8/29 Investigation. We have shown that the levee study done by the government is flawed and controversial. We also know that the review done by the ASCE was shoddy and biased.

-Loki, HumidCity Founder

Once more HumidCity is proud to syndicate the emails of engineer Matt McBride, the man who formerly helmed Fix The Pumps.

Dear New Orleanians,

Apparently the Corps New Orleans District is trying to allay fears about leaks through their levees, according to a press conference held today.

“‘We want to put to rest the concerns with seepage,’ Durham-Aguilera said…’We are talking about a way of working collaboratively with the levee authority to decide how to implement peer review, whether to use individuals from academia or a think tank.’”

One of the best ways to do that would be to force the public release of the final report on the London Avenue canal load test, held last summer. That report has already been through independent peer review.

The report’s release�has been delayed repeatedly since at least March of this year. At the May 15th�East Bank Levee Authority meeting, a member of the�Authority asked about the report, and was told by Colonel Bedey it would be out by June 1, which is three days away. Is the Corps holding the report back? Probably so.

The report undoubtedly contains a great deal of information about seepage in existing floodwalls, as that’s what the load test was all about. Getting it released would definitely shine light on what the Corps currently knows about�leaks through levees and floodwalls, much more so than a press conference and vague promises of future reviews. They’ve already got the information, so why not put it out there?

Matt

This post is dedicated to all of the soulless cretins who denigrated my neighbors and I for moving back to New Orleans. This ones for you!

Most of America has “Katrina Fatigue.” They’re sick of hearing about the minor issues that have displaced half our city. It almost makes me wish I was sadistic enough to revel in this news article, but I’m not and I can’t.

You see the Army Corps of Engineers is not just the source of an overflowing cornucopia of woes for the Crescent City, oh no! Their pernicious incompetence ranges far further than that, at least if you believe….MSNBC:

ST. LOUIS - Across America, earthen flood levees protect big cities and small towns, wealthy suburbs and rich farmland. But the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that oversees levees, lacks an inventory of thousands of them and has no idea of their condition, the corps’ chief levee expert told The Associated Press.

The uncertainty, amid an unusually wet spring that has already caused significant flooding across many states, is creating worry even within the corps.

“We have to get our arms around this issue and understand how many levees there are in the country, who’s watching over them, what populations and properties are behind them,” Eric Halpin, the corps’ special assistant for dam and levee safety, said in an interview last month. “What is the risk posed to the public?”

Critics are troubled that the government doesn’t know the answer.

Its disturbing on a level that New Orleanians are all too familiar with. And it makes me come back to an old mantra of mine I have not voiced in awhile: “We must not let this happen to anyone else.”

If there is a lesson to be learned from the Levee Failure that followed Katrina it is one that has been lost to the members of modern American sound-bite culture. Not everyone, but enough of a percentage that I run across them frequently whenever I travel north and visit anyplace else in the country.
Go read. Especially if you are from somewhere else. Trust me, you do not want to experience what we did in August of 2005.

Really, you don’t.

This content is syndicated from the email by Matt McBride, formerly at the helm of Fix The Pumps. -Loki

Dear New Orleanians,

The Corps has released the preliminary version of their category 5 study:

http://lacpr.usace.army.mil/default.aspx

or the direct link:

http://lacpr.usace.army.mil/default.aspx?p=LACPR_Draft_Technical_Report

They had promised this to the public (after missing their 12/31/07 deadline) on February 8th, as seen here:

http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/pao/Video/WLAE_Col_Lee_080115.wmv

I went and checked on March 7th, and it hadn’t yet appeared on the LaCPR site. But it’s there now.

By the way, the study doesn’t actually make any recommendations. In fact, here’s an excerpt from the end of the report:

“Efforts to date do not point to a single effective risk reduction strategy. No single strategy for comprehensive hurricane damage risk reduction, other than entirely abandoning communities in South Louisiana, will guarantee safety for the population along the coast.”

Basically, what this study has done is just collect all the alternatives, so that more meetings can be held. The Corps has placed a paragraph in the report meant to blunt criticism that the public was expecting recommendations from this report, and there are none (and, yes, I am aware that was reported earlier, but that doesn’t mean that every member of the public in South Louisiana will remember or care about it):

“Congress also directed a technical report rather than a reconnaissance or feasibility report as described by normal USACE policy. The technical report will contain many of the same components as a reconnaissance or feasibility report, such as presenting the results of the formulation and evaluation of alternatives. As outlined by the Congressional direction, the technical report will contain a ‘comprehensive hurricane protection analysis and design…to develop and present a full range of flood control, coastal restoration, and hurricane protection measures…for comprehensive Category 5 protection.’”

Expect to see that argument when people start asking, “why are there no recommendations other than, ‘have more meetings?’”

Matt

FEMA, FEMA, FEMA….

Its like shooting fish in a barrel to take another shot at these guys but sometimes you just have to do it. So lets see, the second Hurricane Season Post Katrina looms and we will be safe this time, right?

WASHINGTON (AP) — FEMA says its new national response plan won’t be ready in time for the June first start of the hurricane season.

Oh. Maybe they just have their hands full in the wake of the Nor’easter that ripped through NY.

“There is no question that these counties need aid right away to begin the recovery from the storms,” Schumer said in a statement. “As the scope of this disaster widens, we need a swift response from FEMA and I will hold FEMA’s feet to the fire to ensure any and all aid flows quickly.” - Sen. Schumer, NY

Hey Schumer, don’t hold your breath! Still, it will be interesting to see how much assistance actually makes it to Westchester County. I hope they do better by them than they did by us. No one deserves treatment like we received and Westchester County was where the wife and I spent our exile after the Storm. If any of our friends in Dobbs Ferry are reading please leave a comment and let us know you are alright!

Hmm… Maybe they have been too busy ensuring that people in the Katrina Zone are fed to get around to it.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Emergency Management Agency Friday more than doubled its estimate of the number of prepared meals lost during the 2006 hurricane season because of storage problems to 13.4 million, up from the 6 million it reported earlier.

Guess not. Puzzling, eh? This year already looks like a doozy, and the Federal Employees Missing Again are looking like they will have a hell of a lot of things to answer for by its end. If, that is, anyone ever holds them or the Corps accountable.

We are four months shy of the two year mark. Almost two years since the failure of the levees that we were told were safe. Almost two years since FEMA was doing a “heckuva job.” Makes you wonder about those trailers just over the MS border, the ones still unused. Makes you wonder a lot of things.

It will be interesting to watch the next few weeks. Either FEMA will step up and take care of the wealthy upper east coast communities the way it should have handled its commitments here OR they will foul up egregiously again and our countrymen elsewhere will get a dose of the joy we have been experiencing here in NOLA. The interesting thing will be seeing what the politicians and mainstream media have to say (spin) about it….

The joy is only starting, after all the Corps of Engineers has classified 122 levees nationwide as at risk.

How many times must we see this rerun?

NEW ORLEANS - Residents whose homes were flooded during Hurricane Katrina can sue the Army Corps of Engineers over claims the agency ignored warnings about defects in a nearby navigation channel, a federal judge ruled Friday.

The ruling, one of the first significant decisions in a set of cases over what caused the flooding, may force the Corps to hand over documents about the management of the channel. (via yahoo news)

I had given up hope for this! The unassailable position of immunity that the Corps(e) has held is finally getting some scrutiny and action!

The Corps and federal government had argued they were immune to legal challenges because decisions about the waterway were based in policy.

But U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval said there is no way to know that at this point, and said plaintiffs should get a hearing for their allegations.

Is that the tiniest flickr of hope I feel begining to ignite? Stanwood Duval is my new hero, one I’m sure will enter our peculiar local pantheon. Now the question is, will the suit have a chance?

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“I am deathly afraid that this vital emergency post-Katrina work is now
being treated like typical Corps projects that take decades to
complete,” Vitter wrote. “We will not recover if this happens.”

-David Vitter

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Hurry, hurry, hurry! Step right up for the Sickest Show on Earth! For the low price of your peace of mind you may see sights unknown to the First World!

In Blue Tarp Tent Number One you can watch the Dancing of the Politicos, an infernally complex arrangement of motions guaranteed to explore every direction except forwards! Watch local salaries for C Ray and his companions in the City Clown Car skyrocket into the stratosphere while nothing gets done! See a total lack of Republicans in the Courthouse Cage Battle! All the while our helpful concessions staff will enhance your enjoyment of the festivities with a steady stream of antidepressants and alcohol!

Meanwhile in Blue Tarp Tent Number Two watch the FEMA comedy act as it informs Americans everywhere that their own levees are the punchline! You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll kiss your ass goodbye! Then we will treat you to a spectacular show as MC Gold releases his uncut track, Just Shoot ‘Em, Who Cares?

These things don’t grab you, my friend? I see you are an entity of discerning tastes. Allow me to redirect you to the center tent, where you can absorb all the New Orleans news and flavor you could ever want! Join the teeming masses in salivating over the biggest press we have gotten yet, the F*CK DA EAGLES GIRL! Scantily clad in her shiny new photospread, this must be the most important thing going on!

So don’t stay stuck in the FEMA Trailer tonight, entertainment abounds! Come on out and see The Sickest Show on Earth tonight!

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Cassandra Syndrome, I feel like I have had it for years now. From my speculation that Iraq was going to become a sociopolitical morass akin to Viet Nam, to my fears about the direction of the New Orleans rebuild I always seem to be written off as an extremist. Like Cassandra I have been both correct and disbelieved for quite some time now.

So here is the latest confirmation of something I have been screaming from the roofops since the day the Corps admitted culpability. You see, everyone is under the impression that the levee failure is a New Orleans problem, that it does not affect them directly, which is patently false. My refrain has been, “what if it happens to YOU next?” Well here is some groovy news for our neighbors across the US, it IS your problem as well:
Peter Eisler over at USA Today says 146 LEVEES ACROSS THE US MIGHT FAIL.

WASHINGTON — The Army Corps of Engineers has identified 146 levees nationwide that it says pose an unacceptable risk of failing in a major flood.

The deficiencies, mostly due to poor maintenance, are forcing communities from Connecticut to California to invest millions of dollars in repairs. If the levees aren’t fixed, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could determine that they are no longer adequate flood controls.

Maybe some people will pay attention now, but I am begining to doubt it. Those that have an interest and those with compassion have already been at our sides from the begining. The ill informed often perk up and pay attention when told the realities down here, but rarely does it seem to have a lasting effect. In this era soundbites are gospel, and attention spans are shorter that Ross Perot.

So I guess we will have to wait for catastrophic flooding in Connecticut, or a levee failure in sunny California before people start to get it. I’ll bet FEMA will be there with bells on, don’t you?

(hat tip to GentillyGirl)

EDIT: Here is a nice little video on Weather.Com adressing the subject. If you live here you already know the drill, if you don’t you should watch it. It could be your levees next..

No real time to write, we leave town tomorrow at O’Dark Thirty and I have two of my staff out sick on a hard work day. I do want to impress the importance of a new site on you folks though. Check out Fix The Pumps and get a solid, picture laden, well researched view of why the Corps of Engineers needs to be held accountable. This is what is going on right now, jeopardizinng our city and citizenry. Go. Read. Now

Fix the pumps
After Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers agreed to assume full responsibility for repair of New Orleans’ drainage pumps. Over a year later, much work remains undone. I am here to push them to do that work.

We are too much a rabble, leaderless and increasingly dispirited. I heard nothing in the mayor’s 100-day remarks Wednesday to remedy that. We lack the charismatic leadership we need to see us through this dark hour, our Henry V to rally the tired few to the great battle that will remake the world. Instead, we get Mayor Hamlet, Prince of Denmark or somewhere, anywhere else but New Orleans, wandering the ramparts of Perdido Street and wondering how to proceed.

I see more and more on-line commentators, and some in the newspaper, remark that they are starting to have thoughts of moving on, of leaving the city, of giving up. No one I know personally is ready to leave, and people I thought lost to Texas continue to trickle in despite all the challenges. Still, the conventional wisdom of the street points to the sprouting forests of For Sale signs as indication that many who haven’t yet returned, and more than a few who are back, are making other plans.

I wasn’t surprised to hear this sort of chatter in August. The first serious month of hurricane season was filled with an endless tide of contrary news, the threat of a storm in the Gulf, and the looming anniversary. Even for the most heavily medicated population in the developed world, it was a depressing prospect. Can we make it, people asked each other with the breathlessness of exhausted swimmers struggling to make their way to the shore.

The mayor and his circle give us no confidence. Leadership is the rescue we need now every bit as much as the people on the roofs of last year, watching the helicopters circle then leave; the 100-day promise was another lifeline tantalizing dangled before our eyes and then withdrawn. Perhaps we should drape our houses in bedsheets roughly lettered: Mayor Nagin, Please Help Us.

I remain convinced the city will survive. We the 200,000 who have come home can be enough if we do not surrender, if we insist that our leaders step up to the difficult challenges we face as a city, as a collective. We only ask they they work as hard and as ingenously as those who labor all day to save their businesses, and still go home at night to work on ruined homes, that the mayor and his cohorts navigate the paths of Entergy and RTA and recovery finances in the same way the majority of us hack our way through the jungle of insurance, SBA and LRA.

The rousing speech Shakespeare puts into the mouth of his Henry V is something I have carried with me through the years, the product of most of a degree in English Literature from the University of New Orleans, and a number of years spent working alongside a Shakespeare enthusiast. Henry’s position was bleak. He was at the end of a long land campaign, surrounded by the French who had cut off his line of supply and retreat, facing a choice between victory and defeat, with no place for retreat. It is a marvel of motivational speech, a statement that rings true to the American ear across the centuries with its martial setting and its celebration of exceptionalism.

It is the speech I would hear from Perdido Street, but have no reason to expect; the sort of speech we must demand of our own leaders, if they wish to be counted among the 200,000 who saved the city. It is the speech we must all give to ourselves, should post on our shaving mirrors or on the doors of our new refrigetarors, to remind ourselves we are here because we have chosen this place to fight.

Its opening words are the best response I could offer to Mayor Hamlet’s vacuous remarks, and the truest antidote to them. If you read this blog, you are among the 200,000, the happy few. I do not mean to indict those who have not returned, by choice or happenstance. It is mostly beyond their control. Instead, I mean to remind the 200,000 that they are living through a special place and time in history, one that will be long remembered. When people look back on this time, they will read of the president and the governor and the mayor and laugh, or perhaps cry in catharsis at the tragedy of hubris strutting to its doom. There’s nothing we can do now to remedy the leaders who hobble us, except to prove them wrong, to write for ourselves the scene that ends not in tragedy but in triumph.

…proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
and say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
-Mark Folse, Wet Bank Guide 

Reuters AlertNet - Army leader who admitted New Orleans errors quits

WASHINGTON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who in June admitted that design flaws in the levees his agency built to protect New Orleans caused most of the flooding during Hurricane Katrina, has asked to retire, the Army said on Thursday.

Why is it that no one oputside of Louisiana seems to know about the admissions of failure made by these people? They did a “heckuva job!” on my city…

I wonder who the new idiot will be?