Wet Bank Guide

Why hasn't this Times-Picayune story moved on the Associated Press news wire?

Corps chief admits to 'design failure'

WASHINGTON -- In the closest thing yet to a mea culpa, the commander of the Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged Wednesday that a "design failure" led to the breach of the 17th Street Canal levee that flooded much of the city during Hurricane Katrina.

This is an admission of what three independent engineering investigations have shown: Katrina was only incidental to the flooding of New Orleans. The levee system was a disaster waiting for a storm to come along to precipitate it.

I can't find this story anywhere else.

As the story points out, this doesn't remove the immunity Congress granted the Corps. The Corps would have built the damn things of cotton candy and pocketed the difference in cost, and we would have no cause in the courts.

It makes clear, however, the obligation of the nation to restore us and protect us. This was not a natural disaster. It was a failure of the government to do what is promised. It failed to protect us. The last time the government failed so stupendously, they emptied the public purse into the lap of New York, and declared wars to cover for their ineptitude.

What will they do for us?

We will know tomorrow morning if the nation is still with us, or has turned their backs on us. If this crucial admission is not found prominently in the nation's great newspapers, if men and women representing Portland, Maine and Portland, Oregon do not take to the well in Congress to denounce the Corps and demand an immediate response, if the President is not forced to come to the microphones to explain and apologize, we will know that we are truly on our own.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Think New Orleans Louisiana FEMA levees flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK