I'll have to ask my dad about the specifics, but I'm not sure why the forensics people are so shocked the levees were inadequate. Everyone knew the levees were inadequate. People had been saying so for years. What happened during Katrina had been predicted by any number of experts. It's just that no one would pony up the cash to do anything about it.
It's sad that government spending is by its very nature completely antithetical to the idea that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. A billion dollars spent improving the levees pre-Katrina would have saved the government $200 billion afterwards - but of course it would never, ever have happened.
They've been saying for years they they're inadequate to protect against a large hurricane and should be upgraded.
This investigation is finding that they were inadequate to protect against a SMALL hurricane, and were, in fact, fundamentally structurally unsound. If it hadn't had this flaw, it would have held against Katrina, since Katrina's surge was within the design limits. A 12-foot surge broke a levee rated against 14-foot surges.
And they're saying "Holy crap, this is undergraduate-intern-student-level work that's been fucked up so badly, and NOBODY with a supposed engineering degree caught any of it?"
"Holy crap, this is undergraduate-intern-student-level work that's been fucked up so badly, and NOBODY with a supposed engineering degree caught any of it?"
Yeah. I wonder, though, how much of it was genuine stupidity, and how much was just cutting corners. (Although, "Never ascribe to malice what can be put down to incompetence.")
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-30 06:03 pm (UTC)It's sad that government spending is by its very nature completely antithetical to the idea that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. A billion dollars spent improving the levees pre-Katrina would have saved the government $200 billion afterwards - but of course it would never, ever have happened.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-30 06:19 pm (UTC)This investigation is finding that they were inadequate to protect against a SMALL hurricane, and were, in fact, fundamentally structurally unsound. If it hadn't had this flaw, it would have held against Katrina, since Katrina's surge was within the design limits. A 12-foot surge broke a levee rated against 14-foot surges.
And they're saying "Holy crap, this is undergraduate-intern-student-level work that's been fucked up so badly, and NOBODY with a supposed engineering degree caught any of it?"
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-30 06:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-30 06:52 pm (UTC)Yeah. I wonder, though, how much of it was genuine stupidity, and how much was just cutting corners. (Although, "Never ascribe to malice what can be put down to incompetence.")
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-30 06:33 pm (UTC)