H
Harry Dope
Guest
The Katrina Video Congress Didn't Want You To See II
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2007/08/29/the-katrina-video-congress-didnt-want-you-to-see-ii.php
I'm going to warn you now. If you've only heard the news from the mainstream
media, everything you think you know about Katrina flooding New Orleans is
wrong. If you think you already know everything there is to know about
Katrina, then you can safely ignore this post. - If the sum total of your
interest in New Orleans flooding is to bash Nagin or Bush, then please... Go
to where your intellect will be more appreciated. If you'd like to have your
whole understanding of the Great Flood of New Orleans changed, hang on, it's
going to be a bumpy ride.
We've all heard the story, in the early morning hours of Aug 29, 2005, the
Category 4 Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, overwhelming the New Orleans
levee system and flooding the city. If you read Wizbang, you've known since
early October of 2005 this story was fatally flawed.
In the months since Katrina, we've learned that the storm was a Category 1
by the time she hit New Orleans. No "Super Hurricane," just an average
storm. We've also learned that the New Orleans Hurricane Protection System
was not overwhelmed by Katrina, it collapsed. Causing the Corps of Engineers
to admit they flooded New Orleans not Katrina... An admission that got scant
little media coverage. The Great Flood of New Orleans was not a natural
disaster but a man made one.
The reason the Corps finally had to admit responsibility was that the
floodwall that failed -flooding 70% of the city- basically collapsed under
its own weight. It was undeniable. The Corps tried for months to claim the
water came over the top of the floodwall and washed it away from the
backside. (Which would make it Congress's fault) Everyone who has seen the
break or looked at the surge data knew this was a lie; that the wall
suffered a catastrophic failure before the water reached the top. Almost a
year later, the Corps admitted that the floodwall suffered from multiple
fatal design flaws and failed prematurely.
What was not really told to the public however is how high the water got up
the walls before they failed. - This is an important question to a city
rebuilding ~$250 billion in infrastructure. It is commonly assumed by the
public that the water must have been quite high.
The question also has legal ramifications. Sovereign Immunity says citizens
can not sue the government for damages unless there is negligence or
Congress allows the government to be sued. If the public assumption is that
Katrina was responsible for the flooding, Congress would never allow the
government to be sued.
Perhaps that explains why Congress confiscated a video of the floodwall
collapsing and refused to let the public see it until (a perfectly timed) 10
months after the storm. - Well after the storm passed but a few months
before the current 1 year anniversary hype.
You've probably never seen it, but we have video taken by New Orleans
firefighters as the 17th street canal floodwall was actually in the process
of breaking during Katrina. It answers the question of just how prematurely
the walls failed. The video was obtained by the National Geographic channel
and aired a few weeks ago. (it took me a while to blog it, so sue me)
The video -if you understand it- is shocking. Sadly, no one at National
Geographic or even the local TV station got the significance of the
video. -- Because they were looking at the wrong thing.
I'm going to explain what is on the video that no one caught and I'll do my
best to give you a good understanding of the whole thing.
Before I type their whole story, watch the firefighters' story as told by a
local TV station a couple of months ago. As you watch the video, don't worry
about the pictures for now, we'll get to them. For now, listen to the
reporter and the firemen tell their story.
You can also see the video here.
Other than the heroism of the NOFD, let's look at the rest of the video and
why it is so revealing. As the fireman said, the wall broke before 9AM. I
have a picture taken from a house just a few meters from the break and they
left a simple message on their gutted house for the whole world to see about
the timing of the break.
This one isn't, but most other pictures are clickable.
As you can see the water was high enough to kill a battery powered wall
clock by 8:57.
As it turns out, the wall gave way in stages. (Which is logical if you've
ever hit a lump of mud with a garden hose.) Sometime about 8:30AM it started
to leak enough to flood the houses across the street from the break.
Sometime a little after 9AM (as per the firemen) the wall slipped some more
and was in the condition we see it in the video. Later, about 10:30AM a
Coast Guard helicopter pilot saw the wall give way and burst wide open as
we've all seen in the now infamous pictures:
Via Wikipedia, very clickable
So as a recap, the video we have is roughly 30 minutes after it started
leaking and about an hour and a half before it gave way all together. The
damage is still limited to feet not blocks. Now watch the video again:
You were probably, like everyone else, looking at the wall closest to the
camera. If you did that, you were looking at the wrong wall. Look at the
other wall across the canal. Here's a screen shot.
This is the smoking gun. Go ahead and click on it.
And/Or watch the video a few more times.
If you look at the top of the image in the band where the color is shifted,
you see the other wall of the canal. Notice the weeds on the bank? Notice
how far from the top of the wall the water is... just minutes after it
started leaking but over an hour before it gave way. (BTW- This is a cap
from the NGC special, not WWL. Their video was a little cleaner.)
Here is another picture of that same wall -over a week after the storm had
passed- after the repair is in place... In other words, with the water at
"normal" levels.
Look familiar? I reduced it to make it look like the screen cap. It's
clickable.
You can watch the video several times and you'll clearly see the water was
at this level the whole time. In fact the weeds look taller in this picture
because the video was shot form so high up. BTW- If you look at the very
base of the weeds in the good picture, you can barely see some white rocks
in the water. (it will be more clear later)
Here's a few more shots taken in the few weeks after the storm:
This is right after the repair was made. You'll notice (on right) I was
there at low tide.
This is what got me suspicious just a week after the storm. Anyone in the
area knew that wall never saw floodwater...(It was a very low tide)
EVERYTHING the water touched was caked in mud.The wall, on both the front
and back, was clean. It had to be dry. Notice I got there just after they
got the water out of the area... The mud is still wet. I won't tell you how
I got in, I'll just tell you that some National Guardsman from South
Carolina (with a loaded M-16) never heard of social engineering.
The Governor had a little bit better view than me. She didn't even wave.
(Horrible composition, I know, don't remind me.)
This is a great perspective. It is taken at low tide from the break side. In
this picture, you can see the white rocks in the water the tide is so low.
The wall is so tall BTW that I'm 6'3" and I'm standing on top a pickup truck
to take this. And I still couldn't reach the camera above the wall the way I
wanted. AND the truck is on a road they built up to fix the break. The top
of the wall is probably 15ish feet above the water level.
The bottom line is, Katrina's storm surge did not wash the wall away. As you
may remember, water had been seeping under the floodwall at the break
location for about a year before Katrina. The ground under the levee was
soaked and ready to give at any moment...
New Orleans was doomed with or without Katrina, we just didn't know it. A
good high tide puts more water in the canal than this. As the video shows,
the water was barely higher than normal levels. The walls could have failed
on a decent high tide.
From the looks of the video the fact the wall failed when Katrina was
approaching was really coincidence. Yes, Katrina was the "final straw" but
so could any winds from the southeast. Or any given winter storm. (we often
get winds out the south that "stack" the lake far higher than this.) Indeed
these same walls held much higher surges in the past; that is, before they
were undermined by seeping water for a year.
Ironically the same flawed walls are incrementally safer now. We'll never
have water seeping under them for a year and nobody doing anything. The
flaw(s) is still there but now we can compensate for it more effectively.
The right answer, of course, is to replace them.
What I will say next will probably completely throw you. Katrina saved
probably over 50,000 lives.
That levee was doomed. If it had failed without notice, the death toll would
have been measured in tens of thousands. There would be no evacuation, no
preparation, no Feds at all. (such that they were anyway) no Coast Guard in
choppers etc. Tens of thousands of people would have been dead in hours and
tens of thousands more would have died on 120 degree rooftops waiting for
rescue. It would have been unimaginable. - More unimaginable.
"Luckily" -and I groan when I say that- Katrina allowed the city to be
evacuated.
I've said it for months. Katrina didn't flood New Orleans. She just happened
to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But what I find just as troubling is the history of this video. It was
turned over to Federal authorities just days after the storm. The firemen
who took it were told they would be fired if they spoke about it. For months
the Corps -who had to have seen the video- claimed the walls were
overtopped. For months the firemen listened to the lies and never said a
word.
There was no national security reason to hold the video as there might be of
a terrorist attack. In fact the video would have helped the scientists
studying it determine the cause. Congress had the firemen testify behind
closed doors then placed a gag order on them.
I routinely mock conspiracy theorists but I have trouble understanding why
this tape was withheld for months. What I also find interesting is that the
Corps denied they were to blame until June 1... Just TWO WEEKS before this
video was quietly released.
Perhaps, I'm too cynical but it is impossible for me not to notice that if
this tape had been released in the weeks after the storm, the media
coverage -and the scrutiny of Congress- would have been vastly different.
You may draw a different conclusion but I'll go to my grave believing that
Congress withheld this tape intentionally. It was too damning.
What I don't understand is where the media is today on this story... The
story of their lives is waiting to be told but they just ignore it. If you
didn't read Wizbang, you'd never know the true story of the Great Flood of
New Orleans.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
"God bless the America we are trying to create."
Hillary Clinton
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2007/08/29/the-katrina-video-congress-didnt-want-you-to-see-ii.php
I'm going to warn you now. If you've only heard the news from the mainstream
media, everything you think you know about Katrina flooding New Orleans is
wrong. If you think you already know everything there is to know about
Katrina, then you can safely ignore this post. - If the sum total of your
interest in New Orleans flooding is to bash Nagin or Bush, then please... Go
to where your intellect will be more appreciated. If you'd like to have your
whole understanding of the Great Flood of New Orleans changed, hang on, it's
going to be a bumpy ride.
We've all heard the story, in the early morning hours of Aug 29, 2005, the
Category 4 Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, overwhelming the New Orleans
levee system and flooding the city. If you read Wizbang, you've known since
early October of 2005 this story was fatally flawed.
In the months since Katrina, we've learned that the storm was a Category 1
by the time she hit New Orleans. No "Super Hurricane," just an average
storm. We've also learned that the New Orleans Hurricane Protection System
was not overwhelmed by Katrina, it collapsed. Causing the Corps of Engineers
to admit they flooded New Orleans not Katrina... An admission that got scant
little media coverage. The Great Flood of New Orleans was not a natural
disaster but a man made one.
The reason the Corps finally had to admit responsibility was that the
floodwall that failed -flooding 70% of the city- basically collapsed under
its own weight. It was undeniable. The Corps tried for months to claim the
water came over the top of the floodwall and washed it away from the
backside. (Which would make it Congress's fault) Everyone who has seen the
break or looked at the surge data knew this was a lie; that the wall
suffered a catastrophic failure before the water reached the top. Almost a
year later, the Corps admitted that the floodwall suffered from multiple
fatal design flaws and failed prematurely.
What was not really told to the public however is how high the water got up
the walls before they failed. - This is an important question to a city
rebuilding ~$250 billion in infrastructure. It is commonly assumed by the
public that the water must have been quite high.
The question also has legal ramifications. Sovereign Immunity says citizens
can not sue the government for damages unless there is negligence or
Congress allows the government to be sued. If the public assumption is that
Katrina was responsible for the flooding, Congress would never allow the
government to be sued.
Perhaps that explains why Congress confiscated a video of the floodwall
collapsing and refused to let the public see it until (a perfectly timed) 10
months after the storm. - Well after the storm passed but a few months
before the current 1 year anniversary hype.
You've probably never seen it, but we have video taken by New Orleans
firefighters as the 17th street canal floodwall was actually in the process
of breaking during Katrina. It answers the question of just how prematurely
the walls failed. The video was obtained by the National Geographic channel
and aired a few weeks ago. (it took me a while to blog it, so sue me)
The video -if you understand it- is shocking. Sadly, no one at National
Geographic or even the local TV station got the significance of the
video. -- Because they were looking at the wrong thing.
I'm going to explain what is on the video that no one caught and I'll do my
best to give you a good understanding of the whole thing.
Before I type their whole story, watch the firefighters' story as told by a
local TV station a couple of months ago. As you watch the video, don't worry
about the pictures for now, we'll get to them. For now, listen to the
reporter and the firemen tell their story.
You can also see the video here.
Other than the heroism of the NOFD, let's look at the rest of the video and
why it is so revealing. As the fireman said, the wall broke before 9AM. I
have a picture taken from a house just a few meters from the break and they
left a simple message on their gutted house for the whole world to see about
the timing of the break.
This one isn't, but most other pictures are clickable.
As you can see the water was high enough to kill a battery powered wall
clock by 8:57.
As it turns out, the wall gave way in stages. (Which is logical if you've
ever hit a lump of mud with a garden hose.) Sometime about 8:30AM it started
to leak enough to flood the houses across the street from the break.
Sometime a little after 9AM (as per the firemen) the wall slipped some more
and was in the condition we see it in the video. Later, about 10:30AM a
Coast Guard helicopter pilot saw the wall give way and burst wide open as
we've all seen in the now infamous pictures:
Via Wikipedia, very clickable
So as a recap, the video we have is roughly 30 minutes after it started
leaking and about an hour and a half before it gave way all together. The
damage is still limited to feet not blocks. Now watch the video again:
You were probably, like everyone else, looking at the wall closest to the
camera. If you did that, you were looking at the wrong wall. Look at the
other wall across the canal. Here's a screen shot.
This is the smoking gun. Go ahead and click on it.
And/Or watch the video a few more times.
If you look at the top of the image in the band where the color is shifted,
you see the other wall of the canal. Notice the weeds on the bank? Notice
how far from the top of the wall the water is... just minutes after it
started leaking but over an hour before it gave way. (BTW- This is a cap
from the NGC special, not WWL. Their video was a little cleaner.)
Here is another picture of that same wall -over a week after the storm had
passed- after the repair is in place... In other words, with the water at
"normal" levels.
Look familiar? I reduced it to make it look like the screen cap. It's
clickable.
You can watch the video several times and you'll clearly see the water was
at this level the whole time. In fact the weeds look taller in this picture
because the video was shot form so high up. BTW- If you look at the very
base of the weeds in the good picture, you can barely see some white rocks
in the water. (it will be more clear later)
Here's a few more shots taken in the few weeks after the storm:
This is right after the repair was made. You'll notice (on right) I was
there at low tide.
This is what got me suspicious just a week after the storm. Anyone in the
area knew that wall never saw floodwater...(It was a very low tide)
EVERYTHING the water touched was caked in mud.The wall, on both the front
and back, was clean. It had to be dry. Notice I got there just after they
got the water out of the area... The mud is still wet. I won't tell you how
I got in, I'll just tell you that some National Guardsman from South
Carolina (with a loaded M-16) never heard of social engineering.
The Governor had a little bit better view than me. She didn't even wave.
(Horrible composition, I know, don't remind me.)
This is a great perspective. It is taken at low tide from the break side. In
this picture, you can see the white rocks in the water the tide is so low.
The wall is so tall BTW that I'm 6'3" and I'm standing on top a pickup truck
to take this. And I still couldn't reach the camera above the wall the way I
wanted. AND the truck is on a road they built up to fix the break. The top
of the wall is probably 15ish feet above the water level.
The bottom line is, Katrina's storm surge did not wash the wall away. As you
may remember, water had been seeping under the floodwall at the break
location for about a year before Katrina. The ground under the levee was
soaked and ready to give at any moment...
New Orleans was doomed with or without Katrina, we just didn't know it. A
good high tide puts more water in the canal than this. As the video shows,
the water was barely higher than normal levels. The walls could have failed
on a decent high tide.
From the looks of the video the fact the wall failed when Katrina was
approaching was really coincidence. Yes, Katrina was the "final straw" but
so could any winds from the southeast. Or any given winter storm. (we often
get winds out the south that "stack" the lake far higher than this.) Indeed
these same walls held much higher surges in the past; that is, before they
were undermined by seeping water for a year.
Ironically the same flawed walls are incrementally safer now. We'll never
have water seeping under them for a year and nobody doing anything. The
flaw(s) is still there but now we can compensate for it more effectively.
The right answer, of course, is to replace them.
What I will say next will probably completely throw you. Katrina saved
probably over 50,000 lives.
That levee was doomed. If it had failed without notice, the death toll would
have been measured in tens of thousands. There would be no evacuation, no
preparation, no Feds at all. (such that they were anyway) no Coast Guard in
choppers etc. Tens of thousands of people would have been dead in hours and
tens of thousands more would have died on 120 degree rooftops waiting for
rescue. It would have been unimaginable. - More unimaginable.
"Luckily" -and I groan when I say that- Katrina allowed the city to be
evacuated.
I've said it for months. Katrina didn't flood New Orleans. She just happened
to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But what I find just as troubling is the history of this video. It was
turned over to Federal authorities just days after the storm. The firemen
who took it were told they would be fired if they spoke about it. For months
the Corps -who had to have seen the video- claimed the walls were
overtopped. For months the firemen listened to the lies and never said a
word.
There was no national security reason to hold the video as there might be of
a terrorist attack. In fact the video would have helped the scientists
studying it determine the cause. Congress had the firemen testify behind
closed doors then placed a gag order on them.
I routinely mock conspiracy theorists but I have trouble understanding why
this tape was withheld for months. What I also find interesting is that the
Corps denied they were to blame until June 1... Just TWO WEEKS before this
video was quietly released.
Perhaps, I'm too cynical but it is impossible for me not to notice that if
this tape had been released in the weeks after the storm, the media
coverage -and the scrutiny of Congress- would have been vastly different.
You may draw a different conclusion but I'll go to my grave believing that
Congress withheld this tape intentionally. It was too damning.
What I don't understand is where the media is today on this story... The
story of their lives is waiting to be told but they just ignore it. If you
didn't read Wizbang, you'd never know the true story of the Great Flood of
New Orleans.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
"God bless the America we are trying to create."
Hillary Clinton