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Federal Judge Says Corps of Engineers Liable For Katrina Damage
Hugh Pickens writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that a federal judge has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers — and thus the US government — is liable for a big chunk of the damage caused when hurricane Katrina pushed ashore on August 29, 2005 by failing to stop the natural widening of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet canal (aka Mr. Go) causing it to eventually bump up against the shore of Lake Borgne, on the city's east side. 'It is the court's opinion that the negligence of the corps, in this instance by failing to maintain the MR-GO properly, was not policy, but insouciance, myopia, and shortsightedness,' wrote US District Court Judge Stanwood Duval. Judge Duval said he believed it was the failure to shore up the outlet that 'doomed the channel to grow to two to three times its design width' allowing waves on Lake Borgne to enter the Mr. Go and travel into the east side of the city, battering the levees to a degree to which they were not designed. 'One of the greatest catastrophes in the history of the US' was both predictable and preventable, testified veteran Louisiana geologist Sherwood Gagliano, a former Corps consultant."
This is why you need to listen to the guys with hard hats and pocket protectors.
They aren't the only necessary ingredients of a functional society; but engineers(in concert with scientists) are your best hope of pulling nature's teeth before it can bite you in the ass.
Appealing to "individual responsibility" is fun and all; but senseless if perspective is not kept.
Living below sea level is stupid. However, living below sea level behind a levee designed specifically to make that area habitable, which has been doing exactly that for years and years now is considerably less stupid.
Does "individual responsibility" require near-Cartesian levels of doubt in every possible piece of infrastructure?
So, let's get this right... If you contract me to do some work on your roof and it leaks -- it's your own damn fault for choosing to live in an area where it rains?
I like it!
60% of the population of the Netherlands live below sea level. Are they all stupid too?
There is a war going on for your mind.
Mmm. I think if you check the New Orleans flood map, you'll find that the hardest hit districts were the ones with the lowest social mobility. If you're born there, and can't afford to move anywhere else, then should you be damned for your "decision" to be poor?
Perhaps the State has no responsibility to act for the benefit of its citizens, but if not, then what is its purpose?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I've read in several disparate sources that the Corps repeatedly informed the powers-that-be in Louisiana and New Orleans that the levies were insufficient but were regularly ignored.
Exactly, because breaching a levee in one place does not magically strengthen it in others, nor does it "relieve the pressure" being exerted by a fucking hurricane. What kind of fucking numbnuts even entertains such a notion?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
if the levee is only rated to work and hold up to a category x type storm and a x+1 type storm comes along and you're still there. you have nobody to blame but yourself.
When my parents bought a home, the elevation was not on the contract or even sale presentation. You could only see if you were going to search for special map with precise elevation lines. So how many people living there do REALLY realize they live on ground below sea level ? Well *NOW* maybe a lot. but how many did back then ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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Fuck the poor, the weak and the helpless!
They've nobody and nothing to blame but themselves!
That's the spirit.
Silly ass-O.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Actually, their government does that.
Oh wait.
They are partly correct: This catastrophes in the history was both predictable and preventable. They built a city right next to the ocean, bellow sea level, in a major hurricane zone, on a sinking delta, and in the flood plain of one of the world's largest rivers. It is quite easy to predict that any such city will be flooded, and being a major city it was a major disaster. And it was preventable: they could have built the city somewhere else, and limited the use of the delta area to only stuff that had to be there.
-WolvesOfTheNight
The same Army Core of Engineers recommended for years the levies be reinforced. There is no reason to think doing so would not have avoided the flooding problems. The people there failed to make the investment. Its the local government there that is responsible and nobody else.
What we have here is a professional organization said the situation was unsafe and recommended a fix. The customer did not elect to implement the fix. Then when things went wrong the customer is trying to blame that organization for not having recommended something else.
Its total crap.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
If this was such a major concern for the state of Louisiana......................why didn't they just use state money? This is a classic case of fingerpointing.
The people who knowingly decided to live below sea level bear no responsibility?
They probably didn't even know they were below sea level. What is your town's elevation? Hell, Cahokia IL is smack in the middle of the midwest and it's only 400 feet above sea level.
And a lot of people, especially the poor, don't have much of a choice where they live. If you were talking about the rich people in California who build mansions where they can slide off a cliff, or in a wooded area that was prone to wildfires you would be right. If someone's home Kansas gets blown away by a tornado do you blame them because they live in Kansas? If someone's house in Japan gets destroyed in an earthquake do you blame them for living in Japan? If someone in Florida's house is destroyed by a hurricane do you blame them just because they live in Florida? There aren't many places on earth that are immune from natural disasters. But the disaster in N.O. was caused by the Corps of Engineer's incompetence. It's scary; I have friends in the St Louis area. I just saw in the paper yesterday that the levees in Alton, IL are in bad shape. I hope the one in Caholia is good, I have friends there. When the hundred year flood hit in the nineties, the Mississippi was at the top of the levee there.
Blaming the victim is despicable, and that's just what you're doing. The government reassured these people and they believed the gov. Who's to blame, the liar or the one who believes the lies?
Free Martian Whores!
Appealing to "individual responsibility" is fun and all; but senseless if perspective is not kept. Living below sea level is stupid. However, living below sea level behind a levee designed specifically to make that area habitable, which has been doing exactly that for years and years now is considerably less stupid. Does "individual responsibility" require near-Cartesian levels of doubt in every possible piece of infrastructure?
The levee could not handle a Category 3 hurricane. Category 3 hurricanes which hit that area are periodic events that happen from time to time; they are absolutely inevitable. So you have a city below sea level protected by a barrier which cannot possibly handle an event that you know with certainty will one day happen. Additionally, all those years that passed without it happening were ample opportunity to reinforce the levee and otherwise to prepare for that eventuality. This did not happen. This alone would dissuade me from living there because the result is absolutely predictable. It's only a question of when.
What do you call it when people make themselves available for preventable disasters that are easy to foresee? Usually the word "stupid" is used to describe actions like this. "Stupid" is also used to describe people who need a politician or other official to tell them when something is a bad idea because they've lost their common sense and have replaced it with various authority figures. So without a government mandate or official inquiry they, acting on their own, would not seriously question the integrity of the levees or the tremendous risk they were taking. That sheeplike dependency, that inability to independently question and reason, explains not only why New Orleans was such a terrible diaster but also most of American politics and government expansion.
If you want to do something constructive, don't feel sorry for them or make excuses for them. Those sentiments are probably meant well but they accomplish nothing. They have no power to prevent a future disaster. If you want to do something, use this as an example for why there is no substitute for thinking for yourself and assessing your own risks. Let it represent why there is no substitute for those things, that all kinds of preventable harm is caused by the failure to value those things. The (minority of) people who understand this got out of New Orleans a long time ago and wouldn't have considered moving back without substantial improvements to the inadequate levee. The rest were surprised by the inevitable, which is like choosing to be a victim.
So yes, individual responsibility was a big factor here. It's not about doubting everything to an absurd degree. It's about knowing the situation you're in and putting yourself into a different situation if it's an invitation to disaster. But the folks who were hit hardest were not thinkers. They didn't think about their situation or compare it to other situations or evaluate risks. They had no such awareness. They just did their daily thing without a second thought and were surprised when something happened. That's the real message here.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
It also makes the entire state of Louisiana look stupid for not declaring an emergency (Federal gov't can't send in the national guard without the state's say so) or forcing an evacuation, even though they are the ones who should have best known that anything above a category 3 would put the city underwater.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
That's the irony, actually. Normally, the same people who are big on "personal responsibility" are also big on "accountability". Why would they be opposed to the Army Corps of Engineers being "accountable" for fucking up?
One can legitimately assert that this bit of engineering shouldn't have been their job; but it has been for some decades now and they've never been absolved of it. Why would anybody not want them to be accountable for doing their job properly?
You pretty much decided to be poor. You decided not to be educated. You decided not to try to better yourself.
This is the great conservative myth, born in the 1970's under the auspices of Barry Goldwater and popularized by Ronald Reagan.
People don't decide to be poor. No one wakes up in the morning and says "I want to lose all my money and become broke". But the statistics don't lie: Either the vast majority of children of poor people are lazy, stupid, and unmotivated while the vast majority of children of wealthier people are smart, hardworking, and motivated, or there's some other factor at work.
For instance, in private colleges and universities it is not uncommon to find children from wealthy families who have a hard time writing at a 6th grade level. Explain that via personal decision-making. In your typical Best Buy you can and will find people who with a bit of training could have become darn good developers and admins, but the best they can manage is working overtime for the Geek Squad to make ends meet. Explain that via personal decision-making. Or for that matter, explain someone who works at my company answering customer service calls while earning a 2-year degree in web development, got that degree, and still is answering the phones for a living.
Even in Horatio Adler stories, being smart and motivated wasn't enough. The hero usually needed quite a bit of luck, and a benefactor of some kind.
I am officially gone from
Actually yes. Eventually those shingles will wear and be damaged and it'll rain again and it'll leak again. Move to the desert if this arrangement bothers you. Its not the governments responsibility to control weather, raise land to above sea level, plug faults, super glue cliffs together by the ocean, fireproof trees or quench volcanos. If you choose to live where there are naturally dangerous occurrences and they occur , It isn't my fault, it isn't the governments fault, it isn't even the insurance companys fault , it's yours.
To further look into this, It isn't the governments job to make you safe against anything but invasion (what a fine f**king mess that is) and various sundry constitutional duties. If you really want to know what the states liability is, then read your states constitution. The rest is in your hands. Live in a flood zone? Build on stilts and take the elevator up. Live in a quake zone? Build a single story in the wide open. Live on a volcano? Buy some barbeque sauce , Einstein.
Unless my semen had something to do with your birth and it was my responsibility to teach you how to get along in life, everything else is your responsibility.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
The levees in New Orleans were not ever designed to make a Category 3+ storm survivable, and they've always been in a TERRIBLE state of repair (anyone who's actually been the the area could tell you that water constantly seeped through them in several places). New Orleans floods during normal rainstorms. Anyone who thought they were safe there during a Hurricane doesn't deserve any pity.
Also, the money allocated to levee repair/upgrade was spent on things like off-ramps for casinos and such by the local levee boards. This judge declaring the Corps. to be responsible while ignoring the gross criminal negligence by state and local officials is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice I have ever seen.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
They don't tend to pray that hurricanes decide to change direction to avoid them... So I say no.
Location. Location. Location.
Conservative myth? And you're quoting fiction literature?
I was born poor, buddy. I watched poor friends decide not to try. I watched poor friends use their resources to get ahead as I did. I made the effort to stay in school. I made the effort to further my education while they decided to party and turn into welfare leeching drunks. You can quote all the liberal regurgitation you want in place of actual knowledge, and it won't make it anything but Democratic campaign vote buying points. If this is truely what you believe, you can be a Democratic dressing room fluffer. At least you picked a career that pays better than writing html. (which by the way was his fault for choosing a shakey career. Why not just take your college money to Vegas instead of finding something that actually pays?)
If you spent a bunch of money on education and the industry you prepared for tanks, start over again. Just don't remain inert crying in your beer and accepting poverty. Even in the 90's average career changes had changed to every 6 years down from 10 in the 80s and 12 in the 70s.
Did you have something better to do? Feeling sorry for yourself is a low paying job.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Stop posting AC & I could be bothered to respond to you.
But you did respond...
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
Yes, but what about the previous 35+ years? This puts the blame squarely on the local and state government. At least with the Administration, they knew where the money was going to in Iraq. With New Orleans, we're not sure which person's freezer the bags of cash would wind up.
I just got off work, and I'm just to tired to do the search that I ought to do. Anyone can google if they care to.
The retaining walls in New Orleans failed in exactly two places. No more, and no less. In precisely those two places, the N.O. water and sewer department had disturbed the wall, years earlier. They lifted the panels out of the wall, and out of the prepared soil in which they had been planted. After making alterations to these panels, they were lifted back into place, and set back on the very same groung, without any work being done to the ground.
Some people who have never been around a construction site may need to ask around, or research, but I'll tell you what you'll find. Lifting a fencepost, a wall, or anything out of the ground, breaks built up adhesion. In fact, adhesion is going to lift great gobs of dirt along with whatever you are lifting. When you put that fencepost, or panel, or whatever BACK into the hole, you will have voids. Voids are conducive to water flow.
And, those two panels that failed, did so BECAUSE water had percolated UNDER them, removing all the loosened soil under and around the panels. Once all the loose soil was gone, water flow increased, washing out more and more stabilized earth.
Eventually, the walls collapsed when several panels were left without any support.
Bottom line? That judge is full of shit. The New Orleans water and sewer department caused the city to flood. Katrina was not the primary cause, nor were the Corps of Engineers. Water and sewer fools who had no idea what they were doing, took it upon themselves to tamper with vital infrastructure, without consulting the Corps.
I'm going to bed. If I'm barraged with challenges, maybe I'll find the pertinent reports for everyone when I get up. But, I'm sure that SOMEONE can find the news articles as well as the reports.
Have fun!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
New Orleans is heavily Catholic and God could have steered Katrina away. As God's representative on earth, we should sue Pope Benedict.
Mmm. I think if you check the New Orleans flood map, you'll find that the hardest hit districts were the ones with the lowest social mobility. If you're born there, and can't afford to move anywhere else, then should you be damned for your "decision" to be poor?
Very, very few people in the US are so poor they cannot move elsewhere. Yes it's harder for those without means but it's not remotely impossible. I grew up in a family that was poor as church mice when I was little. We could have moved if we felt the need. Saying you can't move because you are poor is demonstrably untrue most of the time. Nobody promises you it will be easy but it most definitely is possible.
Perhaps the State has no responsibility to act for the benefit of its citizens, but if not, then what is its purpose?
Of course its job it to act for the benefit of the citizens but ONLY for those things the citizens can't do themselves. There is hardly an able bodied or able minded adult person in this country who could not pick up and move to another location within the US if they set their mind to it. They don't need the government's help to do that in most cases.
They get a lot of hurricanes in the Netherlands, huh?
So you have a city below sea level protected by a barrier which cannot possibly handle an event that you know with certainty will one day happen. Additionally, all those years that passed without it happening were ample opportunity to reinforce the levee and otherwise to prepare for that eventuality.
The judge agrees with you:
'It is the court's opinion that the negligence of the corps, in this instance by failing to maintain the MR-GO properly, was not policy, but insouciance, myopia, and shortsightedness,'
The thing is, the judge lives, along with most of us, in a world where people and organizations have some minimal obligation to other people. Thus, when there is a government organization whose responsibility it is to build levees that will protect a city full or people, and when this organization fails to protect against something that is, as both you and the judge point out, perfectly predictable, then we say this organization has been negligent, and we hold it responsible. We call this state of affairs civilization. Come join us!
It's complicated.
In my case, for example, my parents were both from very poor farmer families.
They moved to the city, studied at night after work to finish high-school and slowly progressed up to what's essentially lower middle class. Even so, they choose to only have one child (me) because they knew they couldn't afford to have their kids go through university if they had more than one - I still remember that when I was 8 I had to sleep in the sofa in the living room in an apartment and the paint would peel from the walls due to humidity and improper construction.
For myself, it so happens that I'm good with intellectual endeavors so I managed to go through High-School and University without needing any extra (paid) tutoring. Now, 15 years past the end of my education and 3 countries later, my income is in the top 10% of the country where I live (UK) in, roughly 7 times the average around here. Compared to where I came from, my income is probably 20+ times the average income there.
A lot of my success is my own doing (the intellectual abilities, the taking the risks of changing jobs, employment styles and countries) but all of that is based on my parents choices:
- Their choice of moving to the city.
- Their choice of furthering their education.
- Their choice of only having one kid.
- Their choice of pushing me to go through University instead of putting me to work when I was 16.
not to mention the values they taught me, some of which came from my grandparents.
Had my parents not made those choices they did or taught me the values they taught me, my own skills and abilities might not have been enough to make me go much further beyond just another poor peasant.
In the end, a bright kid with unlucky, dumb, inept or just plain screwed-up parents (say a single-mother junkie) will be way much more likely to end up in a life of poverty than a dumb kid with reliable, educated and wealthy parents.
To be clear, I myself am doing extremely well professionally compared to others my age. I'm not any of the people I mentioned in my previous post. I'm not sorry for myself in the least: I'm raking it in and worrying more about how to properly invest the savings than how to make ends meet.
How poor were you born? Seriously. Did your family ever survive via government assistance? Did you ever move frequently because your parent/guardian couldn't pay the rent? Was there a time when largest meal of the day was your government-supported school lunch? Believe me, I know what poor looks like: I never lived it, but I spent a lot of time with kids in all of these circumstances.
I'm not saying people can't overcome their circumstances. I'm saying they're the exception, not the rule, and that the answer of "they're stupid and lazy" seems to me to be a massive oversimplification.
I am officially gone from