Tests confirm levee sheet pilings only driven about 1/2 as far as recommen

[funkybutt]

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWL113005tests.26f96425.html

" Government engineers performing sonar tests at the site of a major levee failure found exactly what independent investigators said they would -- that steel reinforcements barely went more than half as deep as they were supposed to, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official said Wednesday. "


recommended??? Do you RECOMMEND how a contractor builds your house??? Are engineering decisions recommendations?

[Skink]

1. No explosives eh?

[Pirate Smile]

2. Who built it? Here are the last two paragraphs.

"Engineering studies prior to construction of the flood wall were performed by Eustis Engineering, Modjeski and Masters Inc. and the Corps. Members of van Heerden's team have expressed shock that all three could have missed what they characterized as fundamental flaws. Calls put in to Eustis and Modjeski and Masters were not returned Wednesday. However, van Heerden said the federal government bears ultimate responsibility.

"The federal government built the levees, the federal government supplied that security, the security system failed, as a consequence these 100,000 families have lost everything," van Heerden said. "In our opinion, the federal government needs to step up to the plate." '

[funkybutt]

4. Army Corps of Engineers

He's right!

It was the Army Corps of Engineers

reportedly the most disasterous engineering mistake in American History. Thanks Corps! :hi:

[Pirate Smile]

5. Do you know what year these where built? Did the Army Corp

contract it out and to whom?

This article leads to many more questions.

edit to add - Doh! I see the article says it was built in 1993.

[The Backlash Cometh]

25. Are you sure? It sounds like some of the work was privatized.

[Old and In the Way]

30. See how more efficient privitization is for the public sector?

Add a profit motive to the public works projects and they come in under budget and under schedule, and ultimately under constructed.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

3. I don't know about NO but, in Ca.

Any "public works" project, schools, fire stations, etc are built to about 5 times the standard of general construction. The reason behind this is that these buildings/structures/etc. are ment to be "Dwellings of last resort" in the event of a disaster, natural or otherwise.

Believe me, I do a lot of this kind of work. In the event of a disaster, you WAN'T to be in a public works project! You simply cannot imagine how over-engineered these buildings are.

As for the Pilings not being deep enough, bullshit! , Someone got paid off, and got paid very well! On every one of the public works jobs I've done in California, The inspectors won't give you 1/64th of an inch! No screw too small, no bolt too thin, no nothing, Plan and spec is all they understand, even when logic dictates otherwise!

[funkybutt]

6. thanks for the input

yeah, it's likely that someone was paid off.

I lost everything and I don't care if it was a contractor or engineer for the corps...the Feds failed...the system failed...and we're fucked as a result. Where does the buck stop?

[aquart]

14. Someone was paid off in Louisiana? What a shock.

Nonetheless. For this I advocate a public hanging. I'm not the forgiving sort.

But why would the Army Corps of Engineers want to pay off anyone?

[funkybutt]

15. We don't know IF or WHO paid WHO

this is all speculation. My point is that the Army Corps of Engineers was responsible because they designed and oversaw the levee project.

[EuroObserver]

18. Legal Class Action Suit? n/t

[fed-up]

7. Interesting website here on Levees in California (home of failed levees)

http://www.stanford.edu/~meehan/flood/vtech1.html

Glad I live north of Sacto

[gulfcoastliberal]

29. Have you seen those sac Bee articles about how catastrophic levee failure

would be with all those new developments going up it flood plains? It's unbelievable that Natomas is so built up and they are doing that everywhere! Then they run an article about how Folsom Dam is vulnerable to failure. Remember the floods of 1997 when the floodgate on the dams failed and so many leveees crumbled? They've run a lot of front page things about how ridiculously bad it could be - Sac is at the confluence of the American and Sacramento rivers - draining a huge watershed.

[DemoTex]

8. Yep. In a past life I built bridges.

I drove a lot of sheet piling, especially building coffer dams. The state highway department inspectors were on us, like stink on shit, at every point of the process. They cored concrete, they cut out welds for testing, they checked for compaction, and they watched every inch of all pile driving (sheet-piling, H-piling, etc). As it should be .. the state was paying big bucks for the bridge.

[funkybutt]

9. State Levee Board questions

Many Louisianians are disappointed in the failure of the Senate to pass the consolidation of several parishes into ONE area levee board.


Unfortunately, as I've come to discover after my home was flooded, the levee boards have a history of favoritism, corruption and ineptitude.

These guys have been quoted in the local paper as having neglegted the annual "inspections" for LUNCH!

[DemoTex]

11. Are you back in NO?

If so, how is it? I am retired and thinking about what I might do down there, hands-on, over the next few weeks or months. What does NO need, other than money, that I could provide with my knowledge and experience?

Mac


DemoTex -- 1970

[funkybutt]

13. Yes Sir! We need your help!

Pretty much EVERY aspect of construction has HUGE understaffing problems. If you have anything to offer in this field...AND can find housing, then I'd be heading this way. Unfortunatly, i think that housing is holding us all back right now.

Things are...okay. Not great. Most of us are displaced, frustrated and increasingly desperate every day. How are we to know what to do without a commitment from the feds? These are incredibly important and life changing decisions that we must make. I don't feel that people understand this. We have been forsaken...America has moved on.

[EuroObserver]

19. Are these people really doing anything?

See eg: Bush Cronies to Mop Up Katrina;
Shaw Group Katrina subcontracting

[AngryAmish]

23. Was this in California?

Or Texas? Or which state?

I live in Illinois. The depth of corruption in this state is staggering. It reaches very deep. The roads are shit because the road builders own most state politicians.

[Igel]

21. NYT article's saying that the standard is 130% of required

strength. And that those that failed are estimated to be at 93-98% of required strength. I'm not sure if that's "estimated assuming specifications were met" or "estimated from observations."

I agree: I believe someone got paid off. The local contractor and inspectors, or whoever was in charge of the inspections. (And exactly who *that* is is a serious question: Did the ACoE actually do the sampling and inspecting themselves, or rely on local authorities, or on a second contractor?)

[necso]

10. They should do this

(and/or any other appropriate testing) at all failure sites that opened into developed and damaged areas, regardless of the supposed causes.

Levees* failed in some places, not others, under what were probably very similar if not identical conditions.

*: used generally to include bank structures, bank and wall structures, floodwalls, etc.

[BJW]

12. Thx for posting this--we need to keep the heat on!!!!

[DeepModem Mom]

16. NYT: Louisiana's Levee Inquiry Faults Army Corps

Louisiana's Levee Inquiry Faults Army Corps
By JOHN SCHWARTZ and CHRISTOPHER DREW
Published: December 1, 2005


The devastation of New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen because of a significant flaw in levee design by the Army Corps of Engineers, according to preliminary findings from the official Louisiana team investigating the Hurricane Katrina flooding.

The findings are included in a draft report prepared by engineers on the team. They mirror the conclusion of many outside experts: that the levee that toppled at the 17th Street Canal was built with too little regard for the inherent weakness of the soil under the canal banks. Similar conditions, the experts say, existed at the sites of the two other major levee breaches in metropolitan New Orleans.

"It should have been obvious," said the deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, Ivor van Heerden, the leader of the investigative group, known as Team Louisiana....

***

The Louisiana team's investigation of the levee breaches shows that the sheet piles, the interlocking sheets of steel that are driven into soil to anchor the levees and prevent a flow of water underneath them, were too shallow to prevent that flow. Tests by the Louisiana group found that sheet piles reached only 10 feet below sea level in some spots, far less than would protect the city. Corps documents dating from the time of construction show that the design was for a depth of 17½ feet, but even that, the investigators say, would have been too shallow. By comparison, in spots where the levees are now being repaired, the Corps of Engineers is calling for sheet piles to be driven to a depth of 51 to 65 feet.

The state manager for the Team Louisiana project, Edmond J. Preau Jr., assistant secretary of the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, said the levees had failed at water levels that would have been predicted had the soil problem been recognized. The walls should never have been toppled by water levels of 11 or 12 feet, Mr. Preau said....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/national/nationalspecial/01levees.html

[Erika]

17. So what does the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have to say?

[niallmac]

27. I want to hear what they have to say as well.

Aside from building dams that destroyed the environment I always thought they were
engineers who knew how to get the job done and done right. Not?

[Pirate Smile]

20. kick

[Pirate Smile]

22. kick

[EuroObserver]

24. K&R

Research section anybody?

[BrklynLiberal]

26. K & R and appalled!!!!

[DemoTex]

28. K&R and looking for a way to get to NOLA to help.

:kick:

[rayofreason]

31. Problems throughout the 90's

It seems there were reports for years about the levee problems

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9532037/

And the initial design was also flawed and doomed to fail

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1133336859287360.xml

So much for "secret bombing" and other conspiracy rants. Now to get to the bottom of the real conspiracy of corruption that allowed this situation to come to pass.