Hurricane protection outdated

Hurricane protection outdated
Corps says flood walls made using old data.

Published Thursday, June 1, 2006

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Louisiana’s hurricane protection system was overwhelmed by Katrina because it was built disjointedly using outdated data, according to an Army Corps of Engineers report released today.

"The system did not perform as a system," according to the report, released on the first day of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season. "The hurricane protection in New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana was a system in name only."

The 6,000-plus page document included details on engineering and design failures that led to the Aug. 29 storm surge overwhelming the city’s outer levees and breaking through flood walls within New Orleans.

Katrina damaged 169 miles of the 350-mile hurricane system that protects New Orleans and was blamed for more than 1,570 deaths in Louisiana alone.

The report, prepared by the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, said the area’s hurricane protection system was inadequate and incomplete, noting it had been built disjointedly over several decades using outdated elevation data.

It report was contrite in tone but did not address questions raised by other agencies regarding the Corps’ organizational mind-set, focusing instead of details such as flood wall designs, storm modeling and levee soil types in greater depth than the task force’s preliminary studies.

Last month, a report by outside engineers said the Corps was dysfunctional and unreliable. That group, led by the University of California, Berkeley, recommended setting up an agency to oversee the Corps’ projects nationwide.

Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the Corps chief, said the agency takes responsibility for the failures. "Words alone will not restore trust in the Corps," Strock said, adding that the Corps is committed "to fulfilling our important responsibilities."