Katrina: The Jury Answers

by Don Wittig

  KATRINA:

  THE JURY ANSWERS

  DON WITTIG

  Note to the Reader Katrina: The Jury Answers is a work of fiction. While it is inspired in part by the actual storm and disparate scientific opinions, the story itself is fictional. The book does not depict any actual person or event. Most of the science of hurricanes and global warming is based upon the literature and published opinions of diverse observers with editorial observations.

  Photo Credits: Most photographs were taken by the author with the limited exception of two photos found in the public domain on the World Wide Web without attribution. The author’s photo is by RCL Portrait Design, Austin, Texas.

  Copyright ©2014 Don Wittig

  All rights reserved

  katrinajury@gmail.com, CreateSpace 9.2.2014

  ISBN: 1501007742

  ISBN 13: 9781501007743

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014915740 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, North Charleston, South Carolina

  1 Everybody Talks About It

  A FTER ROMPING ACROSS THE FLORIDA Keys, Katrina paused, drew in a deep, moist, heated breath, and then mobilized on her west-bynorthwest track. Slowly, the massive monster trucked her wayward path toward the Big Easy.

  Purchased in her New Orleans office, Major Melinda Lewis, PhD, stayed her station alone, two hundred and fifty miles northwest from the mounting storm. She deliberately toggled between the weather channel, her computer, and nautical charts. What if this category five hurricane made a direct hit on my New Orleans? Melinda hypothesized and recalculated the possible scenarios and repercussions in her mind. What would the wind do? Where would the surge go? How much rain could the city hold? Why did the storm have to change her mind and take aim at New Orleans?

  Melinda could not conceive that she was about to witness the costliest national disaster in the history of the United States. In terms of human lives, Katrina would go down as one of the five deadliest storms ever. But was it actually a natural disaster? Melinda was a brilliant engineer who well knew the possibilities of such a storm. Had she done enough? Had the Corps of Engineers done all it could? Were New Orleans and the Gulf Coast really ready for Katrina?

  Her eyes first fixed on the barometer. With her long, slender fingers, she meticulously reset the fixed arm to mark the sinking barometric pressure. She turned counterclockwise, like the

  1 approaching storm, and then riveted her attention upon the television monitor. The Miami Hurricane Center update was late again. She twisted her chair farther left to face her antiquated, manilacolored, government-issued computer monitor. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) radar filled her weather screen, and a swelling, dull, looming eye stared back at her more soulful, steady gaze. The time-delayed radar images repeated their monotonous sweeps over and over again. She easily rose from her metallic executive armchair, stood erect, and marched the eight paces to her two-by-two, government-issued window. There she stared in disbelief as row after row of gray-black cumulus banked toward her New Orleans office vantage point. An uninvited guest was coming to breakfast.

  Weather experts initially predicted Katrina skirting up the East Coast. Wrong. The weather guessers’ probability target area changed again and then again. The forecasters sounded like a couple of old sportscasters calling a heavyweight fight.

  “He’s circling right, now left! Look at that jab.”

  “That was no jab! It’s a knockout!”

  The drama of the question pressed: would Katrina hit west of

  the city, directly on the city, or just east? Melinda had weathered many storms and had run similar multiple scenarios too many times in her twenty-five years with the Army Corps of Engineers. She knew what must be avoided. A storm strike to the near east side of town could create a massive, unmanageable surge into the back gate of the city, Lake Pontchartrain. The devastation of a cat five surge into the lake could not be contained by the best engineering and construction in the world. The sea would envelop the city in a pincer movement that would leave nothing standing or alive.

  For a while the storm again stilled, gathering more power for her strike. Melinda’s mind flooded with thoughts of the many memos she had written her superiors. How could a government stand by and watch tens of thousands build their lives below the sea level of the Gulf ? There had been plenty of articles in the Times Picayune about the dangers. Hadn’t the people seen the street flooding and high water from mere local thunderstorms? It didn’t take a veteran engineer like Melinda to look at the big picture and foresee what could happen—what would happen. Still she agonized; maybe there was more she could have done.

  Melinda called John, her best friend and husband, one last time. The cell phones would be knocked out at any time. “Honey, did you make it to Houston OK?”

  “Yes, Melinda. But you gotta get out of New Orleans too. Have you seen the size of the storm? Promise me you’ll get out ahead of any storm surge. You know what you have been preaching to me all these years about how dangerous a storm like this can be.”

  “Don’t worry. If the barometer gets below nine hundred and eighty, I’m outta here. I know what I’m doing. And someone who knows about the levees needs to be handy. Bye, sweetheart. I love you.”

  Pressing the old-fashioned black government phone against her ear under her tousled red hair, Melinda heard the line go dead. Before the disconnect, John’s last words were that he’d see her soon.

  2 Governor Greg Godin had just talked with the president, who urged an immediate mandatory evacuation. But Godin knew how many hundreds of false alarms the people of Louisiana had been subjected to in his lifetime. This was not the time to panic. Rather, this was a time for a sure and steady hand—responsible, not reactive. He wanted to assure the people that all would be fine. The last thing he needed was a panic-stricken populace, rushing headlong into the storm. He clung to the stubborn belief there still was a good chance New Orleans would be spared.

  People across the nation were tethered to their televisions, consumed by the endless updates on Katrina. Political and other news commentary left the airwaves so that the only noise left was Katrina. Regular programs were preempted time and again. A sense emerged that this storm was different. Soon the TV pundits and doomsayers came out to play. People gathered at their favorite pubs. Others listened to talk radio.

  “The increase in the number or storms and their greater intensity are due to global warming.”

  “The increase in the intensity of the storms is a predictable, cyclical event caused by the weather and rains in the tropics.”

  “The destruction of environmentally sensitive marshlands subjects the mainland to greater flooding and has destroyed the natural barriers to tidal actions.”

  “Money destined to shore up the levees was diverted to marinas and other pork-barrel projects.”

  “Louisiana has received more funding from the Corps of Engineers than any other state.”

  “The levees are only built to withstand a cat three hurricane.”

  A social storm was brewing right alongside the one Mother Nature was cooking up in the heated waters of the Gulf.

  Meanwhile, in New Orleans, a silent, palpable fear began to grip its heart and soul. The immense hurricane was slowly breathing down on the still dry, subterranean city. Chaos began to roam the streets. The smell of dread and the forthcoming storm filled the nostrils of those left behind. Too many, like Melinda Lewis, chose to stay behind.

  2 The Agency

  M ELINDA’S LONGEVITY WITH THE CORPS afforded her access to the inner workings of the bureaucracy. Her three years in Washington, DC, had shown her more than she ever wanted to know about the agency. Like every other bureaucracy and milita
ry service, the Army Corps of Engineers was in endless competition with every other governmental bureau. But worse, almost every congressperson and senator had favorite engineering projects in their own backyards. Politicians demanded more and more spending, first to build the dam and then to circumvent the dam so that fish could swim upstream and spawn. Coastal levees were built to allow developments east, then rerouted to allow barge traffic west. In one project, a lonely twenty mile stretch of Texas coast in Matagorda County was adorned with a five foot high sea wall. This diminutive granite structure would theoretically save the Intracoastal Water Way but would turn the natural barrier island into a mud bank. Interior development lots became oceanfront property. The Corps was beholden to many masters.

  Still, Melinda was proud of her agency. The Corps managed to keep most of the nation’s waterways open most of the time. They were constantly performing studies to better protect both commercial and environmental interests. Yet the engineer in her always dreaded being assigned to a dredging project. A dredging project could take five to twenty-five years, depending on factors beyond the Corps’ control. Environmental Protection Agency studies were usually required. Besides the ponderously slow evolution of the EPA studies, the project would often have to endure endless rounds of litigation. How long the process took was in the hands of lifetime appointed federal judges and their magistrates. Some were environmentally friendly. Some not. Too often the courts were slow, overwhelmed by their federal drug crime dockets. The smallest environmental ruling could be appealed, stopping or slowing an entire Corps project. The legal system was designed to protect, not to build. Once in the courts, there was little the Corps could do.

  Melinda marveled at the power of the courts. She could not understand how an individual or a single group could bring the mighty federal government to its knees. While in Washington, she learned that special legislation, some might say special-interest legislation, allowed individuals and environmental groups unprecedented access to the federal courts. Few were granted this status. Ordinarily, no one can sue the government. The government is immune from most lawsuits. Governmental immunity extends to almost everything the government does, short of violating someone’s constitutional rights. But unconventional laws were passed. Under special environmental laws, almost anyone can sue and challenge environmental issues in the federal courts. To the engineer, this slow, ponderous, judicial scrutiny is often more an impediment than a protection to the environment. Nevertheless, there was something unbureaucratic and exceedingly democratic about the court system.

  When Melinda was in San Antonio, she saw an environmental group threaten to stop the growth of the Alamo City and six surrounding counties. The group claimed that taking too much water from the giant Edward’s Aquifer threatened the extinction of the blind salamander. They got a progressive judge to rule in their favor that could have turned over the state’s rights to control its own water and given that control to the federal government. Everyone got in the act: farmers, ranchers, developers, US Fish and Wildlife, the cities, and even the Texas Legislature, which was called upon to deal with one judge’s opinion that the water must be measured out and even rationed. So much for Texas’s famous “right to capture,” giving title to water and minerals to landowners. Thus began decades of controversy and escalating battles pitting the salamanders’ right to life with the locals’ right to farm their land and city dwellers’ right to drink water and water their lawns.

  So when Melinda got the dreaded dredging project, she knew from past experience she would never see it through. First, there would be tedious studies, planning, and the actual inception of work. Then there would be an environmental lawsuit, and the project would be halted. Someone else would inevitably replace her on the project. Nevertheless, she enjoyed the power to right a wrong. When her Corps was asked or even told to disregard avoidable environmental impact, she learned how to stop the needless destruction of nature. Melinda worked within the Corps to find a better route. Once she stood up to local political interests who would have had the Corps destroy one of the best estuary systems in the Chesapeake Bay. She had her victories. “Good engineering and coastal conservation are never incompatible,” she always said.

  Somewhat of a renegade, Melinda didn’t confide with anyone within the Corps, even friends and coworkers. More than once, however, she secretly informed a friend at the EPA about an environmentally disastrous earmark a well-known congressman had tried to sneak through. Another time she even informed an influential stalwart of a well-known environmental group about a particularly destructive coastal plan by her agency. Because of the leaked information, the project was killed. “It should have been!” she wrote in her diary. When it comes to engineering and protecting the environment, right is right and wrong is wrong, Melinda preached to herself. Her strong moral compass rarely deviated.

  Melinda’s environmental empathy led her to a chance encounter. At a monthly meeting of one of the ecological organizations, she met Bob Deerman. She developed a friendship with him and discovered that he was one of the inside movers of the Sahara Club. The introduction led to a gradual change of her course and attitude. She liked Bob Deerman and became a guest both at Bob’s home and at Sahara meetings. The liaison was almost clandestine, given the frequent battles between her agency and Bob’s club. At a coastal engineering conference in 1998, they found themselves staying at the same hotel at the posh Ocean Reef resort. Their table dined on lobster and shrimp by the tidal pool overlooking the Florida Keys.

  Later that evening, against her better judgment, Melinda had a nightcap with Bob at the Burgee Bar, led on by her desire to learn more about environmental issues. Little did she then appreciate the significance of that one hot summer night, nor could she foresee that Bob Deerman would later become executive director of the Sahara Club.

  3 Katrina Crashes Ashore

  A FTER DAYS OF TAKING THE measure of the mid–Gulf Coast, Katrina ripped ashore. She ravaged the coastline with 154 plus miles perhour winds. Her storm surge piled up twenty-five-foot seas onto the deserted beaches and inlets. She carved a mighty swath all the way from western Louisiana to the Florida panhandle. In her path she left death, destruction, and chaos.

  Melinda hunkered down in her office. She spoke to herself out loud. “It’s too late to leave.” The storm screamed through the buildings of New Orleans. The television signal was starting to cut out. However, she was happy to learn Katrina had weakened to a cat four. Still, she had winds of 154 miles per hour or higher and a thirteen to eighteen-foot storm surge according to some reports. Melinda wondered and worried about the levees. Then came the good news!

  Moments before Melinda’s television signal went down for the count, she learned that Katrina had veered more to the east, more than seventy miles from her earlier trek. Unbelievable, she thought. Perhaps a miracle or some mighty good luck. The levees will hold! The highest storm surge in the northeast quadrant of Katrina will bypass New Orleans and the lake. New Orleans is saved from the worst! She rejoiced. Melinda tried to call John and tell him the good news, but both the phone lines and cell towers were down. She would ride out the storm in her sturdy building engineered by her own Corps.

  It was August 29, 2005. Katrina’s monstrous eye looked beyond New Orleans. Then in the early morning hours of August 30, Katrina struck Mississippi and Alabama. Devastating waves and seawater rumbled their way as far as six miles inland. Blocks and blocks of Biloxi were more than 90 percent destroyed. Over a hundred deaths would be blamed on Katrina in Mississippi alone. According to most reports, the devastation in Mississippi was more terrible than from Hurricane Camille, the worst storm ever to hit the state. One Biloxi woman would return to where her home had stood and found only a single shoe.

  In Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, ominous black marks placed on the doors of homes signaled the presence of dead bodies inside.

  In Alabama, over four hundred thousand homes were affected, from power outage to total destruction. Mobile had floods as d
eep as eleven feet. As far east as the Florida panhandle, eleven perished and eighty thousand homes were left without power. Tornadoes and torrential rains affected Georgia and Tennessee. Inexplicably, television networks virtually ignored the worst of the storm’s swath. The action line was New Orleans. If it didn’t happen there, it didn’t happen. Like most stories in the United States, once the media settled on its story line, most everything else was ignored.

  August 29 surprisingly saw news crews roaming the streets of the French Quarter. New Orleans had been remarkably spared. Windows were out, signs were down, and a few structures dumped their bricks on cars parked below. But considering the enormous size and power of Katrina, the damage was manageable. Mississippi and Alabama bore the brunt of the hurt. People still worried about the ongoing rain, but most in the Big Easy let out a collective sigh of relief. Several of the French Quarter bars stayed open or reopened within hours of the storm’s passage. The three hundred year-old city ducked another round with Mother Nature, so she thought.

  Melinda easily exited her office and wandered the streets of New Orleans. She wondered how it could be that the city escaped yet again. It must be black magic or holy saints protecting us. Maybe just Cajun luck. Only two months to retirement. At least the Corps won’t be embarrassed on my watch. When I retire in October, then maybe I can get them to listen to me. Bob Deerman promised he would help, and I trust him more than the bureaucrats in DC. Guess I better get down the road toward Lake Charles so I can call John and let him know all is well. Melinda made her way to her car and drove to I-10 East. No time to go by home. I’ll be back in town by tomorrow night.

  Melinda braved her way to Lake Charles. Relieved, John happily joined her and they celebrated the near miss of Katrina. Nightfall brought more rain. Then catastrophe.

  August 30. Water built in the streets. Rumors flew. Torrents overflowed one of the levees. Yes, it was the London Street Canal, right by some of the wealthiest denizens of the city. How could this be? The levees should have easily handled the expected lower storm surge. It was Biloxi, not Pontchartrain that took the biggest and direct surge hit. This was not possible. A hole in the levee? A multimillion dollar levee crumbled like a Cracker Jack toy. The floods came. The levees failed.