Friday, December 16, 2005

Was the Corps blocked from making repairs?

Times Picayune: :

"In another indictment of local oversight of levees in the New Orleans area, a U.S. Senate committee heard wide-ranging testimony Thursday about lax maintenance, confusion over who was in charge of emergency repairs and even a report that the Army Corps of Engineers was blocked by a local levee official from trying to fill breaches in the London Avenue Canal.

'We wanted to fill in the London Avenue Canal with fill,' corps Col. Richard P. Wagenaar said in an interview with Senate investigators released Thursday. 'And he (an unidentified levee district official) said, 'They're not doing that. Over my dead body are they going to fill that canal.'"

The Advocate.com: :
"Wagenaar said Thursday that a West Jefferson Levee District employee blocked the corps from getting to the failure.

'He literally blocked our equipment,' Wagenaar said. 'They would not let the Corps of Engineers operate.'

The head of the West Jefferson Levee District notified on Thursday of the account said his crew started repairing the breech because no other agency was on site.

'They're full of bull,' Harry 'Chip' Cahill, president of the levee district, said of Wagenaar's account. 'Nobody was doing anything.'"

Oh, yeah. We gotta get to the bottom of this -- FUBAR!

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