Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Levees in distress



One of the more worrisome things I read in the online Times-Picayune (http://www.nola.com/) in the months following Hurricane Katrina was the discovery that, in addition to the failed levees, there were several sections that were "distressed". The most disturbing of these to me was one located on the west (Metairie) side of the 17st Canal; i.e., on the side of the canal where my parents and brother and other family and several hundred thousand other people live. So when I visited in December 2005 I took a day off from replacing sheetrock in my parents flooded home (yes Virginia, parts of Metairie flooded too) and walked the west (Metairie) side floodwall on the 17st Canal.

The photos above show small but significant displacements between two sections of floodwall on the west (Metairie) side of the canal. They don't look like much, but they are larger than the gaps between any of the other floodwall sections. John Rogers, one of the members of NSF's Independent Levee Investigation Team, found the same section but was smart enough to get on top of the floodwall to take his picture. I guess that's why he's the earthen dam/levee expert and I'm just an earthquake chaser.

Why does this matter? Two reasons, one fortunately hypothetical and the other very real. First, if the west (Metairie) side levee of the 17th Street Canal had given way before the east (Orleans) side, a vastly larger part of the New Orleans metro areas floods. Orleans Parish's fate is already sealed by the London Avenue levee breaches, but a breach on the west (Metairie) side of the 17th Street Canal floods all of the East Bank of Jefferson Parish. More people die, more homes and businesses are destroyed, and basically New Orleans is even more screwed than it actually was. More people need to rescued, but staging areas like Zephyr Field and triage/evacuation centers like the Louis Armstrong Airport are under water. Think of it this way: more people need help but help has alot harder time getting to them. That ~10,000 dead number starts to look more like a realistic estimate under those conditions.

The second thing that concerns me is this: Do we know where all the other weak/distressed levee sections are? Some, like near Lake Vista Drive in Kenner, are known weak points and are getting some attention. But are there others? What tale do the rest of the geotechnical boreholes tell? Are there enough of them to really characterize the geology beneath the levee system?

Yeah, I know, I am probably overdoing it. But I never expected that a category 3 hurricane would produce seven major levee failures. One would have been bad and two disasterous. Seven? Ouch!

Color Me Pissed

Ok, I was hoping to get in a few Katrina related posts before something like this happened. From The Guardian Unlimited UK (http://www.guardian.co.uk/indonesia/Story/0,,1823219,00.html
regarding the earthquake and tsunami in Java:


Officials failed to pass on tsunami warning

The government's
science and technology minister, Kusmayanto
Kadiman, confirmed today that Indonesia had received bulletins
from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii and Japan's
meteorological agency after the quake, but "we did not announce
them. If it [the tsunami] did not occur, what would have
happened?" he said in Jakarta.

What the fuck? Why even put together a tsunami warning system unless you are going to use it? Sorry Kusmayanto Kadiman but 300+ lives are more important than Covering Your Ass. What makes me doubly furious is I personally know a now retired USGS seismologist who was standing by helpless on Dec. 26, 2004, unable to contact anyone on South Asia because the communication lines weren't set up. You would think Indonesian officials would have bent over backwards to get the warning out - instead this happens.

I need a beer.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Old Hammond Highway Bridge

What's the Old Hammond Highway Bridge? It's the bridge that crosses the 17th Street Canal at Lake Ponchatrain in New Orleans. It's also near the site of one of levee breaches that flooded the city of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.


Why the Old Hammond Highway Bridge? That's a bit of a story. First, I was born and raised in Greater New Orleans. My favorite West End seafood restaurant, Brunings, was near the Old Hammond Highway Bridge. My parents favorite after church breakfast place, Russell's Marina, is near the Old Hammond Highway Bridge. One of my cousin's had a house in Lakeview, not far from the Old Hammond Highway Bridge. I have driven across that bridge so many times I can't count.

And as I grew up and learned more about the history and geology of New Orleans, as I grew professionally and learned how natural hazards impact people and the structures they rely on, every time I drove across the Old Hammond Highway Bridge I looked at how the water in the 17th Street Canal was above the level of the ground on both sides. And I said to myself that if those levees and floodwalls ever failed there'd be hell to pay.

And then I woke up on the day after Hurricane Katrina passed New Orleans, thinking my hometown had dogged another bullet, and found one of my worst nightmares coming true on national TV.

Enough said on my first post. There's alot more to come.

Testing

This is a test. I hate tests.