Dollars and Disasters

Hurricane Katrina has awoken the world to the fact that physical devastation and human suffering are not limited to developing countries, where natural tragedies are usually catastrophic due to lack of effective engineering. In Louisiana the effects of Katrina will be felt for a generation and New Orleans will never be the same again. It is estimated that as many as a quarter of a million New Orleanians may never return home, and that will certainly change the character of this fine old city. The Mississippi Gulf Coast suffered as much physical damage as New Orleans, and in some places even much more. The town of Waveland is no longer there—it’s completely gone, as is much of the coastal structure all the way to Pascagoula. A prestressed concrete plant located up a canal a mile inland from the Mississippi Sound had a high-water mark at twenty-eight feet! Hurricane Camille was the most destructive on the Gulf Coast before Katrina, and it had a storm surge of twenty-two feet. Could government spending based on engineering recommendations have prevented much of the destruction and loss of life? That’s a question that’s already being debated. Could the levees in New Orleans have been made higher? Of course they could have; the question is, why weren’t they? One simple answer is actually a political question: where did the engineering budget dollars go? Instead of putting the dollars into levees, they were allocated to other projects that were deemed, at the time, to be more important, perhaps based on the risk of a category 4 hurricane (the levees were constructed to withstand a category 3 storm). Those who determine spending priorities felt that protection from a category 3 storm was adequate based on the risk (see ENR, Sept 12, 2005, “Breach of Faith”). One thing politicians didn’t figure on, though, was the cost of failure. The tangible cost is in human life and the associated hard-dollar costs to mitigate and rebuild. The intangible costs are in the confidence people place in their government to protect them, and to react and assist them if that protection breaks down, as in this case.

The tragedy in New Orleans can be termed an engineering disaster while, for the most part, that in Mississippi is simply a natural disaster that could not have been prevented. Why is New Orleans an engineering disaster? It’s because of the failure of an engineered system: the canal wall and the levees. Why did these systems fail? For the most part they failed because they were underdesigned for the storm that finally and inevitably hit. Whose fault is that? Let’s hope that engineers are not going to get the blame for the lack of spending necessary to provide the protection that wasn’t there. Let’s hope that engineers will not be made scapegoats for politicians. Let’s hope that when it’s time to sort out just why this happened and how it could have been prevented, the blame, if there is any, goes to those who made the spending decisions, and not to the engineers who consistently warned that the levees were inadequate for the risk and that monies should be allocated to improving the system to provide the protection that could have prevented Katrina’s destruction.

Who will heal this wound? It’s the engineers who will make New Orleans whole again and will make changes to the systems to prevent a similar tragedy. It’s us, my fellow professionals, and it’s a great engineering opportunity. I hope the public will be informed that many engineering firms and professional societies immediately jumped into the mix to offer help in Katrina’s wake. ASCE hosted a roundtable on September 6 in Washington, D.C., for nongovernmental organizations to brainstorm ways the construction and design communities could respond to the storm’s aftermath, in addition to sending teams to the region. Yes, many firms will be awarded big contracts in light of the rebuilding efforts, but many of these firms offered their help immediately without contracts and without being asked. The public needs to know this about engineers, so let’s hope that the next “Engineering Disaster” on the History Channel will address the New Orleans disaster on its merits and point out that New Orleans could have been engineered to withstand this event, but it wasn’t funded to do so. It would be nice to follow that up with “Engineering Miracles” when it is shown how systems from New Orleans to Venice have finally been engineered to protect the vitality of the people and the industries in these regions (see ENR, Sept. 12, 2005, “Comprehensive Regional Plan Needed for Reconstruction”).

Let’s back up for a second and see what I’ve been getting at here. The tragedy in New Orleans was from flooding, not wind. The flooding could have been prevented if recommendations from the Corps of Engineers and others regarding serious dangers from the insufficient protection afforded by the current levee system were heeded by the politicians who ultimately controlled the source of funding that could have addressed the concerns. If engineers are to be taken seriously when making such concerned recommendations, then we must become more politically active, and by that I mean politically powerful. Power is the only thing that most politicians understand—period! Even in the absence of such significant power, we must at a minimum learn to add a realistic price tag associated with the failure to implement our recommendations. Think about it: had the persons expressing great concern and making the plea for improvements to the protection system for the lower Mississippi told Congress that a disaster was likely to happen and would cost two or three hundred billion dollars in reconstruction, and been able to show that these costs were realistic, then, even without the political power, someone may have listened to the voice of the engineering community. That’s what we can do in the future, but right now we need to unite in our efforts to rebuild this devastated area and to join together in providing engineering recommendations for constructing systems that will not allow this devastation to happen again.

If you don’t agree with this letter or would like to comment, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me or give me a call. You can also write feature articles for this publication or submit Forum material that you think would be worth sharing with our readers.

“It may be those who do most, dream most.”

—Stephen Leacock

Your faithful servant,

Chick Glagola, P.E.