oodles is back in San Francisco and has this to say about her trip here.
I did not go back to New Orleans looking for answers to big questions like “why?” and “how could this have happened?” I know I will never know. But, instead, what I found were thousands of courageous people who returned to the Big Easy. The ones who came back to live life as they always had and the ones that showed that life does go on.
Her post is full of sentiments so sweet they made me tear up. I’m sorry to say, oodles, that life does go on, but New Orleanians cannot afford to live like we always have. Not when the Army Corps of Engineers continues to fail us repeatedly over this city’s most crucial survival mechanism.
Fact: Our levees and pumps are broken, and not yet ready for the second hurricane season since 2005. The Army Corps of Engineers has not met project deliverables or the promised deadline. Instead, “the Corps’ January 2006 call for bids for 34 pumps used the wording on how the pumps should be built and tested, with minor changes, found in MWI catalogs … The specifications were so similar that an erroneous phrase in MWI catalogs – ‘the discharge tube and head assembly shall be abrasive resistance steel” – also appears in the Corps specifications. The phrase should say ‘abrasion resistant steel.’ An incorrect reference to the type of steel that would be required apparently was also lifted.” Thank you, Matt McBride. You need so much more help than this city offers you.
Question: How many courageous returnee lives will be lost in the next flood?
… [Bob Purcell, a former MWI employee and whistleblower, and current salesman for MWI competitor, FPI] then complained: “We were forced to meet someone else’s specifications in entirety.” He said the consultants did not cooperate with FPI, and he charged that MWI was given “a head’s up” about the job. That, he said, was evident by MWI’s order for pump engines before the contract was even put out to bid.
“I don’t know anything about that, sir,” [Corps contract officer overseeing the January 2006 bid, Cindy Nicholas] responded. She said that if MWI ordered the engines ahead of time, “they took a big risk.”
“Obviously it was a risk that paid off, let’s put it that way. They must have had some assurance!” Purcell exclaimed.
“Not from me,” Nicholas said.
