Hurrican Katrinia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Hurrican Katrinia - Essay Example aled to both the contractors who designed and built the wall as well as the Army Corps Engineers the nature of the weak layer of soft soil that made the base of the floodwall’s steel piling foundation. In addition, the primary design for the steel sheet foundation for the walls indicated a suggested depth of 10 feet having the calculations made with wall base at 12.8 feet. Furthermore, a New Orleans engineer claimed that the depth was later on increased to a depth of up to 17 feet. Nonetheless, although the corps maintained their claim that the wall depth was 17 feet, investigations carried out by a forensic engineering group from Louisiana State University by use of sonar revealed that the piling sheets were 10 feet (Shrum, 2014). Also, investigations of the constructions on the Industrial Canal and London Avenue levees showed that they were below the stated standards. Other reports indicated that homeowners along the 17th Street Canal close to where the site of breach appear ed had previously reported about a constant leakage from the canal that flooded their yards a year before the Hurricane Katrina. Therefore, aside from the fact that the storm heave formed remarkable subterranean pressures under the floodwalls making the soil under the sheet weaker structural problems in the walls played a role as well (Shrum, 2014). Poor levee maintenance was another underlying factor, whereby, investigations suggest that a probable trigger of the breach on the 17th Street Canal levee may be due to a fallen large oak tree planted rather too close to the levee base. In addition, on the London Avenue Canal, burrowing animals had formed enormous through-ways that undermined the already weakened foundations. Therefore, the local levee boards responsible for maintaining had not done their work as they should have. In addition, the destruction of cypress trees and various vegetations that had previously grew in the brackish waters in the intersection between the Gulf of Mexico