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maggie katzen

um, thanks.

gail

I didn't want the comment to get lost in the thread since a lot of people are interested and very few have an insider's perspective.

Carin

THANK you. I had heard this before, but didn't really have a "source." Now RTO can be my source :)

On friday, they were already crying that for 5 days nothing had been done, and that is simply not true.

I just can't help but wonder what the liberal hand-wringers would be doing if we had a democrat in the White House. Instead of all this partisan BS that is just pissing people off, and taking away from the issue at hand.

gail

That doesn't let the city and state off the hook for failing to evacuate BEFORE the hurricane and to wait until they were sure the levees would hold before they let people come back. They knew the levees weren't designed to withstand more than a Cat 3 hurricane.

maggie katzen

They knew the levees weren't designed to withstand more than a Cat 3 hurricane.

chertoff is saying this means overflow, they expected them not to keep water out, but not break.

Carin

I heard an engineer the other night say that they were not designed to withstand that kind of pressure - that they would break. Who knows?

RTO Trainer

I wasn't the storm surge, though that broke them. That had subsided by the time the levees actually broke.

No doubt that the storm and its pressures are what fatally weakened them. In fact, i expect to find that it was the releif of the pressure that actually precipitated the actual point of failure.

Imagine a stone arch. Gravity holds it together though it is made of segments. The storm surge fractuers teh levee's structures, but the pressure outside is pressing the segments in and holding the whole together. Then the pressure subsides and allows the pieces to fall out.

I have no data to support that. It's just an educated guess.

gail

Thanks for the insight RTO.

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