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Katrina, Four Years Later: Expert Fired Who Warned Levees Would Burst
There's another floater. Four years on, there's another victim face down in the waters of Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Ivor van Heerden.
I don't get to use the word "heroic" very often. Van Heerden is heroic. The Deputy Director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, it was van Heerden who told me, on camera, something so horrible, so frightening, that, if it weren't for his international stature, it would have been hard to believe:
"By midnight on Monday the White House knew. Monday night I was at the state Emergency Operations Center and nobody was aware that the levees had breeched. Nobody."
On the night of August 29, 2005, van Heerden was shut in at the state emergency center in Baton Rouge, providing technical advice to the rescue effort. As Hurricane Katrina came ashore, van Heerden and the state police there were high-fiving it: Katrina missed the city of New Orleans, turning east.
What they did not know was that the levees had cracked. For crucial hours, the White House knew, but withheld the information that the levees of New Orleans had broken and that the city was about to drown. Bush's boys did not notify the State of the flood to come which would have allowed police to launch an emergency hunt for the thousands that remained stranded.
"Fifteen hundred people drowned. That's the bottom line," said von Heerden. He shouldn't have told me that. The professor was already in trouble for saying, publicly, that the levees around New Orleans were no good, too short, by 18″. They couldn't stand up to a storm like Katrina. He said it months before Katrina hit -- in a call to the White House, and later in the press.
So, even before Katrina, even before our interview, the professor was in hot water. Van Heerden was told by University officials that his complaints jeopardized funding from the Bush Administration. They tried to gag him. He didn't care: he ripped off the gag and spoke out.
It didn't matter to Bush, to the State, to the University, that van Heerden was right -- devastatingly right. Exactly as van Heerden predicted, the levees could not stand up to the storm surge.
In 2006, I met van Heerden in his office at the University's hurricane center; a cubby filled with charts of the city under water. He's a soft-spoken, even-tempered man, given to understatement and academic reserve. But his words were hand grenades: the Bush White House did nothing about the levees, despite warning after warning.
Why? A hurricane is an Act of God. But a levee failure is an Act of Bush -- of the federal government. Under the Flood Control Act of 1928, once the levees break, it's Washington's responsibility to save lives -- and to compensate the victims for lost homes and lost loved ones.
By telling me this, the professor had to know he was putting his job on the line. This week marks the fourth anniversary of the drowning of New Orleans.
Shakoor Aljuwani of the Rebuilding Lives Coalition reminds me it is also the fourth year of exile for more than half of the low-income Black residents who once lived in the Crescent City. In the Lower Ninth Ward, 81% have yet to return.
And it marks the end of Dr. van Heerden's career at LSU. They got him. Once the network cameras were turned away from New Orleans, as America and Anderson Cooper shifted attention to Brad and Angelina and other news, the University put an end to Dr. van Heerden. "In 2006 they started the nonsense -- they stopped me from teaching. They tried last year to get faculty to vote me out."
His contract was not renewed; he was forced out too, dumped along with the chief of the Hurricane Center who led the academics who supported van Heerden's research. The Man Who Was Right was fired.
Cronies and Contracts
I did not seek out professor van Heerden about Bush's deadly silence. Rather, I'd come to LSU to ask him about a strange little company, "Innovative Emergency Management," a politically well-connected firm that, a year before the hurricane, had finagled a contract to plan the evacuation of New Orleans.
Innovative Emergency Management knew a lot about political contributions, but seemed to have zero experience in hurricane response planning. In fact, their "plan" for New Orleans called for evacuating the city by automobile. When Katrina hit, 127,000 wheel-less New Orleans folk were left to float out.
And van Heerden knew all about it. Well before the hurricane, I discovered, he'd pointed out flaws in the "Innovative" plan -- and was threatened for the revelation by a state official. The same official later joined the payroll of Innovative Emergency Management.
When I asked the company, at their office, for a copy of the plan, they body-blocked our Democracy Now! camerawoman and called the cops.
Not everyone shared the harsh fate of van Heerden. Just this month, Innovative Emergency Management, the firm with the drive-for-your-life plan, was handed a fat contract by the State of Alabama to draft -- you guessed it -- a hurricane evacuation plan for Mobile.
The City That Care Forgot
After the flood, I filmed the uplifting story of Common Ground, the commune of Katrina survivors who, under the leadership of the community organizer Malik Rahim, rebuilt a shattered hulk of a building with their own sweat and donated materials. They housed 350 displaced families.
Since I broadcast that film in 2006, Rahim and the tenants were evicted by speculators who bought the building. Just before Christmas, elderly residents were carried out and dumped in the street, literally, by marshals. The speculators paid the families who build their new edifice not one dime.
We also filmed the story of Patricia Thomas, a woman fighting to return to her home in the beautiful Lafitte public housing project. Speculators have long lusted for this property on the edge of the French Quarter.
And now the speculators have it. Patricia's home, unscathed by Katrina, was nevertheless bulldozed. As Rahim puts it, "They wanted them poor niggers out of there and they ain't had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers." Their plan succeeded. Patricia, homeless, died last year.
This Friday, take a moment to remember a courageous professor, an indefatigable activist and the refugee families who once lived in what was once called, "The City That Care Forgot." Now, in 2009, you could call it the city that everyone forgot.
- Posted in
29 Comments so far
Show AllAnd the pig Bush roams free to pull more wings off flies and blow up more frogs with cherry bombs. May there come a time when poppa can no longer help this sick bastard.
Two memories come immediately to mind:
A few years before Katrina, I watched a PBS?/History Channel?/Nat'l Geographic? program concerning the hurricane threat and accurate predictions of exactly what eventually came to pass 4 years ago down in NO. It was no secret. (Similar to Ms. Rice's post 9-11 declaration: "No one could have predicted flying airplanes into a building.")
The chapter in Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" concerning the small fishing-village beaches coveted by major hotels before the Indian Ocean tsunami, and how that event was used as an excuse to take them over by the powerful tourist industry.
Re Old Peculiar August 28th, 2009 11:23 am
The scenario of a major named storm hitting NO was also the subject of a cover article in Scientific American (I believe it was the Oct. issue of the year preceding Katrina). It was, if memory serves, most concerned about the likelihood of Lake Pontchartrain overtopping or breaching the levees, which is exactly what happened.
We may never know with 100% certainty whether Shrub et al engineered 9/11 or merely allowed it to proceed, but here there can no doubt: warnings were given and ignored; protocols had been written, but were violated; offers of help were tendered and rejected out of hand.
And yes, the parallel with the premeditated land grab in the Indonesian Archipelago is unavoidable, both showing the mens rea of the gangster-politician-CEO axis of evil in high relief.
Well said. I just wish it was as obvious to others.
It's interesting to note that since New Orleans was partly abandoned, Louisiana has become one of the very most right wing, fascist oriented states in the country, right up there with Oklahoma and Utah. If the South were to break off from the rest of the US again (which I highly doubt will happen) this time they would have a more politically reliable port on the Gulf.
tremaine August 28th, 2009 11:57 am...........and let us not forget the charter school takeover of the public system....Another way to make sure the poor blacks stay away.
Huey Long must be spinning in his grave, poor man. Just based on his behavior in life, he'd have been down there 15 minutes after the hurricane passed, running the rescue operation himself with everyone on the public payroll in the state down there helping him.
the bald face racism that was katrina remains a major milepost on the road that marks the dissolution of the united states.
you're doin' a heck of a job brownie...
having the goons from blackwater running around doing law enforcement was another milestone in that same dissolution.
the spectacle of obama golfing in hyannisport this week with the ceo of ubs at his 30,000.00/mo vacation shack - though unnoticed in the corporate media - was the height of bad taste.
while the dispossessed "niggers" of new orleans die homeless in the street the "nigger" in the whitehouse doesn't seem to much care about his "brothers and sisters" at all.
if he would have offered the same assistance to new orleans that he did to the wall street scum that got the 14 trillion dollar handout everything would be back to normal and the black community would have felt some "change they could believe in".
instead they get "the back of of maggie's hand" as they say in england.
obama is a nwo shill and he needs to be, as webster tarpley says, attacked from the left and from the black community as well.
obama is a right wing war mongering ass licking uncle tom for wall street and we need to get over the pr job that was done in the election - he is not who we though he was. he is not going to do jack shit for the working folks - his healthcare plan is a disaster in the making and he himself was the one who slid in and slit its throat with back room sweetheart deals with the boys of big pharma and hmo's.
those guys are obama's friends - wall street, pharma, war machine, hmo's.
sadly, we have an oreo cookie in the white house who's greatest skill is ass kissing.
the black community should not feel constrained by obama's blackness - he doesn't care about you, he is a political hack for the white boys and rascists in the nwo...
Maybe this should have just been attached to the article about the mean streak in gringos,
as it sure is a good example.
Thanks to Greg Palast, for another hard hitting factual episode about what really goes on without Corporate Press attention.
if that was white folks bush would have been steering the titanic
around new orleans himself stopping to pick up each and every
one.so while we are discussing all the murdered in iraq
what about his domestic genocide? why hasn't little georgie
bush been indicted for mass murder? we are asleep in
this country just like the germans were when hitler took
over. the propaganda would make adolf wince what is
possible today and we go to our jobs like nothing is
happening.stick out faces in the dog food bowl and
chow down like nothing is happening.we should be storming
washington and standing in the streets yelling together
we are mad as hell and we are not going to take it
ANYMORE! what are they going to do shoot us all? in
revolution for democracy there is always going to be
sacrifice and that's what has to happen. this isn't a
democracy and we are letting them get away with murder!
tell the truth August 28th, 2009 4:44 pm..............Could not be clearer. Unfortunately, nothing will change. Most Americans are too caught up in their own selfish lives and pursuits to actually take a realistic look at what their country has become AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. The ruling powers now know just how far they can go. What they have discovered is that they can go as far as their evil, heartless psyche will allow them and the vast majority of Americans will still sit there and try to change the channel. The idea is to keep us fed, drugged, in fear, in debt, hypnotized by TV, consuming and working until we drop.
Children have been tortured in our name. Two sovereign nations invaded. Our rights destroyed. Habeas corpus deleted. Veterans mis-treated. Voting compromised. New Orleans destroyed. The economy trashed. Taxpayers money stolen through felonious bailouts and outrageous bonuses. 20,000 foreclosures a day. 10% unemployment, which is more likely close to 20%. The false flag of 9/11. Lie upon lie upon lie. AND STILL WE SIT...BROKE...CONFUSED...FEARFUL...CONDITIONED...FAT...AND DUMBED DOWN.
Waiting for the next shoe to drop. They have us by the short hairs and will pull until there is nothing left. AND WE WILL CONTINUE TO SIT AND DEFEND THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE, holding on to some illusion that never really saw the light of reality.
SO...
Whadt 'DO YOU' Suggest...
Should HAPPEN,,,'nevergiveup'?
AND...'tell the truth'???
Given our attitude of helplessness, indifference and selfishness, I have no friggin idea.
'GooDt'...
(*answer*)...
`Hhahaha...
`SNeaKy...
h`AiNt...
(?'I'?).
];@~
When Hurricane Katrina blew in it exposed that the empire has no clothes!
What happened in the Big Easy was foretold three years prior in a five-part series in the "New Orleans Times-Picayune".
October 2004’s National Geographic fictional story became fact, as it laid out the scene in incredible detail, which became reality on TV.
Local officials and FEMA knew about the probability that even a slow-moving category three hurricane would cause catastrophic loss and a lot of human misery.
19th-century levees were not designed for that eventuality!
Over a billion tax dollars a day go to support a war in Iraq, but not one level of government could be bothered to scrounge up the bucks for adequate supplies of food, water, and medicine when Hurricane Kat's waters broke the levees.
For years, climatologists have predicted and warned us that powerful storms will occur more frequently in this century, because of the rising sea level from global warming.
The hardest-working marsh in America is the Louisiana bayou, and we have neglected its health.
For three hundred years, men have built walls and levees to control that mighty force of nature, and it has wrecked havoc on New Orleans’s natural defenses.
From the Mississippi border to the Texas state line, Louisiana is losing its protective fringe of marshes and barrier islands faster than any place in the U.S.
Homeland Security money should go to restoring the homeland and not making us take off our belts and shoes at the airport!
Much More @ Back to the Big Easy by Way of Gaza:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1359&Itemid=223
This was an ethnic cleansing of opportunity by Bush and his corporate minders.
With-'OUT' a 'DOUBT'...
SO...'WHAT' TO !DO!...?
gnken
Dr. Heerden, you are in my prayers. You knew what would happen. I live in Maryland and have worked in (will just say publice Service) for 25 years. Never did I see a disgraceful operations as was done by FEMA in La. and Washington. The day before I watch as Hurricane Katrina was moving towards NOLA and had been told by a close friend living in the French Quarter in 1979-80 when he took me on a tour of the Levees and they looked impressive too me but he warned me that they would not hold if a Hurricane was over the city. I also had read the story in National Geographic while waiting to be called in for my dental appointment about 6 months before and understood the article. The day before I watched as vehicles were leaving NOLA and at work someone asked where do these motorist go. I explained that there are "Host Communities" for crisis/disaster relocation operations. I was wondering why city bues were not being deployed? Those questions would surly be asked later during the week. Im only a dispatcher but I feel Im more qualified then Michael Brown would ever hope to be. There was never any emergency prepardness in NOLA. The NO PD, FD NO and the rest of the State and City Govt. should be ashamed of what happened as well as the Federal Govt. Now you hear about such things as "Wage Theft" (workers being stiffed on wages) during the rebuilding. The Pres. Bush withdrew the "Prevailing Wage Act" which had been in effect since the late 30's and would have paid living wages and prevented such things as wage theft. The people who are still without a place to call there former home and community which is gone for good. I hope the speculators and other high investment types choke on there gains.
I'd like to know how many of these posts come from people who live or did live in New Orleans. Seems to be plenty of 'shooting off the lip' without really knowing what happened or what is happening now.
The majority of people who died were elderly, both black and white... in close to even numbers,,, guess that means the government was really trying to get rid of old folks?
Amazing how rude and tasteless people can be when they are anonymous.
The article speaks for it's self no need to add your ill-informed garbage.
More whites than blacks died. More whites lost homes than blacks. FEMA prevented practical action to help the situation. Blackwater moved in before assistance. "More guns than food and water." Then came the Israeli OPs. Many people decided to stay, rather than being unable to leave. There was callous indifference to the plight of New Orleans. There was also callous contracts written before the hurricane actually moved in on the coast to Halliburton, et al. The method of moving folks out of the city was definitely tantamount to methods of the Nazis in herding Jews, Gypsies, and others, into camps and ovens.
My brother lives in New Orleans. When he had to leave and was then denied return to the city to recover home and property, I did nothing but research the situation. It was despicable. Never in the history of the city were people denied the right to return and rebuild. The entire event was a black mark on U.S. government and citizens in complicit support.
Thank you for the article Greg. Is there any way we can get this kind gentleman his own consulting firm that can provide ways to protect neighborhoods such as the Lower 9th Ward?
If the government won't allow him to help protect the city, maybe he can do it bit by bit (home by home if need be).
For the university to behave in good ole' boy behavior is not surprising. What's surprising is the intentional instead of negligent behavior when it comes to picking and choosing where to displace people.
Do these people really think we are that stupid? Or do they just don't seem to really give a rat's ass?
I also think it's dishonorable for the president to not be in New Orleans on the anniversary, especially since the last president was, well, you know. Unless he plans on visiting New Orleans during Southern Decadence...
Our government and we the people have nothing to do with each other. They are at a party a la Louis XVI, a costume ball where everybody is pretending to be who he/she is supposed to be. The people are out-of-sight-out-of-mind.
If we get anything done we will have to do it for ourselves. They have told us as much: "You neighbors should help each other".
Taxes? We in the government have wars to fight, banks to bail out, health care dollars to steal. Don't bother us. Who do you think you are?
P.S. Watch you mouth or maybe we send some of da boys over to shut it for you.
Whoever said that had they been white folks, Bush would have been rescuing each & every one, doesn't get it. The neocon war isn't on blacks, as such, it's on the poor. To the neocon, the poor have no rights, & exist only to serve & enrich the already rich & powerful.
Study their writings, if you have the stomach for it, & you'll recognize the extent to which their barbarous views have seeped into our culture. Privatize profit, socialize loss.
Utterly reprehensible. An undeclared war on the poor.
I recently found out something I didn't know: that a great deal of New Orleans was located below the level of the Mississippi River, and it was called "The Bowl". Clearly it was evident to everyone who knew the topgraphy of New Orleans that this area was flood prone. It was also an area coveted by developers and speculators. So like a patient cat at a mouse-hole, all they had to do was wait. Then make sure nothing was done to save their tasty mouse. This was not about race, it was about money, what else? It's also a great example of why "coveting" is on the big ten list of stuff you shouldn't do.
What do you want to bet that when Tom Delay and Ray Nagin build mansions in 'the bowl' the levees will receive the attention they deserve. This will of course be after all poor former residents have been forced to sell out for pennies on the dollar.
I wish I could speak French.
I have seen Dr. van Heerden a few times on TV, including on some documentary. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he knows what he is talking about and about his civil engineering credentials. And I have no doubt about his social concern and that he warned about the levees well in advance. He had compared the technology used in the Netherlands and what was used in New Orleans and was lamenting the vast difference. Firing him is shameful.