Source from CNN

Levee repairs may not protect New Orleans

WASHINGTON (AP) — Repairs to New Orleans’ levees may be insufficient to protect residents moving back to the devastated city if another hurricane comes before the tropical storm season ends this month, engineers said Wednesday.

Dozens of breaches continue to mar the city’s levee system, including a large seep at the Industrial Canal last week, according to engineering experts who have examined the floodwalls.

Repairs have gotten better in recent days, the experts told a Senate panel investigating floodwall failures after Hurricane Katrina. But the initial rebuilding process was done with little or no engineering guidance and perhaps substandard materials, they said.

“Short term, without a storm, they are probably adequately safe,” said Dr. Peter Nicholson, a University of Hawaii engineering professor, representing the American Society of Civil Engineers. “Certainly with a large storm, as we are not yet out of hurricane season, and certainly for next hurricane season, there is significant risk.”

At the Industrial Canal levee, which abuts New Orleans’ obliterated Ninth Ward, repairs to breaches “were not adequate for a high-water incidence — for instance, another hurricane storm surge with the storm season that isn’t yet behind us, or even a very high tide,” said Raymond Bolton Seed. Seed, a University of California at Berkeley engineering professor, participated in a National Science Foundation study investigating the levee failures.

The large seep at that levee, which occurred October 24, “was not entirely unexpected,” Seed told the panel.

However, he said, deeper walls “that will be far more stable than they were before” have been dug in at least some areas since the NSF first examined the levees.

“I don’t think there is a long-term risk to the city of New Orleans,” Seed said.

The findings highlighted what Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chaired the panel, called troubling concerns about whether the repairs have been insufficient.

“These rebuilt levees may be at risk of failing in another storm, a disturbing finding that raises questions about the safety of the city’s returning residents,” Collins said. She heads the Senate Homeland Security committee, which was holding a hearing on why New Orleans’ floodwalls failed after Katrina hit on August 29.

Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, top Democrat on the panel, said reconstruction efforts were done, “we all understand, in haste and in very urgent circumstances.” But he echoed Seed’s questions about whether the levees could now “protect the city of New Orleans from high tides, let alone another hurricane.”

The Senate hearing also examined the NSF’s report showing that the levees may not have been designed to protect a major city. Moreover, engineers who designed the levees did not fully consider the porousness of the Louisiana soil or make other calculations that would have pointed to the need for stronger floodwalls, the study shows.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/11/02/levee.probe.ap/index.html

Will the US REALLY have enought flu vaccine? Depends on who you talk to, but things seem to be more positive this time around…

Rich

WASHINGTON PREDICTS ADEQUATE SUPPLY OF FLU VACCINE
By GARDINER HARRIS
NYT Express
10/24/2005

WASHINGTON — Top federal health officials acknowledged Monday that there were some spot shortages of flu vaccine this year but said overall supplies should be adequate.

Some doctors and public health clinics have complained that they have limited supplies of flu vaccines this year. But Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt and other top health officials said this situation should change in the coming weeks.

Eight states have reported some flu cases, a normal level at this point; flu season usually peaks in January and February, and people have many weeks to get vaccinated, officials noted.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said flu vaccine supplies were tight because the country is in a “transition” period. As more people decide to get vaccinated against the flu every year, vaccine supplies will become more abundant and reliable, he said. This change will also help the nation if a pandemic were ever to strike, he said.

In the wake of a supply crunch last year, federal health officials had instructed doctors to vaccinate through Sunday only the elderly, the very young, the sick and health care providers. On Monday, however, vaccines were made available to all.

Federal officials said that somewhere from 70 million to 88 million doses of flu vaccines should be available this year, much of it in the coming weeks.

Leavitt also took care to distinguish between fears of a bird flu that could cause millions of deaths worldwide and the annual effects of the seasonal flu.

He said the administration was revising its long-awaited plan for dealing with an outbreak of a rare pandemic flu that could kill millions. But he pointed out that the seasonal flu is also dangerous.

“It kills an average of 36,000 Americans a year, leads 200,000 Americans to be hospitalized and causes countless lost school and work days,” he said. “Much of this can be prevented by simply getting a flu shot.”

Source

NYC Unveils Hurricane Evacuation Plan
By LARRY McSHANE, AP

NEW YORK (Oct. 4) - It’s coming, with skyscraper-rattling winds and a 30-foot storm surge that threatens to submerge Wall Street, flood the subways and turn Coney Island into a water park. And when it arrives, more than 3 million New Yorkers - more than six times the population of New Orleans - could be forced to evacuate by the first major hurricane to hit the city since 1938.

A killer storm in the nation’s largest city, with flooding in all five boroughs, inaccessible highways and airports, and enormous traffic jams, would require an unprecedented response. After the summer of Katrina and Rita, New Yorkers are wondering if the city can handle the challenge.

“The plan now is full of technical and other management flaws,” said state Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, who chairs a committee investigating the city’s planned response. “There’s a basic bottom line: We are incredibly vulnerable, and our leaders are patting us on the head saying, `There, there. Trust us.”‘

A recent WNBC-TV/Marist Poll indicated that 62 percent of New Yorkers felt it was not possible to evacuate their neighborhoods.

Not true, city emergency officials say. New York is ready to respond to the hurricane risks, and the city dispatched staffers to New Orleans and Texas in hopes of learning from Katrina and Rita.

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Every 90 Years…NYC Unveils Hurricane Evacuation Plan

Source

from the September 02, 2005 edition (Christian Science Monitor)

Homeland security in a perfect storm
By Eric Holdeman

SEATTLE – In the days to come, as the nation and the people along the Gulf Coast work to cope with the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, we will be reminded anew how important it is to have a federal agency capable of dealing with natural catastrophes of this sort. This is an immense human tragedy that will work hardship on millions of people. It is beyond the capabilities of state and local government to deal with. It requires a national response.

Which makes it all the more difficult to understand why, at this moment, the country’s premier agency for dealing with such events - FEMA - is being, in effect, systematically downgraded and all but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security.

Apparently homeland security now consists almost entirely of protection against terrorist acts. How else to explain why the Federal Emergency Management Agency will no longer be responsible for disaster preparedness? Given our country’s long record of natural disasters, how much sense does this make?

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FEMA - R.I.P. 1979-2005