PRELIMINARY RECONNAISSANCE AND OBSERVATIONS OF THE NEW ORLEANS LEVEE AND FLOODWALL FAILURES BY INDEPENDENT ASSESSMENT TEAMS

Almost immediately after the realization that a number of New Orleans area levees and floodwalls had failed during the onslaught of the storm surge created by Hurricane Katrina, ASCE mobilized to respond to this disaster. It was clear that something had gone terribly wrong with the engineered infrastructure designed to protect the city and surrounding areas from just this type of catastrophe. ASCE and its membership, as well as other organizations, responded immediately with a pledge to assist with support by whatever means were most suitable. One very important mission was to collect perishable data and other evidence to assist in determining the causes of the levee failures. Groups from ASCE’s Geo-Institute (G-I) and Coasts, Oceans, Ports & Rivers Institute (COPRI), together with a group sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), banned together in organizing a reconnaissance team, self-titled the Levee Assessment Team (LAT). The LAT joined a U.S Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) reconnaissance team from the Vicksburg, Mississippi Engineering Research and Development Center (ERDC) in the field to make initial assessments of the failures that had occurred and collect perishable data to help provide answers to the causes of those failures. This initial, preliminary study was an important starting point from which a number of detailed investigations have followed. The collection of perishable data was an invaluable source of information that was quickly disappearing as recovery operations proceeded. The independent teams spent more than two weeks from late September to early October 2005 visiting significant failure sites, performing forensic field inspections and documenting observations. While specifics of failure mechanics and detailed source points would take much more in-depth studies, the data collected in this early field reconnaissance allowed many preliminary evaluations and hypotheses to be drawn. While some difficulties were initially encountered in obtaining adequate background information, this unprecedented involvement of independent assessment experts for the failure of a major federal project proved to be an important positive step forward in practice and policy for engineers responding in the wake of disaster.