Hurricane George: How the White House Drowned New Orleans

Note from A.M. in the Morning! MUST read. An internationally acclaimed award-winning investigative journalist who works for the BBC, Greg Palast is a native Californian whose work also broke the story on the stolen 2000 election. I admire, trust, and respect Palast's brilliant investigative journalism, and he's a personal friend as well.

Originally published August 23rd, 2007 at GregPalast.Com

by Greg Palast
August 23, 2007

It’s been two years. And America’s media is about to have another tear-gasm over New Orleans. Maybe Anderson Cooper will weep again. The big networks will float into the moldering corpse of the city and give you uplifting stories about rebuilding and hope.

Now, let’s cut through the cry-baby crap. Here’s what happened two years ago - and what’s happening now.

This is what an inside source told me. And it makes me sick:

“By midnight on Monday, the White House knew. Monday night I was at the state Emergency Operations Center and nobody was aware that the levees had breeched. Nobody.”

The charge is devastating: That, on August 29, 2005,

the White House withheld from the state police the information that New Orleans was about to flood. From almost any other source, I would not have believed it. But this was not just any source. The whistle-blower is Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, the chief technician advising the state on saving lives during Katrina.

I’d come to van Heerden about another matter, but in our talks, it was clear he had something he wanted to say, and it was a big one. He charged that the White House, FEMA and the Army Corp hid, for critical hours, their discovery that the levees surrounding New Orleans were cracking, about to burst and drown the city.

Understand that Katrina never hit New Orleans. The hurricane swung east of the city, so the state evacuation directors assumed New Orleans was now safe - and evacuation could slow while emergency efforts moved east with the storm.

But unknown to the state, in those crucial hours on Monday, the federal government’s helicopters had filmed the cracks that would become walls of death by Tuesday.

Van Heerden revealed:

“FEMA knew at 11 o’clock on Monday that the levees had breeched. At 2p.m. they flew over he 17th Street Canal and took video of the breech.”

Question: “So the White House wouldn’t tell you the levees had breeched?”

Dr. Van Heerden: “They didn’t tell nobody knew. The Corps of Engineers knew. FEMA knew. None of us knew.”

I could not get the White House gang to respond to the charges.

That leaves the big, big question: WHY? Why on earth would the White House not tell the city to get the remaining folks out of there?

The answer: cost. Political and financial cost. A hurricane is an act of God - but a catastrophic failure of the levees is a act of Bush. That is, under law dating back to 1935, a breech of the federal levee system makes the damage - and the deaths - a federal responsibility. That means, as van Heeden points out, that “these people must be compensated.”

The federal government, by law, must build and maintain the Mississippi levees to withstand known dangers - or pay the price when they fail.

Indeed, that was the rule applied in the storms that hit Westhampton Dunes, New York, in 1992. There, when federal sea barriers failed, the flood waters wiped away 190 homes. The feds rebuilt them from the public treasury. But these were not just any homes. They are worth an average of $3 million apiece the summer homes of movie stars and celebrity speculators.


There were no movie stars floating face down in the Lower Ninth Ward nor in Lakeview nor St. Bernard Parish. For the ‘luvvies’ of Westhampton Dunes, the federal government even trucked in sand to replace the beaches. But for New Orleans’ survivors, there’s the aluminum gulag of FEMA trailer parts. Today, two years later, 89,000 families still live in this mobile home Guantanamo - with no plan whatsoever for their return.

And what was the effect of the White House’s self-serving delay?

I spoke with van Heerden in his university office. The computer model of the hurricane flashed quietly as I waited for him to answer. Then he said, “Fifteen hundred people drowned. That’s the bottom line.”

They could have survived Hurricane Katrina. But they got no mercy from Hurricane George.

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For the rest of the story, get the DVD, “BIG EASY TO BIG EMPTY: The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans,” as reported by Greg Palast from Louisiana for Democracy Now - with Amy Goodman and the music of “the city that care forgot.” Watch a clip on our Youtube page.

And read the full story of our investigation in the added chapter on New Orleans in the new paperback edition of “Armed Madhouse: from Baghdad to New Orleans - Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild.” Click here to donate to our Investigative Fund and receive a book signed by Greg Palast as a gift from us.

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New report by Corps: Who Flooded New Orleans?

Friday, July 13th, 2007

The Hurricane Protection Decision Chronology, a report financed by the US Army Corps of Engineers was released this week detailing all the decisions leading to the flimsy flood protection that New Orleans depended on when Katrina came ashore. The Chronology report proves yet again that the citizens of New Orleans and the nation’s taxpayers deserve the 8/29 Commission, the brainchild of Levees.Org. Here’s why:

1. The Corps of Engineers financed this study. Since the Corps is the sole agency responsible for the design and the construction of the Greater New Orleans’ flood protection, this means the Corps was intimately involved in the investigation of their own work. If you investigate yourself, what do you think you’re going to find?

2. The Corps’ press release stated that the Corps of Engineers was allowed to review the report before it was released for “errors in logic!” You call that independent?

3. Most interesting to me is a sub-report “Local Sponsor Roles” which apparently had been withheld since August 2006, had conclusions which contradicted the main report (found on the last page of Appendix E). The report on Local Sponsor Roles wasn’t nearly so critical of the historic Orleans Levee District as the main report. And besides, why had the report been withheld until now?

The citizens of Louisiana and the nation deserve better. Please click on this link and send a letter to your Members of Congress demanding the 8/29 Commission, an independent analysis of the flood protection failures in Greater New Orleans.

Sandy Rosenthal
www.levees.org

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Katrina’s Bigger Picture

This is the fourth in a series of five to help the Democratic Party, particularly its presidential hopefuls, to get the framework right, to broaden its lens through which it views Katrina, what’s stopping recovery, what will speed up a vibrant recovery, and how Katrina affords us the opportunity to transform the basic quality of life for all Americans.

Clearly, the Democratic debate on PBS hit a bit of a raw nerve with me. The debate question and candidates’ answers reflected the framework for our national discussion, which has been too narrow, too tiny when discussing who Hurricane Katrina impacted and what the impact was, as well as the solutions offered. So let’s put on a lens through which we can see Katrina’s bigger picture.

First, Hurricane Katrina itself destroyed the Mississippi Gulf Coast. However, the New Orleans disaster was another matter. As so aptly stated on Levees.org, “New Orleans was destroyed primarily by bad engineering and not bad weather.”

Moreover, “[r]esponsibility for the levee failures on August 29, 2005, in New Orleans rests squarely on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and on Congress. This means that the federal government bears primary responsibility for the flooding of metro New Orleans and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of homes and livelihoods.”

When Hurricane Katrina breached the levees in New Orleans, the floods indiscriminately drenched Republican and Democratic, wealthy, middle class, and low income homes and neighborhoods as well as every ethnic group in this international city. However, had the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers carried out its responsibilities, these New Orleans residents would have been spared this horrendous flood. To carry out their responsibilities, of course, requires financial resources as well as solid policy based on sound engineering and environmental principles.

The Washington Post reported

Bush repeatedly requested less money for programs to guard against catastrophic storms in New Orleans than many federal and state officials requested.

When disclosures like this came out in Katrina’s immediate aftermath, the Army Corps of Engineers defended the Bush Administration. "It was not a funding issue," said Carol Sanders, the chief spokeswoman for the corps. "It's an issue of the design capabilities of these projects." What a disingenuous though unsurprising answer since the Corps “worked closely with White House officials” on the responses to these tough, important questions regarding the Bush Administration’s responsibility in deliberately cutting the corps’ budget.

The Washington Post article continued.

Local and federal officials have long warned that funding shortages in the New Orleans area would have consequences. They sounded the alarm as recently as last summer [meaning 2005] when they complained that federal budget cuts had stopped major work on New Orleans east bank hurricane levees for the first time in 37 years. Al Naomi, the senior project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, reported at the time that he was getting only half as much money as he needed and that much of the funding was being used to pay contractors for past work.

"When levees are below grade, as ours are in many spots right now, they're more vulnerable to waves pouring over them and degrading them," Naomi told the Times-Picayune of New Orleans. Walter Maestri, the emergency management chief in Jefferson Parish (county), at the time linked the funding shortfall to the cost of the Iraq war. "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay," he told the newspaper. Maestri added, "For us, this levee is part and parcel of homeland security because it helps protect us 365 days a year."

Indeed, if this city had had the kind of protection that the Netherlands has, my family members who live in the Big Easy would have had it easy after the storm. Here are pictures that demonstrate the difference between the levees in New Orleans and those in the Netherlands.

New Orleans Levees
Photos by National Geographic.

The repaired Industrial Canal levee wall in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward is green with new turf in July 2006 (top). The U.S. government says the city's levees are back at pre-Katrina conditions.A school bus sat stranded near a breach in the same levee on September 12, 2005 (bottom). The embankments were built to endure Category Three storms, yet several crumbled after Katrina's Category Three assault, perhaps as a result of poor design and construction.

Mario Tama / Getty Images file
Workers rebuild the levee along New
Orleans' Industrial Canal in the Lower
Ninth Ward

Netherlands Levees











Photo Credit: By Molly Moore -- The Washington Post Photo
Ted Sluyter, who organizes school tours of the Dutch sea defense system, says the calamitous 1953 flood bears clear parallels to the New Orleans disaster.

U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) led a 40 member delegation from Louisiana to the Netherlands to tour the world's largest levee system.

"When the unprecedented disasters of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the subsequent levee breaks struck Louisiana, the Netherlands was one of the first nations to come forward to offer their support," Sen. Landrieu said. "The Dutch know all too well the challenges we face, having lived for centuries under the threat from similar vulnerability themselves."

Protecting a world class city like New Orleans with a world class levee system like the Dutch have is what we need to do to protect this national treasure. A Netherlands-type of levee system will protect residents, neighborhoods, and businesses in New Orleans. That’s what homeland security is about. It is the smart, savvy, and environmentally sound thing to do. Plenty of good jobs and spin-off business will come from investing in this.

The wider view is that our nation will once again be demonstrating a commitment to investing in the best here at home for our own people, using information rooted in scientific fact.

The wider view still is something I learned from Levees.org. Twenty eight (28) states have at least 120 levees that are vulnerable to the same catastrophic failure New Orleans experienced. One hundred and twenty potential government-created environmental and economic disasters?! Holy Moly!

The spin off benefits of this kind of a levee system will be fantastic. What an awesome boon to our educational system alone with a renewed national commitment to math, science, and technology. Remember the seven-year old African American girl whom I had met at the Bay St. Louis library? She had proudly shared with me that she gets “A’s in math and science!”

With these kinds of projects in 120 areas across the country, little girls and boys in the surrounding areas would grow up with dreams of being engineers and scientists who work at world class facilities just down the street. This is a way we build great communities in which families can live, work, and play generation after generation after generation. What a concept, huh?!

Through the lens of the Katrina travesty, we have learned that we need to reform our national priorities to invest in world class levees in over half the states in our nation. We have also learned of another national problem requiring a national solution. Insurance carriers are jacking up premium costs or not covering homeowners here in Katrina Land . . . and all across the country.

Broadening Katrina’s Lens:
A five Part Series
Part 1: Broadening Katrina's Lens
Part 2: Recovery’s Two Major Impediments: $$$ and the “F” word
Part 3: The "F" Word: FEMA
Part 4: Katrina’s Bigger Picture
Part 5: Katrina’s Karmic Payback: Insurance Reform

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Broadening Katrina's Lens

This is the first in a series to help the Democratic Party, particularly its presidential hopefuls, to get the framework right, to broaden its lens through which it views Katrina, what’s stopping recovery, what will speed up a vibrant recovery, and how Katrina affords us to transform the basic quality of life for all Americans.

Last week’s Democratic presidential debate really rubbed me the wrong way. From the question posed to the answers given, everyone just marched right along with a recitation of the media’s “one-size-fits-all” frame for discussing who Hurricane Katrina impacted, what that impact was, and a bevy of insufficient solutions offered as a result of this faulty way of viewing this catastrophe.

The one-size-fits-all approach goes something like this.

1. Katrina = New Orleans = levees.
   
2. Problems stemming from Katrina are the same for New Orleans, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and the areas Katrina impacted that were as far as 200 miles inland from the Gulf Coast.
   
3. Katrina impacted mostly the most poor among us, and they were primarily located in the 9th Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana.
   
4. The ineptitude stemming from the Bush White House and FEMA comes out of a racist lens alone.
   
5. Solutions for the city of New Orleans and its levees will solve all the problems stemming from Katrina, which really are about Bush’s immense callous ineptitude about poor people who could not leave New Orleans before Katrina.
   
6. Talking about Katrina recovery in New Orleans is shorthand for talking about, addressing, understanding, and solving the multitude of issues regarding recovery for everything inside and outside of New Orleans.

Do these ring a bell? Of course, they do. The media played these images and talked only of New Orleans and the levees over and over again until they became seared in our brains. The framework became installed. Katrina = New Orleans = levees = racist/classist betrayal. Unfortunately, these are all, indeed, true, but the picture is incomplete and encourages otherwise intelligent individuals to ask questions that miss the mark and offer solutions that are insufficient to address all of the problems we face.

Let’s take last week’s debate as an example. NPR’s Michel Martin asked the following question to the Democratic presidential hopefuls.

Would you support a federal law guaranteeing the right to return to New Orleans and other gulf regions devastated by hurricane Katrina based on the United Nations human rights standards governing the internal displacement of citizens?

What?! Are you kidding me?! Invoking the United Nations? Look. What we need to invoke is the infamous phrase from the movie “Jerry McGuire”: Show me the Money! Show me the Money!

While Ms. Martin’s question was well-meaning, the question itself as well as the answers the Democratic hopefuls provided displayed an appalling ignorance of what is stopping cities from rebuilding their communities, hindering businesses from reopening their doors, and preventing people from returning to their homes, jobs, schools, places of worship, and lives.

Had the staff of NPR or the Democratic Presidential hopefuls been research savvy, they would have learned that Congressman Gene Taylor and U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu have put forth some incredible legislative initiatives to address real problems with real solutions such as expanding the flood insurance program to include all natural perils (H.R 920) and to close the anti-trust loop that has permitted the insurance companies to collude with each other legally (S.618).

Perhaps someone will forward various Democratic presidential campaign staffers this specific series or just turn them on to A.M. in the Morning!

God help us all. The Democrats have to get the framework right. We know that the ReTHUGlicans will be completely clueless—and care less about being clueless.

As Democrats, we agree that the preparation for Katrina and the recovery efforts in her aftermath are microcosms of and metaphors for the appalling absence of White House leadership since George W. Bush and Dick Cheney stole the 2000 presidential election and moved into our Oval Office in January of 2001. On that end of the analysis, we have agreement.

However, flushing out the specifics of the microcosms and metaphors requires more than sound bites that fit nicely with the overall theme of a candidate’s campaign or one’s political perspective on poverty, the environment, race, the Bush Administration, etc.

For example, continually boiling down the problems New Orleans faces only to repairing levees and the challenges in the 9th Ward alone misses the bigger picture and important elements for recovery in that city, in the Gulf Coast region, and in the nation.

By broadening our minds to take in the fullness of what encompasses the problems we face here, we can then see the great opportunities to recover this area far quicker and to make dramatic changes that will fundamentally improve the quality of our lives regardless of where we live. After all, every family wants to protect its greatest asset—home. When we fix what’s wrong with the recovery efforts here in Katrina Land, we’ll be protecting everyone’s home from sea to shining sea.

To do this, we must begin with a framework that works for Louisiana and Mississippi, for those inside of New Orleans and those outside of it, for those that Katrina directly impacted and for those that future natural disasters—tornado, flood, blizzard, mudslide, earthquake—will impact.

What’s wrong with our recovery has everything to do with the crisis in confidence we feel in our federal government, the White House, as well as our insurance corporations that are supposed to provide financial security for our family’s biggest investment: our home. Remedies for what ails the recovery efforts have already been introduced in Congress. Additional remedies will also come from the innumerable court cases that the Scruggs Katrina Group, The Merlin Group, and other lawyers who are successful in attaining a fair deal for their clients through dragging the insurance carriers to court for a bit of American justice.

In the meantime, it is important that we understand fully the true impediments to our recovery so that we can push our federal lawmakers to make changes that make a real difference for those inside and outside of the Katrina ravaged region of our nation.


Broadening Katrina’s Lens: A five Part Series

Part 1: Broadening Katrina's Lens
Part 2: Recovery’s Two Major Impediments: $$$ and the “F” word
Part 3: The "F" Word: FEMA
Part 4: Katrina’s Bigger Picture
Part 5: Katrina’s Karmic Payback: Insurance Reform

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