Looking For a Barge to Plug the Hole in the Levee

[TorchTheWitch]

Well it's about freakin' time!

http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_08.html

"To repair one of the levees holding back Lake Pontchartrain, officials late Tuesday dropped 3,000-pound sandbags from helicopters and hauled dozens of 15-foot concrete barriers into the breach. Maj. Gen. Don Riley of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said officials also had a more audacious plan: finding a barge to plug the 500-foot hole."

Haven't we been saying this from the beginning? Good grief!

[hnsez]

1. -Volunteers Airforce ONE! (they can land it right in the hole with * on)

[wakeme2008]

2. the first thing I thought of was a barge to

slow the water and let them fix the levees

[chicagiana]

9. I heard some FEMA guy saying ...

... that they preferred to plug it with something more "temporary".

Shit what do these people think about. Plug the fucking leack as fast as you possibily can asshole. Run that fucking barge aground and then blow a hole in the lakeside. Then fill the fucker with as many bags of concrete as you can find.

When it comes time to repair the levee, just build a coffer damn around the barge or permanently encase it in concrete.

Comandeer a vessel if you have to and pay the guy off. The US Government fritters away 10s of billions of dollars in Iraq with nary any acounting. But they can't bare to spend a couple thousand dollars in the US to prevent 10s of billions of dollars in damage.

The Bush administration WANTED this disaster. They WANTED gas prices to go sky high because the oil companies will reap a windfall from the supplies they already have.

[LynzM]

3. Good grief

Don't these people know how to use google to look for ideas? I mean, seriously. DU's been talking about this since at least midday yesterday...

[TorchTheWitch]

8. Honestly!

I swear sometimes I'm convinced the whole government has a bunch of flunkies in a room somewhere reading DU so they can figure out what the fuck they're supposed to be doing and how to get their heads unstuck from their asses!

UGH! :banghead:

"audacious plan" my BUTT! IT'S BEEN DONE BEFORE! (apparently the flunkies decided to omit that part when reading DU to make some high up government dumbass look intelligent).


Ya know, we really needing a "pulling your hair out" smilie.

[phantom power]

4. For a city whose very existence depends on those levies...

they seem remarkably unprepared to plug those holes.

[Duer 157099]

5. Yes. In fact, we have been talking about...

this since the moment it was first broadcast on CNN Monday night around 10pm or so.

If they had dealt with the problem then, this major flooding could have been prevented. Even the sandbag strategy could have been viable in those early hours.

It's almost as though they lacked resources or something.

Watching all of the cable news stations in the minutes, hours and now days since the woman at the hospital first mentioned the levee break, has been nothing short of astonishing to me. It's truly as though we, at DU, live in a little bubble-world of our own, and are cursed with being able to see clearly what is going on in the outside world, and yet nobody can hear us.

I was watching the news all yesterday and thought that the paltry rescue attempts were just insufficient. I mentioned this to a Bushie and the reply was: "oh, you can't see everything that's going on just by watching the news -- you only get to see what they can show you, can they can't go everywhere to show you" (doh!). I replied that most of the images were aerial views that did indeed allow me to view the entire city, and that I was able to see what was happening.

Articles are now coming out that yes, indeed, it was the way it had appeared to me (and us).

Sad, sickening, disheartening, disgusting, scary, all those things.

[petronius]

16. You hear that from bushies on a lot of subjects:

"There's a lot going on that we don't hear about." Which apparently means that if we don't hear about it then it must be happening; if it's happening then we owe it to Bush; if it's Bush's idea then it must be working; therefore Bush is a great leader. And we know all this because we don't know what's happening! Get it?

[BrendaStarr]

18. I guess that would have been in the plan that the Army Corps would have

created if their funding hadn't been cut.

If there were a smart and caring president he might have checked with local disaster officials and maybe suggested that they should do something like that instead of playing golf in AZ and then running off to meet with whomever in Riverside CA. (Why Riverside I can't figure out. Riverside in August is the type of place Bush should be in his afterlife.--Weatherwise only, many good people there.-- I can only assume it was a hidden meeting with right wing Hollywood people.)

Make Bush pay-- Get to the mixed boards and get the truth out to the American people.

[Wilber_Stool]

6. I wonder how much money

they've spent on "studies" over the years for just such a disaster as this.

[Skink]

7. Breaking Bush authorizes use of bunker buster to plug hole

will smoke them levees out.

[chicagiana]

10. i'd authorize the use of ...

... Air Force One to plug the leak.

[Drewskie]

11. 15'

The lake is only 15 feet deep. I imagine the 17th street canal would'nt be any deeper. Maybe they could find 200' ship to make in in there... maybe not. Too late now in any case.

[ptolle]

12. dutch boy solution

No kidding. I grew up in farming country before the advent of center pivot irrigation- most was gravity either by gated pipe or ditch and siphon tube.Occasionally a ditch bank would breach and the man( a family friend) I worked for would seat me in the breach and shovel dirt around me until it reached a point where I could get out and the ditch bank could be completely repaired.

[daleo]

13. I read that the water levels have equalized.

So, it needs to be fixed in order to be able to pump water out of the city, but it won't stop any more flooding.

[Cooley Hurd]

14. A barge is a ready-made cofferdam...

...although it would take more than one to do the job.

[libertypirate]

15. Containers and Railcars would be easier....

[leftchick]

17. why can't they find one?

is it that fucking hard?