Posted on 12/14/2005 2:16:53 PM PST by LdSentinal
In some parts of her testimony, Blanco seemed confused
----Give her a break. It takes a few minutes to make up an excuse/lie for each question asked. (sarc)
Not many who would admit that they voted for him.
I said it before; I'll say it again: I think this is one of the "smoking guns" of criminality in LA, and may have been a reason why Blanco, et al were scared to death of allowing the FEDS to have control over disaster response/relief efforts after Katrina. Remember the reports about the screwed-up up police/fire communications system in NO, the one that had no back-up fuel supply for the generators, and which couldn't talk to surrounding police/fire services once the digital trunked system failed? Those pols in Baton Rouge got $100 million from the Congress to upgrade those systems, but only spent about 10-15% of the money. Where's the rest of it? Why wasn't it spent? Why on earth wouldn't you spend "free money" if someone gave it to you to upgrade your comm systems?
You don't have to be a Rhodes Scholar to figure this out -- they didn't spend the rest because it doesn't exist any more; the money has most likely been used to replenish already looted accounts, to mask the previous embezzlements. For those of you who haven't seen embezzlement of government funds before, here's a brief discription of how it was done in a small rural town I know about -- the town treasurer was stealing money for years, and kept it under wraps by transferring funds back and forth between the school account and the Municipal account whenever there was an audit of either account, to "cover" the money he was stealing. He was only caught after an audit of BOTH accounts was done concurrently!
In LA, there must be thousands of different government accounts, budgets, etc. As long as they keep shifting funds from one to another, they can survive partial audits until the cows come home without anyone realizing that millions are missing.
This explains one reason why Blanco/Nagin and the rest of the LA criminals are desperate for Congress to send them a BIG check FAST for "hurricane relief" -- the chickens are coming home to roost now, and there isn't enough money to go around to cover all the accounts that have been looted. The only thing that will buy Blamco, Nagin, and the rest of the pols more time and help mask the embezzlement is a HUGE influx of cash, preferably with no strings attached and no curious auditors to follow up.
If someone else has a better explanation of why the state of LA would let $80+ million of free "communication upgrade funds" lie around unused; I'm all ears.
Still, it would be sweet if a few Louisiana bigs could be taken down, letting the rest of the world see who the real looters are.
Pilings were at correct depth
Levee failure still a puzzle
By AMY WOLD
Advocate staff writer
NEW ORLEANS - The sonar tests were wrong, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers documents were right.
Sheet piling at the 17th Street Canal levee breach extended 17 feet into the ground, not the 10 feet that sonar tests done by the corps and the state's levee investigation team had showed.
The corps Tuesday pulled up eight sections of sheet piling from each side of the 455-foot breach in the floodwall. Sheet piling is supposed to keep water from flowing through the ground beneath the floodwall and undermining the structures.
Before the work started, Brig. Gen. Robert Crear, commander of the corps' Mississippi Valley Division, talked about the pilings, which quickly became a focus of investigations into why the floodwall failed during Hurricane Katrina.
"We know from our drawings what they should be," Crear said. "The only way you can figure it out is pulling them out. That's what we're doing."
At 8:10 a.m., Crear gave the order to pull out the first sheet piling. Almost 100 people -- former residents, government officials, reporters and scientists -- turned toward the crane and watched as the first one came up.
The floodwall was designed to be built with 23-foot-long sheet pilings. The pilings were supposed to extend 6 feet above ground and 17 feet below ground. A concrete "cap" completes the wall.
When the sheet piling was pulled out, many corps employees smiled -- it looked right.
A few minutes later, Crear announced the results: 23 feet, 6 inches.
In fact, all eight sheet pilings the corps brought up Tuesday topped the 23-foot mark.
Col. Lewis Setliff, commander of Task Force Guardian, the corps group charged with rebuilding damaged levees before the start of hurricane season June 1, said he thought it looked good as soon as it came out of the ground.
But he said he didn't feel relief. Regardless of the sheet piling lengths, the fact remains that the floodwall failed.
"We still have a lot of work ahead of us to find out why this failed," Setliff said.
The discrepancies between what the sonar measured and what was actually found means sonar test itself will need to be worked on, he said.
Team Louisiana, formed by the state to investigate the levee failures, had reported that sonar tests showed the pilings were only 10 feet below sea level. Later corps sonar tests showed the same results.
Paul Kemp, a member of Team Louisiana, said the sonar tests don't always give definitive results. He added that the sheet piling measurements Tuesday were good news.
"So far, we see no evidence that the contractor did something different than the corps called for, so that's reassuring," Kemp said. "The fact exists that a failure occurred."
Fred Young, a structural engineer with the corps, said he saw exactly what he expected to see -- 23-foot sheet pilings. Research into corps documents that included photographs, diagrams and engineering reports showed that would be the case, he said.
"I had no doubt," Young said.
Col. Richard Wagenaar, commander and district engineer for the New Orleans District, said it was important to remove the pilings so the public could see for itself what was actually there.
"It's just not as simple as saying the sheet piles were only 10 feet and they failed," Wagenaar said. "There's still a lot of data collection that needs to go on."
But as the corps finds information that could help in the rebuilding effort, those things are immediately being incorporated into the plans, he added.
For example, at the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal levee breach, the corps found that the I-wall was easily undermined by scouring if overtopped by storm surge.
So now they'll be using a T-wall construction, which will help prevent that by armoring the land behind the floodwall with concrete. In the T-wall design, an inverted "T" of concrete is poured at the base to provide more stability.
"We're applying lessons learned as we go," he said.
One of the next steps will be digging out the portion of the floodwall that actually failed and testing the concrete and pilings, Setliff said. The failed portion of the floodwall is now covered by the emergency levee built shortly after the hurricane.
Click here to return to story:
http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/121405/new_pilings001.shtml
Quite a few on this site were not old enough to vote in 1976.
Born in 88, vote in 06.
My first vote was for Barry Goldwater, and we had to be 21 then.
That "vague" plan was written last year under a contract with former FEMA head and Darling of the Democrats, Jamie Lee Whitt. He cashed his check. A good reporter would pursue this, but there are not many good reporters in America today.
(And, in one question not yet picked up in the media reports, after she said Congress needed to provide more funds to coordinate emergency response communications, she had no good answer when asked about the over $100 million sent to the state in recent years to be spent for this purpose, why only a fraction has been spent on the matter.)
A pox on them all especially MSM!
And, the answer is .........? I'm still waiting!
Pubs ask tough questions (sometimes) but they back down too quickly and let the other party off the hook.
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