Entries Tagged as 'Flood'
4 May 2008 · Comments Off
Seen at ABC News:
The Army Corps of Engineers can be held liable for flood damage caused by a “hurricane highway,” a navigation channel that is believed to have funneled Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge into the city, a federal judge ruled Friday.
The Corps of Engineers had argued that it was immune from liability because the channel is part of New Orleans’ flood control system. The law says the federal government cannot be sued if something goes wrong with a flood control project such as a levee, reservoir or dam.
Judge Stanwood Duval dismissed that argument, saying the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, or MRGO, was clearly a ship channel and not a flood control project.
You may recall that plaintiffs are seeking $3,014,170,389,176,410 in damages from the Corps.
Tags:
Catastrophes · Insurance · Flood · Katrina · New Orleans
31 January 2008 · Comments Off
Remember the $3,014,170,389,176,410 sought from the Army Corps of Engineers for post-Katrina flood damage in New Orleans?
The judge has thrown out the case, and federal bean-counters are thanking their preferred deities for legislated grants of immunity. From the AP:
U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ruled that the Corps should be held immune over failures in drainage canals that caused much of the flooding of New Orleans in August 2005.
The ruling relies on the Flood Control Act of 1928, which made the federal government immune when flood control projects like levees break.[...]
In his ruling, Duval said he was forced by law to hold the Corps immune even though the agency “cast a blind eye” in protecting New Orleans and “squandered millions of dollars in building a levee system … which was known to be inadequate by the Corps’ own calculations.”
But, Duval said, “it is not within the Court’s power to address the wrongs committed. It is hopefully within the citizens of the United States’ power to address the failures of our laws and agencies.”
Tags:
Catastrophes · Litigation · Army Corps of Engineers · Flood · Katrina · Louisiana · New Orleans
7 January 2008 · Comments Off
So, does anyone else remember the Corps of Engineers expressing concern about many levees countrywide?
Seen at MSNBC:
An irrigation canal’s earthen levee ruptured after heavy rains early Saturday, flooding hundreds of homes and forcing the rescue of dozens of people in helicopters and boats across about a square mile of their high desert town 30 miles east of Reno. “We had a 50-foot wall of water about 2 feet high going down Farm District Road,” said Lyon County Fire Chief Scott Huntley, one of the first on the scene after a section of the Truckee Canal up to 150 feet long broke just after 4 a.m.
“In some places folks had to deal with 8 feet of water,” he said. “Firefighters were in chest-deep water making rescues.”
Tags:
Weather · Flood · Levee · Nevada
