[DB]

The levee wasn't designed to take a cat 5 hurricane straight on.

[burzum]

The levee wasn't designed to take a cat 5 hurricane straight on.

I concur. The politicians didn't want to build one that big. But that isn't the primary issue with the New Orleans levee failure. The levees failed because the water level was over specification. That is problem #1. Problem #2 is that some of the levees had sunk below design specification.

As someone who had to evaluate operational failures I can't really say much about problem #1 other than to say you get what you pay for. On problem #2, which made this casuality worse, I would rip out the hearts of the maintenance engineers and politicians.

[burzum]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. Obviously the most important issue in the New Orleans disaster was that water exceeded specifications. But from an engineering perspective, the most important issue is that the levees sunk, because engineers aren't responsible for stupid people not buying the bigger levees.

[raybbr]

The levee wasn't designed to take a cat 5 hurricane straight on.

Katrina was not a cat 5 when she made landfall.

See this thread and its remarks.

[TXnMA]

The levee wasn't designed to take a cat 5 hurricane straight on.

Take a look at the second photo in #1. (The water is draining back into the canal.) That levee wall also wasn't designed to take being rammed by the barge at upper right (now resting in a residential area -- outside the canal...)