New Orleans OK So Far

Image credit: Enhanced infra-red image by NOAA. Reduced and captioned by Cujo359


That's a satellite infra-red image of New Orleans from a couple of hours ago. If a 100 mile-wide storm can be said to miss a city, then Gustav just missed New Orleans. According to Reuters, it hit the coast as a Category 2 storm.

Hurricane Gustav slammed ashore on the U.S. Gulf Coast just west of New Orleans on Monday, hammering the city devastated by Katrina in 2005 with surging floodwaters that threatened its rebuilt levees.

The storm was weaker than had been feared. But waves splashed over floodwalls containing the New Orleans Industrial Canal, triggering a tense watch over the barrier system that failed three years ago, flooding 80 percent of the city and stranding thousands of people.

Hurricane Gustav tests New Orleans levees

That's a good thing, because as Dana Hunter points out, some of those levees weren't rebuilt very well:

“That should be criminal,” [St. Bernard parish president Craig] Taffaro continues.

What he's talking about was witnessed by a St. Bernard Parish resident who didn't want to be identified, but did have sharp criticism of the work done by a contractor hired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“It's like putting a Band-Aid on the hole of a gas tank of an airplane,” the resident said.

Instead of an airplane, it's a floodwall, and instead of a Band-Aid, the witness says two years ago, he saw the contractor filling the expansion joint or opening between the floodwalls with newspaper.

4 Investigates: Floodwalls stuffed with newspaper?

Expansion joints are necessary in any large masonry structure, like some of the floodwalls around New Orleans. Their function is to allow the large pieces of masonry to expand and contract in the heat and cold without cracking. They have to be filled with something - preferably something that is strong, flexible, and isn't water soluble. This is an Army Corps of Engineers photo of one such joint, which is located in the St. Charles Floodwall. Over the short term, newspaper was an adequate expedient, but these newsprint expansion joints weren't a short-term solution, as it turned out:

But during a recent trip to the area, two years later, it was apparent [a replacement with proper materials] didn't happen. Much of the newspaper had deteriorated or been eaten by bugs, but some still remained. In fact WWL cameras even captured the date May 21, 2006, on a page of the Parade magazine from the Times-Picayune.

4 Investigates: Floodwalls stuffed with newspaper?

What would proper materials be? According to the news story:

[T]he Army Corps of Engineers says it is confident the floodwall will sufficiently defend residents of St. Bernard and the Ninth Ward.

“If you look at the repairs we made to the joints, there's not really a safety issue with the joints at all,” said Kevin Wagner with the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps also says it’s satisfied with the quality of work done by its contractor. When asked by WWL if there was any shoddy work involved, Wagner said, “I don't think so at all.”

But days before that interview, after a request by Eyewitness News , another Corps employee e-mailed the Corps’ standards for expansion joint construction and in that e-mail, the Corps employee describes the specific materials needed as "sponge rubber" that goes next to the waterstop. That’s the same spot where a witness saw a contractor stuffing newspaper back in 2006.

4 Investigates: Floodwalls stuffed with newspaper?

[emphasis mine]
I'm not a civil engineer, but that's the sort of material I was imagining they should have used. It's flexible and waterproof. If it's the right sort of rubber, it should last for a long time.

If I hadn't spent the last eight years in George W. Bush's America, I'd have said this was unbelievable. As it is, it sounds par for the course.

Anyhow, so far the floodwalls and levees seem to be holding:

In the end, it was just a glancing blow. And for that, the Big Easy let out a big sigh of relief.

A weakened Hurricane Gustav blew into southern Louisiana Monday morning as a less-fearsome Category 2 storm, bearing 110 mile-per-hour winds that cracked tree branches, knocked out power to a million homes and triggered localized flooding, but apparently spared the vulnerable New Orleans levee system.

Gustav hits, but New Orleans escapes worst

It's a bit early to know for sure that NOLA will be OK this time. Recall that it wasn't until hours after the storm had passed that the levees began failing. As the Chicago Tribune article points out, there wasn't the same sort of deluge after Gustav that followed Katrina. Still, soggy ground takes some time to dry out, and that's where the problems will be if they happen.

Meanwhile, we'll just have to hope that the city can survive another bout with Bush Administration incompetence.

UPDATE (Sep. 2): I did something I probably should have done before, which is check for followup stories on the expansion joints being filled with newspapers. Turns out that there was a followup story about a month later, explaining that the Corps had inspected the joints in question, and claimed to have fixed them:

Corps officials told Eyewitness News that in the three expansion joints they inspected earlier this week, five of the six spots had newspaper instead of the proper backing material. Corps officials say it took about four hours to remove the newspaper, install the rubber material, then seal the joint.

So, while it was sloppy to have not followed up on this earlier, apparently the ACE took the story seriously and did correct the problem.

On a related note, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin announced today that citizens would be able to re-enter the city in a matter of days.

You Can Almost Smell The Magnolias

Image credit: The Oxford [Mississippi] Heritage Society (see Note 1)


It's a plot you'd expect to see in a John Grisham novel: a successful, politically connected lawyer who fights greedy tobacco and insurance companies is indicted for bribing the judge in what may be the case of his career, a case in which he is representing Katrina victims against one of those greedy insurance companies. Perhaps not coincidentally, John Grisham knows these people. Yep, this is Southern legal drama at its best. Well, maybe not its best - no one's been murdered yet (thankfully). Almost makes me crave a mint julep and a front porch on which to sip it:

Richard "Dickie" Scruggs has carefully crafted an image as an aw-shucks country lawyer who champions the little guy in David-and-Goliath legal battles.

But in truth, Scruggs is himself a giant - a legend of the Mississippi bar, a supremely well-connected political insider, and one of the richest men in one of the poorest states in the Union, having made hundreds of millions of dollars from taking on Big Tobacco and asbestos and insurance companies.

Now he faces the fight of his life over a relatively modest $50,000 - the amount prosecutors say he offered to a Mississippi judge as a bribe.

Bribery allegations threaten career of lawyer Dickie Scruggs

Lotus, over at her new blog Folo, has been following this drama, with a followup today. Go over and pay her a visit. She's made more sense out of this thing than I could have.

Much has been made of Richard Scrugg's ties to Hillary Clinton, but for some reason the mainstream press have failed to note some of his other connections:

But his political loyalties have always been a little suspect, and not just because of his in-law status. This year, for instance, he has given nearly $30,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and several thousand dollars to Joe Biden. But he's also contributed to Republican John McCain. Next month, Bill Clinton was scheduled to headline a fundraiser for his wife at Scruggs' Oxford home. Not surprisingly, today a Clinton spokesman tells Mother Jones that the event is "not happening."

Hillary Clinton Says Bye-Bye to Indicted Trial Lawyer

[bold emphasis mine]

Like many folks whose living depends at least partly on government largess, Dickie Scruggs has been hedging his bets. Yet only the Clinton connection receives any attention. Wonder why?

Note 1: Oxford is home to both John Grisham and Dickie Scruggs, as reported in this AP article.

UPDATE: Added expository quote from the Associated Press, and corrected another link which has gone south since I published earlier.

Lotus has another article up, this one about the judge in the case, Henry L. Lackey. As she relates, little about this case makes sense. Scruggs and Lackey undoubtedly have known each other, if not personally than certainly by reputation, for decades. That Scruggs would try to bribe him now just doesn't make sense if Lackey were clearly not the sort of person who accepts bribes.

Like I said, this one is interesting.

Beignets and Circuses?

Remember New Orleans? It was a city in Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Big port, lots of oil refineries, and they did a little bit of fishing, too. Used to be you could go just about anywhere there and run into colorful characters or interesting places. All that changed two years ago when a rather large hurricane hit the place.

You'd never know that to look on Google News today. I tried. There's not much there about how a major American city has been dying of neglect. Lynn Allen at Evergreen Politics seems to have noticed this, too. But hey, if Owen Wilson's feeling down who has time for trivia, right? Now, I'm not picking on Google News, mind you. It's just a good indicator of what's out there, and what people are reading.

Various blogs have been mired in the trivia, though.

Digby provided a well documented timeline of events on August 29, 2005, the day the hurricane came ashore. You'll note that President Bush had time to go to two separate venues to flog his dreadful Medicare plan, but didn't have time to answer Louisiana Governor Blanco's pleas for assistance. As Jane Hamsher points out, he did have time to slip Halliburton another sweetheart contract.

Back at EP, shoephone takes the tale from there:

On this second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, when guesses are percolating about which Bush crony or incompetent will be nominated for attorney general, I won't forget how Michael Chertoff, Director of Homeland Security, told NPR's Robert Seigel, just hours after flooding wreaked havoc on New Orleans, that there were lots of rumors swirling and so he was totally unaware of 1200 people languishing inside the convention center without food or water! Chertoff's willful ignorance was like a dare. Too bad NPR sent John Burnett out to report on the facts -- confirming the numbers, the lack of food and water and adding that two people were also lying dead in their wheelchairs inside the convention center, now teeming with stench and desperation and mayhem.

2-Year Anniversary of Katrina: The President's Empty Promises

Yes, what a glorious time! Michael "Brownie" Brown swung into action, which is to say he got his suitcase out, picked an appropriate wardrobe, and headed south. To see the wheels of government spinning with such efficiency was a wonder to behold, wasn't it?

It hasn't gotten any better since then. Depression and use of psychiatric medication is rampant there. Anyone who has seen or read any of Chris Rose's essays on New Orleans since Katrina knows just how bad things can be for its residents:

I pulled into the Shell station on Magazine Street, my car running on fumes. I turned off the motor. And then I just sat there.

There were other people pumping gas at the island I had pulled into and I didn't want them to see me, didn't want to see them, didn't want to nod hello, didn't want to interact in any fashion.

Outside the window, they looked like characters in a movie. But not my movie.

I tried to wait them out, but others would follow, get out of their cars and pump and pay and drive off, always followed by more cars, more people. How can they do this, like everything is normal, I wondered. Where do they go? What do they do?

It was early August and two minutes in my car with the windows up and the air conditioner off was insufferable. I was trapped, in my car and in my head.

So I drove off with an empty tank rather than face strangers at a gas station.

Hell And Back

I bet you'll be hearing and reading a whole lot more about Owen Wilson's battles with depression than you'll hear about New Orleans'.

New Orleans is now a place where much of the city is still uninhabitable, where garbage isn't collected, and where the justice system is overwhelmed. Construction work there entails the sort of hazards normally associated with Third World countries. And some of those colorful folks I mentioned? Phoenix Woman explains that some of them are just a bit too colorful, if you know what I mean. Looks like we can add New Orleans to Baghdad and Basra as cities the Bush Administration have made much worse.

Yet, shoephone points out, precious little has been done since then. Less, in fact, than was promised. You won't be reading about that in the news any time soon, I'll bet.

UPDATE (Aug 31): Part of the reason the courts are overwhelmed in New Orleans is that crime is also increasing:

The number of permits issued to carry concealed weapons is running twice as high as it was before Katrina — this, in a city with only about half its pre-storm population of around 450,000. Attendance at firearms classes and hours logged at shooting ranges also are up, according to the gun industry.

Gun dealers who saw sales shoot up during the chaotic few months after Katrina say that sales are still brisk, and that the customers are a cross-section of the population — doctors, lawyers, bankers, artists, laborers, stay-at-home moms.

[snip]

Citizens, the tourism industry, police and politicians officials have been alarmed by the wave of killings in New Orleans, with 162 in 2006. A Tulane University study put the city's 2006 homicide rate at 96 slayings per 100,000 people, the highest in the nation.

National Guardsmen and state police are patrolling the streets of New Orleans. In neighboring Jefferson Parish, which posted a record 66 homicides in 2006, the sheriff sent armored vehicles to protect high-crime neighborhoods.

(April, 2007) New Orleans residents arming themselves ...

No wonder no one wants to get out of their cars.

UPDATE 2 (Sep. 2): An updated version of this article is cross-posted at Taylor Marsh's site.

UPDATE 3 (Sep. 2): Good grief, I'm just noticing this now? Corrected the text describing Digby's post to the correct year. The weather on Aug. 29, 2007 was considerably more pleasant in New Orleans, I imagine.