In the good old days Google would have linked all these threads about
George Bush regime's failure to act in the wake of the Katrina
disaster. Even I didn't think this thread would run this long. If you
want to find the others you shall have to search usenet groups for
them.

Who drowned New Orleans:

"...Senate Homeland Security Committe hearing today... heard the
testimony of the experts whose preliminary studies of the floodwall
breaches in New Orleans have been scattered across the print press for
the last three weeks.

As those preliminary reports indicated, the scientists' assessments
suggest that the overwhelming majority of damage to New Orleans and St.
Bernard Parish was not caused by a natural disaster, but by design and
construction flaws of the levees and particularly the canal floodwalls.


Absent an independent Katrina commission, today's hearing may be the
closest this nation comes to learning that the Federal government,
under both parties, bears significant responsibility for the
destruction of much of the Crescent City and its neighboring parishes.

The money quotes from AP's story on the hearings:

"It became clear to us that they (the Army Corps of Engineers) were
struggling to get the right kind of people put in charge of the
projects to get the concerns addressed," (UC Berkeley engineering
professor Raymond) Seed said.
....
The Senate hearing also examined the NSF's report showing that the
levees may not have been designed to protect a major city. Moreover,
engineers who designed the levees did not fully consider the porousness
of the Louisiana soil or make other calculations that would have
pointed to the need for stronger floodwalls, the study shows."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-...-_b_10026.html

There is more stuff online as at this link:
http://www.democracynow.org/search.pl?query=Katrina

But this post from another newsgroup just had to come here in its
entirety:

"Note: The author of this message requested that it not be archived.
This message will be removed from Groups in 1 day (Sep 5, 5:01 am).

HURRICANE EXPERT THREATENED FOR PRE-KATRINA WARNINGS

A Greg Palast special investigation for Democracy Now!

Monday, August 28. From New Orleans.

DON'T blame the Lady. Katrina killed no one in this town. In fact,
Katrina missed the city completely, going wide to the east.

It wasn't the hurricane that drowned, suffocated, de-hydrated and
starved
1,500 people that week. The killing was done by a deadly duo: a
failed
emergency evacuation plan combined with faulty levees. Behind these
twin
failures lies a tale of cronyism, profiteering and willful
incompetence
that takes us right to the steps of the White House.

Here's the story you haven't been told. And the man who revealed it
to
me, Dr. Ivor van Heerden, is putting his job on the line to tell it.

Van Heerden isn't the typical whistleblower I usually deal with.
This is
no minor player. He's the Deputy Director of the Louisiana State
University Hurricane Center. He's the top banana in the field -- no
one
knew more about how to save New Orleans from a hurricane's
devastation.
And no one was a bigger target of an official and corporate campaign
to
bury the information.

Here's what happened. Right after Katrina swamped the city, I called
Washington to get a copy of the evacuation plan.

Funny thing about the murderously failed plan for the evacuation of
New
Orleans: no one can find it. That's right. It's missing. Maybe it
got wet
and sank in the flood. Whatever: no one can find it.

That's real bad. Here's the key thing about a successful emergency
evacuation plan: you have to have copies of it. Lots of copies --
in
fire houses and in hospitals and in the hands of every first
responder.
Secret evacuation plans don't work.

I know, I worked on the hurricane evacuation plan for Long Island
New
York, an elaborate multi-volume dossier.

Specifically, I'm talking about the plan that was written, or
supposed to
have been written two years ago by a company called, "Innovative
Emergency Management."

Weird thing about IEM, their founder Madhu Beriwal, had no known
experience in hurricane evacuations. She did, however, have a lot
of
experience in donating to Republicans.

IEM and FEMA did begin a draft of a plan. The plan was that, when
a
hurricane hit, everyone in the Crescent City would simply get the
hell
out in their cars. Apparently, the IEM/FEMA crew didn't know that
127,000 people in the city didn't have cars. But Dr. van Heerden
knew
that. It was his calculation. LSU knew where these no-car people
were
-- they mapped it -- and how to get them out.

Dr. van Heerden offered this life-saving info to FEMA. They
wouldn't
touch it. Then, a state official told him to shut up, back off or
there
would be consequences for van Heerden's position. This official now
works for IEM.

So I asked him what happened as a result of making no plans for
those
without wheels, a lot of them elderly and most of them poor.

"Fifteen-hundred of them drowned. That's the bottom line." The
professor,
who'd been talking to me in technicalities, changed to a somber
tone.
"They're still finding corpses."

Van Heerden is supposed to keep his mouth shut. He won't. The
deaths
weigh on him. "I wasn't going to listen to those sort of threats,
to let
them shut me down."

Van Heerden had other disturbing news. The Hurricane Center's
computer
models showed the federal government had built the levees around the
city
a foot-and-a-half too short.

After Katrina, the Hurricane Center analyzed the flooding and found
that,
had the levees had just that extra 18 inches, they would have been
"overtopped" for only an hour and a half, not four hours. In that
case,
the levees would have held, and the city would have been saved.

He had taken the warning about the levees all the way to George
Bush's
doorstep. "I myself briefed senior officials including somebody
from the
White House." The response: the university's trustees threatened
his
job.

While in Baton Rouge, I dropped in on the headquarters of IEM, the
evacuation contractors. The assistant to the CEO insisted they had
"a lot
of experience with evacuation" -- but couldn't name a single city
they'd
planned for when they got the Big Easy contract. And still, they
couldn't produce the plan.

An IEM press release in June 2004 boasted legendary expert James Lee
Witt
as a member of their team. That was impressive. It was also a lie.
In
fact, Witt had nothing to do with it. When I asked IEM point blank
if
Witt's name was used as a fraudulent hook to get the contract, their
spokeswoman said, weirdly, "We'll get back to you on that."

Back at LSU, van Heerden astonished me with the most serious charge
of
all. While showing me huge maps of the flooding, he told me the
White
House had withheld the information that, in fact, the levees were
about
to burst and by Tuesday at dawn the city, and more than a thousand
people, would drown.

Van Heerden said, "FEMA knew on Monday at 11 o'clock that the levees
had
breached... They took video. By midnight on Monday the White House
knew. But none of us knew ...I was at the State Emergency
Operations
Center." Because the hurricane had missed the city that Monday
night,
evacuation effectively stopped, assuming the city had survived.

It's been a full year now, and 73,000 New Orleanians remain in FEMA
trailers and another 200,000, more than half the city's former
residents,
remain in temporary refuges. "The City That Care Forgot" -- that's
their
official slogan -- lost a higher percentage of homes than Berlin
lost in
World War II. It would be more accurate to call it, "The City That
Bush
Forgot."

Should they come home? Rebuild? Is it safe? Team Bush assures
them
there's nothing to worry about: FEMA won't respond to van Heerden's
revelations. However, the Bush Administration has hired a
consulting
firm to fix the failed evacuation plan. The contractor? A Baton
Rouge
company named "Innovative Emergency Management." IEM.

******
Watch this special investigative report about Katrina on Democracy
Now! this morning or hear it on your local Pacifica or NPR station.
You
can also download it at DemocracyNow.org.

And catch the one-hour special report, "Who Drowned New Orleans?" on
LinkTV, with Greg Palast in New Orleans plus an exclusive interview
with Amy Goodman. (Get it on Direct TV channel 375 and Dish TV
channel
9410. Or check your cable listing at LinkTV.com.)

And for more on IEM and Katrina, read Greg Palast's new NYT
bestseller,
"Armed Madhouse" (Penguin 2006).

A Jacquie Soohen BigNoise Films Production, produced by Matt
Pascarella.
And very, very, special thanks to our Associate Producers on this
particular story -- without their generosity and financial support
this
report would not have been possible."

I just caught the last day for this post as the author wanted it
removed from the archives after a certain time. Why, I don't know. What
is he afraid of? That someone might read it?

Perhaps it is fiction?

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.r...3d17ec57b3c1a?

Has anyone ever come across a copy of the fateful plan to evacuate the
city? What sort of search would one use to find it? The sheer verbiage
on all the search words one might try is immense.

Here is a press release from the people mentioned in the above post:

Baton Rouge, LA, August 8, 2006 - IEM, a leading information technology
and risk management firm, has again been selected as a "Tier 1"
contractor for the State of Louisiana's Office of Information
Technology (OIT). IEM will be supporting application, database, and web
development for state-funded projects.

http://www.ieminc.com/Whats_New/Pres...T_Contract.htm

They don't have a search page. AN I.T. WEBSITE WITH NO SEARCH PAGE?

I wonder why.