August 29th 12 years later

Warning, the following is a stream of conciousness, written while I watch TV coverage from Texas and remember Katrina's anniversary.  

Twelve years to the day, we find ourselves in a tropical storm mode, watching the Houston Texas area drowning in the rainfall from Harvey (a hurricane name that will probably be retired, like Katrina).

Watching the images of rescue from the floodwaters is having a strong negative affect on those that lived through Katrina.  PTSD is raising its ugly head in Katrina land.

Many things have changed since 2005: social media assures that we receive up-to-the-minute information and images via Facebook and Twitter; there are community portals, neighborhood web sites, and local discussion lists; cell phones are more prevalent than in 2005, text messaging helps people communicate   and find one another; there are many more  cell phone towers too.  Katrina taught us what to have ready in case of a storm: nearly everyone I know in this area has a fairly new generator, needed for long periods of electricity loss.

We have learned NOT to wait for the government to come to our rescue.
 
The Cajun Navy was born in after Katrina to help flood victims quickly and without red tape.

Cajun Navy headed to Texas
 
We will always have the memory of fear, sadness, anger, revulsion, etc.  These feelings come automatically whenever we read/see/hear about disasters.  Especially hurricanes.

Watching Harvey coverage unfold is hard, it brings back memories to August of 2005.  Not only in Southeast Louisiana, but also on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which took a direct hit from the storm.

Biloxi Mississippi after Katrina

The city of New Orleans, 80% which was submerged due to levee failures,   is STILL being screwed over by the very people whose job it is to be sure the pumping stations are working.

NOLA after Katrina. I still think of this picture whenever I hear helicopters

Much of the city flooded on August 5th of this year due to the fact that 14 out of 24 pumping stations were not working during a strong rainstorm.   Here's hoping that most of those pumps work hard this week with Harvey coming to visit.

Of course some things never change:  the haters are still out there in droves, asking the same idiotic questions, putting people down for being poor, black, ethnic.  People are gouging the hell out of victims.  Hopefully, karma will be visiting these "people" soon.

If you've read this far and are curious about what it was like on August 29, 2005, go to this link for the now defunct Times-Picayune's coverage of the storm.  Just reading a bit of it put that lump in my throat.  So much suffering and no one could help.

The only "live" coverage we had for about a month after the storm was WWL radio,  whose on air personalities became like family members to us. 

Curious about what it was like in the early aftermath?   local reporter Chris Rose penned a  number of newspaper articles  during the months after the storm that many Katrina veterans could identify with.  The collection eventually came together in the book "One Dead In Attic".

So 12 years on a lot has changed: new buildings, new homes, new stores, new restaurants.  New Orleans' streets still suck, the crime rate is still as bad as before Katrina, but the city is buzzing in many good ways.   The Mississippi Gulf Coast is a great entertainment destination, and all new construction from Waveland to Ocean Springs is a must see (I still need to see some of it).  Slidell, where I live is still a boring Northshore town, but I like it like that, just small enough.  Every once in a while we run into people at the store or a festival and the conversation usually finds it way to "the storm".  Everyone has stories of ruin and survival.  There is a special kinship that has been borne between veterans of "the storm".

So I say "thanks, Katrina" in a different tone than I did 10 years ago.  Thanks for all the good that has happened since we walked outside on that August afternoon  and saw a whole new, scary world.  I think after all we  experienced,  we find ourselves smarter and we possess the empathy necessary to get through life.

Hurricane Season

From Sandy Rosenthal at Levees.org.

On the first day of Hurricane Season, June 1, a certain unease creeps into the city of New Orleans.

Residents begin checking the weather forecasts for low depression spots, the harbingers of monster storms. And they start thinking about levees partly because shortly after the devastating flood during Katrina, the New Orleans Times Picayune reported that annual levee inspections in Orleans Parish tended to be quick drive-by affairs ending with lunch for 40-60 people costing the state as much as $900.

While this is true, the same reports went on to suggest that the quickie inspections might have contributed to the catastrophic flooding and that the local Orleans Levee Board (OLB) may be partly responsible. Neither suggestion was ultimately proved true, but the myths persist.

Here is what really happened.

Pre-Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers was required to administer annual levee inspections of completed federal flood protection levees in Orleans Parish.

ER 1130-2-530, 30 Oct 96 establishes the policy for the operation and maintenance (O&M) of USACE flood control and related structures at civil works water resource projects and of USACE-built flood protection projects operated and maintained by non-Federal sponsors.
This program, called the Inspections of Completed Works by the federal sponsor (Corps) was designed to insure that the local sponsor (Orleans Levee Board) was complying with its federally mandated levee maintenance.

Before the 2005 flood, the OLB's maintenance activity included mainly cutting the grass on levee embankments and removing unwanted vegetation and debris. But, the OLB also performed other activities like checking concrete surfaces for open cracks, and inspecting for ruts, depressions and erosion on earthen levees.

To be clear, responsibility for the annual inspections belonged solely to the Army Corps. It would obviously be a conflict of interest for the OLB to inspect its own work. The Army Corps's inspections should perhaps be thought of as independent annual quality audits of the OLB's year-round maintenance activity.

Additionally, the Corps of Engineers' annual inspections were not designed to verify structural stability and performance and thus, could not have been expected to uncover potential problems with levees' and flood walls' ability to function. In other words, they were not a factor in the flooding as concluded by the preeminent report for information relating to the 2005 flood - the Decision-Making Chronology Report of 2008.

The drive-by levee inspections are therefore, a red herring in the story about the New Orleans flood.

To our knowledge, the Army Corps of Engineers has not directly supported the myth of the levee inspections. The myth apparently took wings on its own, months before the major levee investigations were completed; and in a post-flood environment of anger, grief and a rush to pass judgement.

After the levee failure investigations all concurred that design and construction flaws, not mother nature, was responsible for the flood, Congress responded by passing the first ever country-wide levee safety legislation which may affect the 55% of the nation's population protected by levees. The legislation ordered national policy changes in levee safety and levee building.

And even though annual levee maintenance inspections were irrelevant in the New Orleans Flood, the Army Corps also overhauled its annual inspections protocols nationwide. Now using global positioning and other modern technology, the Army Corps' annual inspections of completed works are more formal, more uniform and pay greater attention to all components of the levee system.

In the meantime, those annual lunches, which were intended as a social occasion for Army Corps personnel to meet staffers from the Orleans Levee Board, are a thing of the past.

Hopefully, myths and misinformation regarding the pre-Katrina levee inspections, and their role in the catastrophic flooding of August 2005, will also soon become a thing of the past.

This article was written with assistance from H.J. Bosworth, Jr., P.E., civil engineer and lead researcher for Levees.org.