New Orleans, LA

Back in the beginning of August, I wrote an article about a Time Magazine article called Time: The Threatening Storm. After I wrote that, I got a comment from a reader named Corps Of Engineers Employee. Corps had this to day:

# Corps of Engineers Employee Says:
August 14th, 2007 at 9:45 am e

TIME magazine’s article, “The Threatening Storm,” undermines the real science and risk information citizens need to make informed decisions about rebuilding with its reckless disregard for the truth.

The Corps provided TIME magazine with engineering, scientific and risk information derived from the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force’s (IPET) study done in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The IPET study has been independently peer reviewed by the American Society of Civil Engineers and the National Academies. TIME chose to base their article on upon technical quotes that are not supported by science-based facts or the analysis done by IPET, ASCE or the National Academies.

For more info, visit:
http://www.usace.army.mil/response.htm

I promised that I would take a look at the link and report back. I have read the information and am now reporting back.

First off, I have to admit, I am not an engineer. I’m a computer neebish, though. Anyway, I mentioned (complained?) in my original post that I would like to see where Time got their info. This page from the Corps has links to that data. This page was basically released like a press release and if you are interested, I would recommend that you read it and the links provided. I will post some, what I consider significant, information from the release here.

WASHINGTON (August 13, 2007) — TIME magazine’s Aug. 13, 2007, cover story, “The Threatening Storm,” contains many errors and misrepresentations of facts with respect to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Hurricane Katrina, and ongoing efforts to improve hurricane and storm damage reduction for southeast Louisiana.

“This misrepresentation of the situation in Louisiana by TIME magazine is damaging to efforts to get essential, factual information to the people and community leaders of New Orleans.”

“The misrepresentation of the situation in Louisiana by TIME magazine is damaging to efforts to get essential, factual information to the people and community leaders of New Orleans,” said Maj. Gen. Don T. Riley, Director of Civil Works for the Corps. “The article’s reckless disregard for the truth undermines the real science and risk information citizens need to make informed decisions about rebuilding.”

At TIME’s request, the Corps spent a week providing the author with interviews and detailed engineering and scientific information about what we have learned and accomplished in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Corps also provided information about the ongoing and planned work the Corps and its partners are doing to restore and improve regional protection.

From this, you can see that the corps consider the Time article to be misleading as best.

TIME fails to include relevant Corps, IPET or HPDC information in the article that would give its readership the context needed to make informed decisions about the situation in southeast Louisiana.

The documents mentioned here are the ones the facts SHOULD have come from and are the ones I felt were missing from the Time article. The corps does not remove itself from responsibility totally:

The HPDC also serves to emphasize the need for the Corps and other agencies to do a better job in providing critical risk information about the state of the national public works infrastructure to the nation’s decision makers that will enable them to make better-informed decisions about infrastructure priorities and funding.

I personally feel that the corps should take the brunt of the blame. It is the levee that they built that collapsed. I do feel that Time could do a better job of backing up the facts in its stories. Katrina is an emotional topic but an organization like Time must be as factual as possible.

The article from the Corps also includes links that you may want to peruse.

new orleans, katrina, levee, army corps of engineers, time magazine, response