Heyia GDNO1 -- and all.<br><br>I FINALLY found some spot-on info with maps and images and details, I have a much better handle on what the deal with the busted levees are -- although there's still a LOT that isn't being reported -- as an apparant complete info-hold on the MSM even MENTIONING the barge-in-the-backyard. I found several other images of this, one showing a substantial deep break the barge must have made. That levee-break is the southernmost of two breaks on the Industrial Canal, part of the Inner Harbor Navigation Channel, and which flooded the poor Ward 9 neighborhood. The other major break occurred to the west of the city on the 17th Street Canal very close to the Lake. That canal isn't part of the Navigation system -- it's not used for barge traffic, the bridges are low-lying stationary traffic crossings. The 17th street canal breach occurred very close to a just-constructed concrete overpass/causeway, with leftover construction pilings in the canal jammed alongside the southern side of the bridge. This breach is very suspicious -- but I couldn't find any conclusive evidence of a deliberate sabotage, just speculation. I think it's VERY odd that these levees weren't being closely monitored, and emergency high-priority effort made to plug the breaks with every possible urgency.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.kathryncramer.com/kathryn_cramer/2005/08/new_orleans_lev.html">www.kathryncramer.com/kat...s_lev.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>-- Excellant blogsite with numerous links and info on the numerous New Orleans canal levee breaks, attempting to cut through the confusion and misinformation that the mass-media has confounded the public with -- WHY? WHY hasn't any news media commented on the OBVIOUS, in-your-face fact of a beached barge having crashed through the broken levee in Ward 9. I'm STILL not sure if the 17th street canal and Industrial Canal are the same. Still looking for some clear images that conform with the few video-news shots I've seen of thr 17th street levee break showing what seems to be another runaway barge.<br>From the above-cited blog:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.kathryncramer.com/kathryn_cramer/2005/08/new_orleans_lev.html">www.kathryncramer.com/kat...s_lev.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>A reader named Jeannie Dominguez asked me to post this comment, sent via email:<br>I was just listening to our President and I cannot stop crying. Ronald Reagan often said, "The most terrifying words in the English language are: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." <br>***<br>Today on the 12:00 news, I was spoon fed, that the Army of the United States of America could not plug it using HUGE sandbags. Our troops, that are dying, having toppled a government and paved the way for big oil business and huge federal contracts are in New Orleans already? They could not plug the breach? We are not looking for neatly placed, in little rows solutions. We do not need a structure requiring engineers and whatever other stupid justifications there are. We need to plug a hole. It is and should have been the priority. Maybe I just watch too many movies of communities battling flood waters and successfully saving the farm and saving the day. Maybe I have visions of Volcano and the Emergency Manager that blew up a building creating tons of cement to block and divert the lava into the ocean. I can't remember the actor's name and that pisses me off too.<br><br>Hell you could just pick up slabs of Highway 10 with a cable and dump them where the levy is breached. Why aren't we dropping or placing massive amounts of anything that will stop the water from coming in? Where are scenes of our helicopters, the Marines or our ships that went all the way to Sumatra? What kind of emergency management is it that gives up and does not mobilize instantly every resource we have and instead just shakes it's head and gives in to hopelessness? What kind of reporting does not pounce all over this? Don't tell me or tell us all that the breach is impossible to sandbag or obstruct with the considerable amount of cement and debris that is all over the place.<br><br>Why is "can't" part of our vocabulary in such dire circumstances? The public at large is watching this and wondering why the city and its people are being literally murdered with the toxic water that no one cares to stop from continuing to enter. One asks themselves what agenda is in play here when no one is saving the homes of the poor and displaced. They are figuring out where to get rid of them as opposed to saving their homes. Most of those that did not evacuate and are trapped are poor.<br><br>Is this gross incompetence or a new way of clearing land for prime real estate for big business development? Of course we do not know but is it not so odd to revert to paranoid thinking when we see the mass destruction of the already poor.I am not a fortune teller but I predict that New Orleans will be reconstructed alright, but not for the people that were displaced.<br><br>Leaving conspiracy theories aside because I want to be taken seriously, let's look at what WE DO KNOW. We need to prioritize our focus. The focus should not be the damage or the tragedy because that is clear to us all by just looking at the images we see. We should be enraged at the value given to a human life lately since the war and now blatantly at home on our own soil. The focus should be on what we cannot see, yet we know for fact: the inexcusable lack of action or reaction to the broken levy. It is unconscionable that now our troops are the scapegoat. It is solely the government leaders at all levels, including the Army brass all the way to the Commander in Chief that are responsible for this shameful response that no doubt will benefit someone. We just do not see it yet. Remember this letter when New Orleans rebuilds.<br><br>Ronald Reagan often said, "The most terrifying words in the English language are: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." I have never been so ashamed of my own government and so ashamed to be American. You should know that I do not vote or have political favorites when I say that the people of New Orleans should take the governor and the mayor and now with the 12:00 news, our Commander in Chief and hang them by the thumbs because they have failed them and are directly at fault for the immense loss of life and property; Katrina is not; not really.<br><br>Jeannie Dominguez<br>*****<br>--quote--<br>The Intracoastal Waterway is man-made. There are levee breeches along the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal, which connects the Mississippi River with the Intercoastal Waterway. There are images of these breeches at
www.digitalglobe.com. New Orleans was founded in 1718.<br>**<br>Actually, the breach listed at the top of the page is incorrect. The 17th St. Canal breach was close to the lake. Your photo indicates the breach being more Midcity, at about Metairie Road/Palmetto Overpass (my old neighborhood). There was another breach on the other side of town, by the Industrial Canal, but no breach here in Midcity.<br><br>Posted by: Shea Dixon | Monday, September 05, 2005 <br>**<br>Your second photo is from the reverse angle, compared to the first; the first pix is looking north from Midcity, this is at the Lake, looking south. This 2nd pix shows the new red-roofed Coast Guard station on the Jefferson Parish side, the JUST-last-week completed new Hammond Hwy. bridge (with all the wood refuse clustered about its pilings) and above it on the Orleans Parish side -- the breach, located just south of the Marina.<br><br>Posted by: Shea Dixon | Monday, September 05, <br>**<br>I don't know about intentionally breaching levees to save rich neighborhoods, although I wounldn't doubt it. However, I think we are deceiving ourselves if we don't pay more attention to the likelihood of the deliberate breaching of the levees. The photos of virtually all the levees show peculiar formations that are not natural occurrences. Knife-like breaches that are very deep are not something overflooding would cause. Also I saw a photo that showed a deep hole in a levee, surrounded by mounds of earth. This is typical of explosive demolition. In addition, the breaches occurred significantly after the hurricane ended, so the force of the storm could not provide any force to cause the breaches. All these things indicate deliberate sabotage of the levees. Also the levees were strategically placed so that only a few (2-3) breaches could flood the entire downtown region of the city. So we need to pay more attention to the very likely probability that the levees were intentionally breached to flood the city. If we don't pay attention, we're making a fatal mistake.<br><br>Posted by: Tom | Tuesday<br>**<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://earth.google.com/images/outages.jpg">earth.google.com/images/outages.jpg</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>New Orleans sat image with graduated flood-damage zones detail<br>**<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://whatluck4rulers.thesanman.com/flood.htm">whatluck4rulers.thesanman.com/flood.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <br><br>Regarding whether the breaches were caused by the storm or intentional, category 4 or 5 or unable/difficult to repair:<br><br>The huge storm surge did not bring any of the levees down. They all held. The next day we celebrated that the Big Easy had been spared. The levee breaking and the toxic water disaster did not materialize. <br><br>Then the levee is breached or rather a storm wall. Tom something, a Parrish councilmen is awakened Tuesday morning and told this. KATRINA WAS GONE MONDAY MORNING.<br><br>So the city was blessed and with no bad weather or storms SOMETHING STARTS GOING WRONG.<br><br>All of this is not relevant because the Emergency Operations Plan, did not even touch on "flood fight". That is huge given the terrible loss of life and destruction that was sure to happen and that was KNOWN FOR YEARS AND YEARS. When you live in bowl you have "flood fight" planning. <br><br>Disaster relief is big business. I don't know about terrorists, but we have big business, Halliburton and Eminent Domain. The we have a country that is so outraged with the response to help the victims we are distracted from 2 things.<br>1. the levee gap was not even addressed and the response was to let the water level out. the response to the storm water the day before was zero. one would think that at first light you would be all over the pumps with generators and a crew of workers to get them to pump the storm water out. THERE WAS NOTHING ON STANDBY and no one was monitoring the integrity of any of the levees. everyone SURRENDERED TO THE BREACH<br>. . .<br>plus we have pumps that should have been there prepared to get that water out. the bigger the disaster the more the money .so who cares about the people you have to get rid of.<br><br>for supporting documentation go here:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://whatluck4rulers.thesanman.com/flood.htm">whatluck4rulers.thesanman.com/flood.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <br>**<br>Lake Shore (the rich neighborhoods along Lake<br>Ponchartrain) DID get flooded, City Park, the northern part of Uptown, and parts of Old Metairie. There really isn't a levee along the east side of the 17th treet canal, just what you would probably call a sea wall, which is what I call revetments. <br>There IS a levee with revetments along the<br>west side of the 17th street canal. You can see that in this image.<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/new-orleans-17th-levee.htm">www.globalsecurity.org/mi...-levee.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>(NOTE: This image clearly shows this is a different levee breach than the one cited earlier showing a stranded barge -- this shows a recently-repaired concrete bridge with massive debris-field of construction pilings on north side of the bridge -- clearly NOT a lift-bridge to accomodate barge-traffic. Apparently my 'recall' of what looked like a sunken barge at the 17 st. levee breach was faulty. However, my tentative suspician of possible sabotage remains. There are conflicting reports of engineers deliberately breaking sections of levee/floodwall to 'aid' the outflow of floodwater, with no clarification that I've been able to find.<br><br>Anybody have any thoughts to add, or a better grasp of how many actual breaches there are, what was done (if anything) to effect emergency repairs in the critical hours following their being discovered, and WHY these repairs were abandoned? There was a report of a helicopter dropping 3000 pound sandbags, also reports of several cars dropped into the break. Why weren't these helicopters used to drop relief supplies when they were no longer trying to fix the levee breaks? There are still MANY unanswered questions.<br>Starman<br>**<br><br>17th street canal levee breach: Satellite Image (2 high-res before-and-after images available)<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17020">earthobservatory.nasa.gov...g_id=17020</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>This is an entirely DIFFERENT section of levee in another canal, than this, which shows a mechanical-lift bridge to accomodate canal navigation traffic:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.kathryncramer.com/kathryn_cramer/images/050830_katrina_hlrg_10ahlarge.jpg">www.kathryncramer.com/kat...hlarge.jpg</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>This seems to be the same scene showing the runaway barge, visible though not very clearly. This must be the Industrial Canal.(Starman)<br>PS: Dramatic side-by-side before and after images on what I THINK is the 17th street levee -- showing several bridges that are NOT moveable-lift for canal navigation. A third image identifies another section of failed levee about a mile south of the levee breach detailed in the second. It's still VERY confusing trying to identify WHICH levee breaks and WHICH canals are being shown in various uncaptioned photos, which the news media hasn't done anything to clarify. The question must be-- WHY?<br><br>Another good image showing the Industrial Canal breach with grounded barge, also showing a primary break while water flows back into the canal over the tops of a much wider stretch of concrete floodwall.<br>New Orleans map of levees/floodwalls:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Components/Interactives/Weather/Hurricane/Katrina/Levees_v1.gif">msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnb...ees_v1.gif</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>showing both 17th Street Canal and Industrial Canal (not labeled, but evident: 17th street is to the west of downtown, while Industrial, part of the Intracoastal Waterway system connecting Lake Ponchetrain with the Mississippi River, is to the east of downtown, on the other side of the New Orleans University and alongside the Lakefront Airport.<br><br>The following article (original source not identified--sorry) clarifies that the Industrial Canal has 2 breaches which flooded the 9th Ward (the southerly breach where the supposed grounded barge ended-up -- I wonder if this barge might have been used to try to seal the break? -- while the 17th Street Canal on the west side of the city is an entirely different neighborhood, very close to the Lake. The blog site listed below is another excellant link to articles and images. --Starman<br><br>From:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://ilx.wh3rd.net/thread.php?showall=true&msgid=6173265#6174829">ilx.wh3rd.net/thread.php?...65#6174829</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>Mark Schleifstein<br>Staff writer<br>--quote--<br><br>The catastrophic flooding that filled the bowl that is New Orleans on Monday and Tuesday will only get worse over the next few days because rainfall from Hurricane Katrina continues to flow into Lake Pontchartrain from north shore rivers and streams, and east winds and a 17.5-foot storm crest on the Pearl River block the outflow water through the Rigolets and Chef Menteur Pass.<br><br>The lake is normally 1 foot above sea level, while the city of New Orleans is an average of 6 feet below sea level. But a combination of storm surge and rainfall from Katrina have raised the lake's surface to 6 feet above sea level, or more.<br><br>All of that water moving from the lake has found several holes in the lake's banks - all pouring into New Orleans. Water that crossed St. Charles Parish in an area where the lakefront levee has not yet been completed, and that backed up from the lake in Jefferson Parish canals, is funneling into Kenner and Metairie.<br><br>A 500-yard and growing breach in the eastern wall of the 17th Street Canal separating New Orleans from Metairie is pouring hundreds of thousands of gallons of lake water per second into the New Orleans area. Water also is flowing through two more levee breaches along the Industrial Canal, which created a Hurricane Betsy-on-steroids flood in the Lower 9th Ward on Monday that is now spreading south into the French Quarter and other parts of the city.<br><br>New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin warned Tuesday evening that an attempt to plug the holes in the 17th Street Canal had failed, and the floodwaters were expected to continue to rise rapidly throughout the night. Eventually, Nagin said, the water could reach as high as 3 feet above sea level, meaning it could rise to 12 to 15 feet high in some parts of the city.<br><br>Louisiana State University Hurricane Center researcher Ivor van Heerden warned that Nagin's estimates could be too low because the lake water won't fall quickly during the next few days.<br><br>"We don't have the weather conditions to drive the water out of Lake Pontchartrain, and at the same time, all the rivers on the north shore are in flood," he said. "That water is just going to keep rising in the city until it's equal to the level of the lake. <br><br>"Unless they can use sandbags to compartmentalize the flooded areas, the water in the city will rise everywhere to the same level as the lake."<br><br>This isn't the first time that the 17th Street Canal has proved to be a hurricane-flooding Achilles heel. Following a 1947 hurricane that made a direct hit on New Orleans and Metairie, officials were unable to clear floodwaters from Metairie through the canal for two weeks. <br><br><br>Sewage from a treatment plant that stagnated in the canal created enough sulfuric acid fumes that nearby homes in Lakeview painted with lead-based paint turned black. <br><br>The slow-motion flooding of the south shore mirrors a similar flooding event during Tropical Storm Isidore, when weather conditions blocked water from leaving the lake as heavy rainfall pushed its surface higher and higher, causing extensive flooding in low-lying areas of Slidell a day after the storm had passed by.<br><br>Van Heerden said water flowing through New Orleans. back door used a weakness that he and many others have been concerned about for years: a V-shaped funnel formed by the joining of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet and the Inner Harbor Navigation Channel. Storm surge as high as 18 feet pushed through the funnel, into the Industrial Canal and on to the lake. It's that surge water that is thought to have caused breaks in the Industrial Canal levees breaks that lake water is now flowing through into the 9th Ward. <br><br>Water entering that funnel also is thought to have topped levees surrounding Chalmette and eastern New Orleans, causing extensive flooding in both places. <br><br>Van Heerden said that if there's a silver lining to this disastrous event, it's that the eye of Katrina didn't go directly over or to the west of the city. If that had happened, the storm surge could have been much higher and would have directly topped levees all along the lake and much more rapidly filled the bowl, which would have meant an even higher death toll than is anticipated from this slow-moving event, he said.<br><br>This flood event contains many of the features used by federal, state and local planners early this year to begin shaping what was supposed to be a catastrophe recovery plan for New Orleans: failed pumping stations, breached levees, rooftop rescues, makeshift medical triage zones. <br><br>In drawing the plan, officials assumed that it would take several days to a week before enough manpower and equipment could be staged to deal with many of the problems they're facing now, such as how to close the breach in the 17th Street Canal.<br><br>There, the problem is how to close the hole quickly. Strategies suggested during tabletop exercises indicated it could take several days to position barges and cranes in place to more permanently fill such a gap, assuming it was part of the worst-case, storm-surge-driven flooding scenario. <br><br>The slow-motion reality of the collapsing canal wall has the state Department of Transportation and Development and the Army Corps of Engineers working into the night to plug the breach and try to stem the flooding in Lakeview, West End, Bucktown and large swaths of East Jefferson.<br><br>A convoy of trucks carrying 108 15,000-pound concrete barriers - like those used as highway construction dividers - was en route to the site Tuesday night, said Mark Lambert, chief spokesman for the agency. Helicopters will lift the barriers above the hole and drop them in place, even as another 50 sandbags, each weighing 3,000 pounds, are also being maneuvered into place.<br><br>"That's 800 tons of concrete," Lambert said. .What we are trying to do is just stop the water from going into the city."<br><br>More difficult will be the overtopping of levees along the Industrial Canal caused by the high lake water flowing in. Lambert didn't say how the state would address that problem.<br><br>The problems caused by floodwaters will only get worse, according to van Heerden and the earlier tabletop exercises. For one, if the water in the city does rise to the height of levees along the lakefront, it may be difficult to open floodgates designed to keep the lake out that would now be needed to allow the lake to leave. Van Heerden said the rising floodwaters also would cause major pollution problems in coming days, as they float dozens of fuel and chemical storage tanks off their fittings, severing pipelines and allowing the material to seep into the floodwaters. <br><br>"In our surveys of the parish, a lot of the storage tanks we looked at weren't bolted down with big bolts," he said. "They rely on gravity to hold them down. If an industrial property is 5 feet below sea level and the water gets to 5 feet above sea level, that's 10 feet of water, and I'm certain many we looked at will float free.<br><br>"You'll see a lot of highly volatile stuff on the surface, and one spark and we'll have a major fire," he said. <br><br><br>-- gear (speed.to.roa...), August 31st, 2005.<br><br><br><br>**<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.rense.com/general67/painful.htm">www.rense.com/general67/painful.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>--excerpt--<br>Members of the Bush Administration knew full well this catastrophe was coming. Which begs the question: Were the collapse of the 17th Street Canal and the Industrial Canal levees deliberate events? <br>. . .<br>So the presence of this barge in the exact area where the Industrial Canal levee breached is highly suspicious. <br> <br>On a side note, the original story linked above has been "scrubbed" from the main Minneapolis Star Tribune website and replaced with a totally different story. Luckily the original article was found in the Google cache. Looks like whoever destroyed those levees are putting massive pressure on newspapers and websites to censor the truth. <br>--unquote--<br>Starman<br> <p></p><i></i>
by smiths » Wed Sep 07, 2005 11:44 pm 
