Katrina Coverage

Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Susan Jackson responded to the news that Katrina was apparently weaker than originally reported as follows:
"In the Gulf, Katrina was a Category 5 storm, and the surge was still Category 5 when it hit the ground… It's the surge — the pressure of water against those levee walls — that's […]

The BBC will be showing a doc called "The Hurricane That Shook America", and they promote it in Fema 'knew of New Orleans danger'.
There appear to be two slightly newsworthy bits of info:
a key briefing officer within Fema sent a message directly to Mr Brown early on the day before Katrina hit, warning him […]

The LAT article "Lobbyists Shape Gulf Coast Rebuilding" has more on just how much say corporations got in Louisiana's rebuilding plan. Bear in mind, that article is about the state's plan, the one they want $250 billion for. See "Louisiana wants $40 billion; stuffed with pork" for previous coverage.
From the LAT:
…"I was basically shocked," said […]

From "Ground Shifted Beneath Levees":
…Levees and storm walls may be as much as 2 feet lower than they were designed to be, both because elevation data were outdated when the levees were built and because the land has continued to sink, [some experts] say.
…Experts also are studying the Army Corps of Engineers' 1990s project that […]

Lisa Myers of NBC reports in "New Orleans levee reported weak in 1990s":
NBC News has obtained what may be a key clue, hidden in long forgotten legal documents. They reveal that when the floodwall on the 17th Street Canal was built a decade ago, there were major construction problems — problems brought to the attention […]

That alone should raise suspicions, but, as previously reported that's only part of what they want: Landrieu, Vitter want $250 billion.
WaPo offers "Louisiana Goes After Federal Billions":
Louisiana's congressional delegation has requested $40 billion for Army Corps of Engineers projects in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, about 10 times the annual Corps budget for the entire […]

Ivor van Heerden and others from LSU's Hurricane Center now say that the flooding of New Orleans was caused by either faulty design or fault construction of the floodwalls, rather than overtopping or other explanations: "Experts Say Faulty Levees Caused Much of Flooding". (Note that the WaPo's headline is confused: they aren't talking about the […]

From this:
One of the central mysteries emerging in the Hurricane Katrina disaster is why concrete floodwalls in three canals breached during the storm, causing much of the catastrophic flooding, while earthen hurricane levees surrounding the city remained intact…
"Why did we have no hurricane levee failures but five separate places with floodwall failures?" asked Joseph Suhayda, […]