Abstract
The effects of the hurricane Katrina would not have befallen the
New Orleans community had the government and disaster committee prepared in
advance through consolidation of the available information to come up with a
viable course of action and additionally disseminating it to the appropriate
parties to accelerate able decision making. Despite the construction of the
levees to defend the state against any storm occurrence, the structures were
not strong enough to offer protection in case of a worse case scenario, yet all
the people involved had sufficient knowledge about this. It is therefore not
surprising that when the storm occurred, hurricane Katrina, the worst that had
been inevitably fathomed was doomed to occur. The levees were breached and the
storm caused flooding that no one would have imagined. (Independent levee
investigation team, 2006)
Analysis
The fact that both leadership and management had envisioned the
occurrence of this risk yet took it lightly is a sign of poor risk assessment.
It is said that there was a failure in both instances even before the
construction phase had taken off. The flooding effects of hurricane Katrina
were contributed by the numerous management and leadership failures accumulated
over time. Despite knowing that the region is majorly accustomed to the
occurrence of storms, human structures were still being put up along the gulf
coast (ILIT, 2006). To make it worse, the structures were not strong enough to
counter the effects of a flood in the case of its occurrence. This is worsened
by the fact that it was common knowledge that the response units and preparation
measures in place were inadequate and not sufficient yet even after the storm, there
was no effort whatsoever to mobilize them effectively. When the hurricane
occurred therefore, instead of working tirelessly to execute the
responsibilities required of them, execution was still slow and coupled with
lots of challenges.
It is noted that both trees and brushes were reported to have
grown along the 17th streets and London Avenues of the levees
respectively, despite the fact that this was not allowed under the standards
established in light of levee protection (ILIT, 2006). This means that the
organizations responsible for the building, operation and maintenance of the
levees had failed in their duties and responsibilities. However, the main fault
falls under the local sponsor, whose main duty was to ensure that the levees
were well maintained, repaired and rehabilitated since they had already
accepted to take over control of the completed units from the state, from the
period 1977 to 1987.
Additionally, the structure itself was a miss from the word go.
The NOFDS project engineers seemed to have neglected the issue of design in
relation to the stipulated standards of the Project hurricane .None of the
desired qualities like flood elevation due to surges or wave heights were
reflected in the design. The design capacities used in the project did no seem
to qualify with the stipulated guidelines that are supposed to act as levee
protection factors, worsened by the fact that the configuration elements were
not properly integrated to act as a flood defence mechanism (ILIT,2006).
It is notable that the
NOFDS structure was not properly audited due to lack of incentive systems. This
therefore led to a structure that can otherwise be termed as being of poor
quality and not in any sense desirable. The quality standards exhibited did not
in any way meet the required standards applicable in the development of any
NOFDS structure (ILIT, 2006). This meant that the element of situation
awareness was not properly addressed due to their deficiency in the required
command and control systems. It is noted that besides the concerns raised y an
outside contractor on the inconsistencies of the levee, no action was taken to address
the problem.
In the political dimension, the corps has had to endure both
negative and positive pressure in the fulfilment of their duties. In this case however,
it is evident that there was a backlog in the project in the sense that the
cost benefit analysis conducted was clearly not properly done. This may have
led to the foregoing of important considerations. This may have been due to the
pressures of not only having to accomplish their projects in a shorter time
frame but also in a cost effective manner. In its quest to achieve both
elements, important aspects such as engineering superiority and oversight are
compromised (ILIT, 2006).
Communication also seems to have been a major challenge as the
decision making process aspect of the NOFDS project seems to have encountered
one such weakness. There was a highly complex system and lots of decisions had
to be made before the required resources would be provided to ensure that the
project was even started off (ILIT, 2006). This was a primary cause of failure
in the execution of the entire project. Thus, in its construction process the
NOFDS did not consider the use of advanced methods in costs evaluation and risk
reduction in relation to flood damage.
Conclusion
The general failure of the NOFDS project could be mainly
attributed to the poor organizational structure of the engineering corps.
However, the role played by the other factors is also not negligible. On the
other hand however, it should be noted that the performance of the corps is
centralized on the decisions carried out by the government just as is seen is
regards to cost and time allocation. It should therefore be noted that despite
the fact that most of the failure factors were due to poor structure, if blame
should be laid therefore, then it should be directed towards the government
involvement in the project.
Reference list
Independent levee investigation team, (2006), New Orleans flood
disaster investigation report chapter 12.
Retrieved from http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/projects/new
No comments:
Post a Comment