Slashdot Mirror
How NASA Defended Its Assembly Facility From Hurricane Katrina
An anonymous reader writes: Tomorrow marks the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's arrival in New Orleans. Though that time was filled with tragedy, there were survival stories, and a new article gives an insider's account of how NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility weathered the storm. Michoud was their key fuel tank production location, and if it had been lost, the space program would have gone off the rails. A 17-foot levee and a building with four water pumps capable of moving 62,000 gallons per minute stood between the storm and catastrophe for NASA's launch capabilities. "Water was merely the primary concern of the first 24 hours; Hurricane Katrina left its mark on the facilities even if Michoud was the rare speck of land to escape flooding. Roofs were lost to strong winds, one building even blew out entirely. External Tank 122 took some damage." Members of the "ride out" team spent much of the next month at Michoud, working long days to inspect and repair issues caused by the water. They maintained the facility well enough that it became a base for members of the military doing search and rescue operations. Amazingly, they did it all without any injuries to the team, and NASA didn't miss a single tank shipment.
New Orleans on the other hand was crumpled like a beer can under the might of Katrina, and smelted in the incompetent furnace that was the Bush administration.
You mean because of the governor and mayor, right? Bush had to wait until the state authorize the use of the military to jump in. Or do you want the president to have the power to jump in and take control of a city?
His failure - if you have to find one - is that he didn't publicly chastise the governor until the governor was shamed into doing that. Unfortunately, that was not his style - otherwise he would have blamed 9/11 on the Clinton administration since that is when most of the preparation and planning took place.
Don't you mean "Nagin administration"? And "Blanco administration"?
Or does the fact those two have a "D" after their names mean you can't blame the people actually in charge when Katrina hit? You know, the clowns who let literally acres of buses get flooded out because they were too stupid to use them to evacuate people?
Because Florida got hit with three hurricanes right in a row in 2004 - Charley, Ivan, and Jean all hit between Aug 13 and Sep 26, 2004.
And there was no problem with the response to that, now was there?
Bush was in charge then too.
What was the difference? Bush was in charge in Florida, too - Jeb Bush.
Oh, and when the response to Hurricane Andrew in Florida was horrible? Guess the party of Florida Governor Lawton Chiles...
Was it ever determined to be incompetence of the Bush administration, or are you just spouting off?
At the time, the stories coming out were that there was a delay in the request for assistance, which is required before the federal government can come help. If they didn't request assistance and the feds showed up, people would be complaining about a federal invasion. Also, when whole swaths of land are ravaged, getting into the area to help is rather difficult, and can take time in the case of a hurricane as they hit an enormous amount of area, not just a little city.
But it is always more convenient to blame your political opponent, even if it is lazy.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Pay no attention to the 130 years of Democrat rule of the city leading up to Katrina. All the fault for the city's unpreparedness lies with a single Republican who had no authority to intervene.
If I rolled my eyes sufficiently for the amount of derp packed into your comment, I'd probably get dizzy and fall over.