Investigators release preliminary findings of New Orleans levee failures
Many of the New Orleans levee and floodwall failures in the wake of Hurricane Katrina occurred at weak-link junctions where different levee or wall sections joined together, according to a preliminary report released today (Wednesday, Nov. 2) by independent investigators from the University of California, Berkeley, and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
Raymond Seed, UC Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Peter Nicholson, an associate professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of Hawaii, presented several findings at a hearing this morning in Washington, D.C., before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Seed is the head of a team investigating the levee failures with funding from the National Science Foundation and the UC Berkeley-based Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), and Nicholson is head of the ASCE geotechnical team.
The UC Berkeley and ASCE teams have been collaborating for weeks with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to investigate the flooding, but the findings unveiled today were developed independently of the Corps. The report presents an overview of initial observations and findings regarding the performance of the New Orleans flood protection system.
posted by Fergie @ 11/02/2005 09:00:00 AM
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