More Res Ipsa Loquitur

UPDATE: photo and more below.

From a page 1 story in today's Washington Post:

Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic.

Except that barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing.

In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large. . .

[O]verall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects. Strock has also said that the marsh-restoration project would not have done much to diminish Katrina's storm surge, which passed east of the coastal wetlands.

Read it all.

More:

Ramblings' Journal annotates a NASA photo dated August 31st:





Click photo to enlarge.

For comparison, this link shows New Orleans today (click on the "Katrina" button).

Problems in NO law enforcement had nothing to do with Iraq:

As of August 31 there were 3,748 Louisiana Army National Guardsmen and Army Reservists and 193 Air Guardsmen and Reservists on active duty throughout the world. The lion’s share of them, about 3,500, are with the 256th Infantry Brigade in Iraq. This leaves some 8,000 Guardsmen and an unknown number of Army Reservists available for disaster relief.

And it appears that the Louisiana state Homeland Security agency delayed Red Cross assistance because "we do not want to create a magnet for more people to come to the Superdome or convention center, we want to get them out."

More x 3:

Ian Schwartz has video: "State authorities told [the Salvation Army and Red Cross] that delivering food and water would impede evacuation efforts." And Gindy links to an ABC News story:

In New Orleans, those in peril and those in power have pointed the finger squarely at the federal government for the delayed relief effort.

But experts say when natural disasters strike, it is the primary responsibility of state and local governments — not the federal government — to respond.

New Orleans' own comprehensive emergency plan raises the specter of "having large numbers of people … stranded" and promises "the city … will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas."

"Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves," the plan states.

When Hurricane Katrina hit, however, that plan was not followed completely.

Instead of sending city buses to evacuate those who could not make it out on their own, people in New Orleans were told to go to the Superdome and the Convention Center, where no one provided sufficient sustenance or security.

As Alenda Lux says:

What is the President supposed to do? Keep a database on the school buses in every American city just in case the mayor is too incompetent to try and use them? It's worth noting that the feds suggested sending bus drivers into New Orleans to bus people out. Nagin's response: "you gotta be kidding me."

(via Protein Wisdom, RedState.Org, Instapundit)