Los diques en Nueva Orleans: diseñados para fallar
Las malas noticias no dejan de aparecer para la gente de Nueva Orleans. Gracias a la burocracia y a los medios políticos, los ingenieros a cargo del diseño y construcción del sistema de diques en Nueva Orleans intencionalmente usaron datos que ya no estaban vigente. Frederick Chatry, el jefe de ingeniería en 1985, supo que los diagramas contenían un diseño inferior pero en vez de corregirlos, decidió usarlo. El nuevo diseño hubiera aumentado la altura de los diques. Tragedia tras tragedia.
As they completed sections of the New Orleans area's hurricane protection system in the 1980s and '90s, Army Corps of Engineers officials assured residents the structures had been raised to standards mandated by Congress.That, however, was mostly a legal fiction, documents and interviews with current and former corps employees show.
The corps' levees and floodwalls might have met specifications in the plans, but the engineers involved knew the measuring stick being used was out of date.
In fact, many sections of the system were a foot or more below authorized heights because the local office of the corps made a decision in 1985 not to use updated elevation values for projects then under way.
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