Harry Shearer's New Documentary: The Flooding Of New Orleans Was A Man-Made Disaster
Actor-comedian Harry Shearer, who has a home in New Orleans, has produced "The Big Uneasy," a new documentary film about the quite un-natural flooding of New Orleans:
At the start of the film, Shearer presents a parade of pundits and politicians referring to the tragedy of New Orleans as a "natural disaster." But he then introduces Ivor van Heerden, who at the time was the deputy director of the Louisiana State University's hurricane center, and Robert Bea, an engineering professor at UC-Berkeley. The two describe their efforts to examine what had led to the flooding of New Orleans. They don't mince words, as they explain how the Army Corps of Engineers, which built and maintained New Orleans' crucial flood-control system, had constructed levees that were structurally unsound and on nonsecure soil. The water surge from the hurricane did not flow over—"overtop," in engineering parlance—the levees. Instead, it eroded the base of the levee walls—which had not been set deep enough—and the levees collapsed. (Bea demonstrates his method of tasting soil to see if it's the right spot to place a levee.)
Van Heerden explains that what the engineers discovered undermined the Corps self-exculpating claim that the sheer amount of water was no match for the levees. He notes the surge didn't reach the top. "It must have been a structural issue, an engineering design issue," he says. Bea adds that he, van Heerden, and other investigators came across the "kind of mistakes…you learn about in second-year engineering." (The film also details how the Corps' construction of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet canal, which was completed in the 1960s, helped set the stage for the disastrous flood.)
The Corps has denied it committed such errors. And the investigators were not rewarded for their efforts. Van Heerden says he was ordered by his superiors at LSU not to testify against the Corps. His position at LSU was terminated. (The Big Uneasy also follows the tale of a Corps whistleblower, Maria Garzino, who tried to warn the agency of problems with the water pumps to be used in the levee system after the hurricane.) Bea notes that at one time the investigators were told by the American Society of Civil Engineers that they couldn't tell the public what they believed had happened: "This is a cover-up."
The findings of the independent investigators did become public. But watching them recalling their run-ins with the Corps and describing the retribution they faced prompts a double outrage. It was terrible enough that the Corps erred in its design and construction of the levees, but the attempt to deny the truth (and punish those who dug it out) almost seems worse, for without a clear accounting of what happened, such a nightmare could occur again.
"The Corps," Shearer says, "clearly didn't enjoy the presence of two independent teams of investigators, and it didn't make their jobs any easier. It also relentlessly criticized them, and their early findings, publicly. The Corps had its own investigation, which it controlled, and it preferred that people focus on that. The national media thought they 'had' the story—big hurricane in Gulf, city below sea level, death and suffering, and they left even before the water did. They never paid attention when those investigators released their reports."
In the movie, Bea sums up the film's prime contention: the flooding was "a very unnatural disaster…caused by people." It was no act of God. But does the natural disaster myth have roots so deep it cannot be undone? "I hope not," says Shearer, "otherwise I wouldn't have spent all this time and money making this film. I hope that, after this tremendous re-experiencing of the footage of suffering and disaster, people might well be ready to ask the question, 'Why'?” Even five years later—and even after the Gulf has been hit by another human-made disaster, the BP oil spill.
...does not address the explosions that were heard by residents. Nor does it confirm what I had read-- which was immediately removed-- that there was evidence of C-4 at that site. I think, from reading those things at the time, five years ago, that it isn't the Corps that's been covered up, but a Special Ops team. Deflecting this as a possibility leaves the truly guilty in the clear. Bad engineering? Probably, But N.O. has been through major hurricanes before without this kind of damage. And Katrina had downgraded to a Category III before coming ashore in Mississippi.
"Courtesy is owed. Respect is earned. Love is given." --Unknown author, found in Guide to Texas Etiquette by Kinky Friedman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbP2zIa9HIM
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
....to complain about how NPR tried to censor his message
Perhaps you do not recall the story that put Daniel Zwirdling on the White House shit list?
NPR was quite chastened after the experience, and Zwirdling was off to new pastures before Katrina hit.
...no, I don't remember that. Despicable.
ran a series of infotels, the very late "90s that apparently Bush didn't heed.
Every four-year-old knows that blame can be mitigated by switching to the passive voice. "It broke. It fell." Parents never fall for that, but if the damage is serious enough, the child's explanation burdens them with having to figure out if the child was just careless or did something bad on purpose. Somehow, even though everybody realized Katrina was a very rare first-world calamity, media, politicians and even engineers had trouble with the notion that the damage of Katrina was deliberately induced by human failure, that greed, incompetence and laziness, which do not square with the public narrative, are alive and well. Harry Shearer has been unflagging in his efforts to change the narrative, and let's hope he does it. Over the past five years he has devoted entire episodes of his otherwise light Le Show to what actually happened before Katrina. Geologists, who noted the acceleration in formation of framboidal pyrites already in the late 1990s, warned Army Corps of Engineers projects and loss of bayou were placing inordinate risk on New Orleans.
Yeah. Yeah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrLJeAL4Ywo
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
+1!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR5xTgMwpiM&fe...
I prefer more from this era
I still have the pink vinyl...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
...what you are asking me to believe is that a government agency knew there was a problem and covered it up? That people in the government are withholding the truth on something egregious? Is that what you want me to believe?
Geez!
You would think there is no accountablility about anything anymore, wouldn't you?
"A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life."....Muhammad Ali
4:00 on the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epwpnMztkM0&fe...
Enough to make you sick. Isn't that obstruction of justice?
"A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life."....Muhammad Ali
This link has a video and radio broadcast archive so you can relive the day Katrina hit NOLA. No thanks. Once was enough for me.
http://www.wwl.com/pages/8001444.php
...can hold back a wall of water. Seriously, does anyone think that a concrete wall and a few yards of soil can hold back all that water? They're gonna have to go out at least a block for the leevees to hold against another big one. And even though Katrina was downgraded before it hit, it still had all that water it accumulated when it was a raging 5 out in the ocean.
why I hate Bush so much.
NOBODY 2012
Imagine running an organization where you were free of independent oversight and could police yourself in order to guarantee a favorable result.
Then imagine having the national media as your accomplice in covering up your cowardice and ineptitude and other henchmen in positions of authority in the background punishing those who dared to reveal the truth.
Maybe the Soviet Union did not lose the cold war after all. They just rebranded themselves as OUR government.
"We will find fulfillment not in the goods that we have, but in the good we can do for each other."
Robert F. Kennedy
sort of like smelling sea food to see if it's safe.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
New Orleans got flooded. period. They were charged with designing and building a system to protect New Orleans from flooding due to an hurricane and the system did not do that. Therefore they failed at their job. The surprise is how badly they failed. There need to be an outside agency that will be responsible for auditing them. There is always alot of political bullshit that goes on in large organizations so they need to be someone outside looking in to mae sure they do what they are suppose to do.
You get what you pay for.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
The truth of the matter is that everyone knew the levees were inadequate. They were out dated.
They were built long ago. There does need to be an over seeing inspector of sorts. So this doesn't happen again. Maintenance, upgrading. But, it's typical America. Don't fix it until it's broken.
We'll see more tragedies. Of this I'm sure.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
to the mark.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
They call it pork. And the commentor below has it right. Bush cut the funding.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
In 1995 a flood did millions of dollars of damage to La., a flood caused by weaken levees. Now, levees are not static things- they erode, they develop flaws, they sink, they are not built correctly or high enough. But whatever, the flood caused a program to be started called SELA, which was designed to inspect and repair all of the levees. It is common knowledge that the levees that failed were not constructed correctly, and they were built from sub par material. But the SELA program was to take care of that.
But, when Bush took office, here is what he did:
February 2001
Bush’s first budget proposed more than half a billion dollars worth of cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers for the 2002 fiscal year. Bush proposed half of what his own officials said was necessary for the critical Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Project (SELA)—a project started after a 1995 rainstorm flooded 25,000 homes and caused a half billion dollars in damage.
Bush did this to offset the tax break he gave to the top 1% of rich Americans. The first major economic initiative pursued by the president was a massive tax cut for the rich, enacted in June of 2001. Bush signed his massive $1.3 trillion income tax cut into law-a tax cut that severely depleted the government of revenues it needed to address critical priorities.
February 2002
Bush provided just $5 million for maintaining and upgrading critical hurricane protection levees in New Orleans—one fifth of what government experts and Republican elected officials in Louisiana told the administration was needed. Bush knew SELA needed $80 million to keep working, but the he only proposed providing a quarter of that.
February 2004
The SELA project sought $100 million to repair the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain levees, but Bush offered only $16.5 million. The Army Corps of Engineers asked for $27 million to pay for hurricane protection upgrades around Lake Pontchartrain—but the White House cut that to $3.9 million. Gaps in levees around Lake Pontchartrain & the Industrial Canal, which were supposed to be filled by 2004, were not filled because of budget shortfalls. Repair work on the levees, including the ones that failed, was stopped due to lack of funds.
Bush destroyed New Orleans.
To add to the injury:
A COMPARISON OF PREVIOUS HURRICANE RESPONSES:
President Nixon -- August 1969 when Cat-5 Hurricane Camille hit roughly the same area as Katrina, President Nixon had already readied the National Guard and ordered all Gulf rescue vessels and equipment from Tampa and Houston to follow the Hurricane in. There were over 1,000 regular military with two dozen helicopters to assist the Coast Guard and National Guard within hours after the skies cleared.
President Clinton -- September 1999, Hurricane Floyd -- Cat-3, was bearing down on the Carolinas and Virginia. President Clinton was in Christchurch, New Zealand - meeting with President Jiang of China. He made the proclamation that only Presidents can make and declared the areas affected by Floyd "Federal Disaster Areas" so the National Guard and Military can begin to mobilize. Then he cut short his meetings overseas and flew home to coordinate the rescue efforts. All one day BEFORE a Cat-3 hit the coast.
President Bush (41) -- August 1992 -- was in the midst of a campaign for re-election. Yet, he cut off his campaigning the day before and went to Washington where he martialed the largest military operation on US soil in history. He sent in 7,000 National Guard and 22,000 regular military personnel, and all the gear to begin the clean up within hours after Andrew passed through Florida.
George Bush (43) -- August 2005 -- Cat-5 Hurricane Katrina bears down on New Orleans and the Mississippi gulf. Both states are down nearly 8,000 National Guard troops because they are in Iraq -- with most of the rescue gear needed.
Bush is on vacation. The day before Katrina makes landfall, Bush rides his bike for two hours. The day Katrina hits, he goes to John McCain's birthday party, and lies to old people about the multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical company welfare boondoggle.
People are dying, the largest port of entry in the United States (and fifth largest in the World) is under attack. Troops and supplies are desperately needed. The levees are cracking and the emergency 1-1/2 ton sandbags are ready, but there aren't enough helicopters or pilots to set them before the levees fail. The mayor of New Orleans begs for Federal coordination, but there is none, and the sandbagging never gets done. Bush goes to San Diego, to play guitar with a country singer.
a few further observations: The Army Corps of Engineers is one of the most competent engineering organizations in the world. The top graduates of every West Point class are granted the privilege of picking their assignment. A large percentage of these choose the Corps. Even they can only build and maintain structures that they are given the budget to do. In the case of New Orleans they have never, ever been given an adequate budget. I find the notion of criticizing them for building levees on unsuitable soils particularly laughable. New Orleans sits on an alluvial delta. There are no suitable soil conditions anywhere in or around New Orleans for building earthen levees to deal with a Katrina level event. If you want that then you should require them to build the levees a hundred miles inland or so. No one, apparently, thought to consult the Corps about the original placement of New Orleans. C'est la Vie.
The tale of woe of the contractor who wanted to build better stronger and higher is quite instructive. I'm sure the Corps could have used their whole budget to build his section to the standards he thought best but unless the whole levee system was built to that standard it would have been one of the stupidest decisions ever made. If you want to build levee structures on poor soil conditions to meet 100 or 500 hundred year events then you have to build impermeable and heavy structures supported by piles that go right to bedrock. All such design decisions are based on fairly simple criteria. What is the probability of a given event occurring and what are you prepared to budget to deal with it. No budget has ever been allocated to do the proper engineering for New Orlean levees and none ever will. You're talking tens of billion of dollars. It would be cheaper to move the city.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
"If God is willing and da Creek don't rise" Explains the levee failure very clearly. Watch it.
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