Most of the major breaches in the New Orleans levee system during Hurricane Katrina were caused by flaws in design, construction and maintenance, according to a report delivered over the weekend by a team of independent investigators led by the University of California-Berkeley.
One of the members of that team, UMR's Dr. J. David Rogers is quoted in today's New York Times. "There's plenty of blame to go around," he says.
But a lot of that blame belongs to the Army Corps of Engineers, if you believe what's in the independent team's investigation report.
According to this morning's Los Angeles Times, the team's 600-page report disputed most of the corps' preliminary findings about what caused levee breaches, saying the corps' investigators had made critical errors in their analysis...The mistakes raise concerns about whether the corps is competent to oversee public safety projects across the nation...The Berkeley-led team found that the defects that caused breaches during Katrina -- including thin layers of soil with the consistency of jelly and sections of levees built with crushed sea shells -- had gone undetected and could be widespread...The team's report makes 11 major recommendations, such as creating a national flood defense authority and increasing the corps' technical strengths.
Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers is doing an official government investigation. With hurricane season approaching fast, that should make the residents of New Orleans feel a lot better.
In other NOLA news, officials broke ground Thursday on the four safe houses to be built in East Jefferson Parish. The houses, designed by Kontek Industries of New Madrid, Mo., will be home to New Orleans pump operators the next time a Category 5 (or smaller) hurricane passes by that area. UMR researchers helped Kontek pass all FEMA requirements in terms of large missile tests that duplicate the power of large flying debris during Category 5 hurricanes. Watch video from the tests here.