In response to the article “In Harvey's wake: People helping people," Oct. 1, the article states, "Twelve years ago, Blackburn watched on television as Hurricane Katrina leveled New Orleans." The fact of the matter, according to the experts, is that the flooding of New Orleans was overwhelmingly the fault of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which was responsible for designing and building the levee system — not the hurricane itself.
An irregular, flawed federal funding process led to a piecemeal levee system that included some low-cost solutions that compromised the quality, safety and reliability of the designs, according to a 2007 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers Hurricane Katrina External Review Panel, as well as a 2015 study by the International Water Association.
Had there been no design defects present in the levees in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina would have made much less news and would not now suffer the fate of being referenced only as a terrible “natural” disaster. Rather, it would be labeled a terrible “engineering” disaster. It is my hope, as a former resident of New Orleans, that with wider dissemination of correct information, blame for the city’s flooding will eventually shift from nature to the failed infrastructure.
William Ferguson
Staunton, Virginia