Also, the Waverly (Tennessee) explosion in 1978 might make an honorable mention on this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waverly,_Tennessee_tank_car_explosion

There were 53 breaches. What you describe above is what happened for many levees to the east of New Orleans, but between the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal and the 17th Street Canal, in the heart of the city, that is NOT what happened.

Outfall canal floodwalls breached while the storm surge water was still 4.5 feet below the top of the floodwalls because USACE engineers specified the use of steel sheet piles driven to just 17.5 feet below sea level when any competent engineer would have specified 60 foot below sea level in order to prevent failure if the water rose to the top of the floodwall.

Furthermore, those levees to the east that failed from overtoping… the fact is the Corps designs earthen levees to fail when overtopped which to me is just crazy. Engineering structures built to protect lots of people should be designed to survive expected conditions.

People say the people of New Orleans knew the levees would fail in a major storm, but that is a misstatement. We all knew the levees could be overtopped in a major storm and some of us knew those levees might breach if overtopped, BUT NO ONE KNEW these engineering structures would fail without even being overtopped.

There are too many unfair myths about New Orleans and Katrina.

Do people know that 90% of the metro area evacuated before the storm? It was the most successful evacuation of a metropolitan area in this country’s history. Could their city do as well?

Do they know that the Lower Ninth Ward is but only 2 of the 140 square miles (in just Orleans Parish) that flooded when flood control structures fell down.

Do they know that 70% of New Orleans home owners had flood insurance? – a rate higher than almost anywhere else in the country.

Do they know that the flood, proportionally, killed just as many rich, middle class and poor as well as black, white, Hispanic and Asian New Orleanians? The only demographic that suffered more than the rest were our elderly who suffered the worst, by far. Did you know many thousands of New Orleanians died in the months after the storm from stress and depression, and are still dying?

Do they know that 50% of New Orleans is above sea level?

Did you know ships must travel 96 miles upriver from the Gulf to reach New Orleans? – we are not a ‘coastal’ city.

96 miles upriver!!!

Do they know the Corps is mostly responsible for the losses of our wetlands that use to serve as a storm surge buffer for New Orleans?

Do they know that New Orleans has a higher percentage of residents that remain lifelong residents of their home town than any other major metropolitan area in the US?

Do they know the vast majority of New Orleanians are honest, hard working, tax paying, law abiding US citizens and deserve their respect?

Why do outsiders believe these myths?

The myths seemed to stem from journalists parachuting in with preconceived notions and lazy but flowery language and they typically reported it all wrong. Countrymen and politicians used our problems as partisan political fodder. New Orleans and its residents have been ruthlessly slandered like no American city has ever experienced. Lazy media reported a ‘natural’ disaster and too many of our countrymen feel we deserved our disaster and should even be denied the right to exist. It is plenty enough to hurt your feelings. Our fellow US citizens, even folk from all over the world, don’t care that all the misinformation has seriously disillusioned and disturbed so many.

Anyway, their plan was fraught with problems from the get-go. First, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that you should give more than just a little thought to the placement of a hazardous product facility. Building it in the commercially zoned area of a city with a million plus people shouldn’t have even been put on the table as a possibility – but it was, and yeah, that’s where they put it. Second, potential environmental dangers were weighed against cost effectiveness and given a lower position on the totem pole. The safety standards used in continental U.S. facilities were not used in the Bhopal plant and, third, no emergency plans were ever devised either by Union Carbide or the responsible Indian government officials to deal with a potential disaster.

Things were going along swimmingly for a while after the plant was built, but then Union Carbide decided that they could actually produce more of the base chemicals needed for the final product on-site at a lower cost and be more efficient. Makes sense, right? (Sometimes you end up spreading the icing a little too thin to cover the whole cake and the end product isn’t something you’d serve company unless you all had a bad case of the munchies, if you get my drift. It spread the facility a bit thin. A drought hit the country in the early eighties, driving down agricultural production and the demand for pesticides. The plant struggled to keep afloat for a couple of years before it was finally was put up for sale in ‘84, having reduced its production to a quarter of capacity.

Here’s what happened. Ready? On December 3, 1984, a technician noticed pressure building in a MIC (methyl isocyanate) storage tank. 1) A faulty valve had allowed a ton of H2O to pour into the gas storage unit creating an exothermic reaction with an accompanying increase in both pressure and temperature within the tank. 2) The coolant that used in the refrigeration unit that prevented the storage tank from over-heating had been diverted to another area of the plant to save cash for the stockholders. 3) The safety valve that would have provided a chemical that would neutralize the MIC in case of a leak had been turned off three weeks earlier – no one of importance thought it would be necessary with the decreased production at the plant. 4) The final safety measure that might have had some effect on the magnitude of the disaster, the gas flare safety system, had been de-activated three months prior – I don’t know the reason. 5) The primary safety valve on the storage tank was unable to withstand the building pressure and gave way near midnight, releasing the toxic methyl isocyanate fumes over the sleeping populace. While Union Carbide denies that temperatures increased to the level at which cyanide gas would be produced, tissue samples of victims indicate otherwise. Have you ever sprayed Raid on a cockroach? I hate cockroaches, but I can’t help but feel a little sick when I see them in the throws of death. I can’t imagine the horror of the moment when the deadly gas settled on the unsuspecting families.

By the following morning, every living creature near the plant was lifeless. The government initially reported over 2,800 dead but revised their figures within 72 hours to 3,787. The final death toll from the immediate exposure was increased to 15,310, or at least that’s the number of families that were provided compensation for the death of a loved one by Union Carbide. Actual figures at this time estimate the number to be closer to between 33,000 and 35,000 deaths total: 8,000-10,000 died shortly after exposure, while an addition 25,000 died later from gas exposure related diseases. Another 554,895 individuals received compensation for injuries which did not lead to death. Union Carbide negotiated with the Indian government to provide an average compensation of $2,200.00 for the family of each person who was killed in this incomprehensible tragedy. The total cost to Union Carbide was was $470 million – the total cost to the people of India cannot be measured. The loss cannot be compensated.

I don’t know if this can truly be considered an engineering disaster or if it should be categorized more effectively as a combination of greed, ignorance, incompetence and bigotry. It cannot be considered “human error” for that would indicate that it was simply one of those awful accidents that occur simply because someone failed to pay attention or made a poor judgment call in a moment of crisis. The atrocity of Bhopal was a preventable tragedy of great environmental, industrial, social and historic significance which seems to have conveniently been “swept under the rug”. The inhabitants of Bhopal were betrayed not only by corporate America, but, sadly, by their own government. It can only serve as a warning to future generations if it is remembered and understood.

For more information on this event, go to the article “Environmental Health: The Bhopal Disaster and its Aftermath: a Review” at http://www.ehjournal.net/content/4/1/6#IDAJLL1K and please add any info you may come across. It would be greatly appreciated.

Our outfall canal floodwalls fell down without even being overtopped (at less than half their design loads) because of negligent engineering in the design of those floodwalls’ foundations by engineers employed with the US Army Corps of Engineers as reported in the official levee failure investigation reports and reported to Congress by Corps leadership in June of 2006 and as decided by US 5th District Judge S. Duval in 2008.

The levee failures and subsequent flooding were NOT because of our corrupt local levee boards and politicians or because of weak soil, barges, wind, rain, land elevation, levee height, budgets, democrats, republicans, violent crime, an act of God, school buses, our culture, environmentalists, neighborhood groups. It wasn’t even caused by FEMA, our Sewage and Water Board or our state’s Department of Transportation, poverty, lack of education or any of the other red herring issues very successfully promoted by so many. It was not the fault of flood victims.

The levees did not fail because they were ‘overwhelmed’. Federal engineers made lots of big stupid mistakes. Our disaster was the worst engineering catastrophe in the history of North America and the engineers that designed and built and were responsible for those failed levees are the same engineers tasked to rebuild our storm surge protection system. And, the federal government gives us no choice (and never did), but to accept the Corps’ work.

This list must be a part of the Corps’ cover up.