blog of a guy helping to restore data service to new orleans.

Budget cuts delayed New Orleans flood control work:

“It’s clear that we didn’t do everything we could to safeguard ourselves from this hurricane or from a natural disaster such as Katrina but hopefully we will learn and be more prepared next time,” said Landrieu spokesman Brian Richardson. The levee defenses had been designed to withstand a milder Category Three hurricane and simply were overwhelmed by Hurricane Katrina, said senior project manager Al Naomi. “The design was not adequate to protect against a storm of this nature because we were not authorized to provide a Category Four or Five protection design,” he said. A study examining a possible upgrade is under way, he said.

The official version; then there’s the in-the-trenches version:

Uncollected corpses

Brown: That’s not been reported to me, so I’m not going to comment. Until I actually get a report from my teams that say, "We have bodies located here or there," I’m just not going to speculate.

Segal: We saw one body. A person is in a wheelchair and someone had pushed (her) off to the side and draped just like a blanket over this person in the wheelchair. And then there is another body next to that. There were others they were willing to show us.

Evacuee Cooper: They had a couple of policemen out here, sir, about six or seven policemen told me directly, when I went to tell them, hey, man, you got bodies in there. You got two old ladies that just passed, just had died, people dragging the bodies into little corners. One guy — that’s how I found out. The guy had actually, hey, man, anybody sleeping over here? I’m like, no. He dragged two bodies in there. Now you just — I just found out there was a lady and an old man, the lady went to nudge him. He’s dead.