Editorial: Nola Levee Report: ‘People Died Because Of Mistakes’

As of May 22, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was withholding comment. But the chief author of a report by independent scientists who had studied the New Orleans levee system was cited on May 22 as saying, “People died because mistakes were made and because safety was exchanged for efficiency and reduced cost.” Raymond B. Seed, professor of engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, was one of more than three dozen engineers and disaster experts whose report was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation.

As John Schwartz of the New York Times wrote, the report blasts the design and construction of the New Orleans hurricane protection system—built over 40 years and incomplete—as being inadequate to protect hundreds of thousands of people in an urban setting. The report faults political decisions that led the Corps to squeeze miles of floodwalls on too-narrow levees along the city’s drainage canals.

“The interlocking sheets of steel that anchor the levees,” Schwartz wrote, “were driven to a depth too shallow to block water or the shifting New Orleans soil.”

According to Schwartz, “The Berkeley study finds fault across the public and private organizations that should have kept New Orleans safe, from Congress to local levee boards.”

Another of the report’s authors is J. David Rogers, professor of engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, who teaches flood control courses for the Corps.

Schwartz said the group has recommended extensive changes for the Corps, along with a transformation of the nation’s approach to flood protection.

If we ask, “did the Corps not really understand the problem before it set about trying to solve it?” then there is some evidence to support the notion that no one really knew the extent of the problem, although they thought they did. Not long ago scientists who directed their ship into the heart of a huge storm reported finding that such storms actually are different in nature than we have for decades believed. Storm surges come in bunches and sometimes a day after the storm hits. The bottom line is that the report suggested that the whole world needs to think again about how it evaluates storms and protects against them. So perhaps the Corps believed just as everyone else believed at the time and tried to provide protection based on “common knowledge.”

Having said that, we have to believe that the Corps planned for what it thought was coming. The plans may have looked good on paper, but unfortunately the agency failed to plan and build correctly. The report accurately faults political decisions that led to doing the job badly rather than well. The system in question may have been built over 40 years, but levees have been under construction for more than 300 years in the New Orleans area, and experience should have counted for something.

Everyone knew that the city was built in a bowl and that it was vulnerable. Did anyone ever give people of the area a guarantee that they were safe? We don’t know. Following civil works budgets and water resource development activities for decades has shown that the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry. Levee money was diverted, clear and simple. Opposition to good levee-construction procedures came from political and environmental groups.

The scientists and disaster experts concluded, “all the factors add up to a culture of inattention that put safety lower on the scale than cost.”

Seed said, “People didn’t die because the storm was bigger than the system could handle, and people didn’t die because the levees were overtopped. They died because of mistakes….”

Even the Corps’ interim findings said the system failed in some places because of unanticipated flaws in design and in others because it was simply overwhelmed.

So there we have it. The disaster was caused by human failure to recognize the extent of the danger, plan for it correctly, finance it properly and carry out the plan efficiently. A typical result so unfortunate.

Today the keepers of the federal exchequer are in turmoil over many issues that result in demands for money. Will Congress make excuses or pass the buck (no pun intended)? Will Louisiana government realize it has some obligations to protect its citizens and cough up some money of its own? At present the New Orleans hurricane protection system is unfixed and hurricane recovery is still a big mess.

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