Bea, who was heavily involved in this case, and was co-investigator of
New Orleans levee failure with Professor Seed, the factor of safety that
Corps has used in design of levees of New Orleans was 1.1 and they were
designed for Hurricane 3 not 4 which is expected there.
This was done knowingly and resulted in loss of 1500 lives. Now, we the
taxpayers will pay billions of dollars in compensation to the survivors
of the victims of this gross negligence. If the Corps had done it right,
we would have those 1500 people still alive.
As my colleague, Professor Karlene Roberts of Haas School of Business
here at UC says: "Engineers think planet earth is uninhabited". Of
course I do not believe all engineers do that but I totally agree with
her that a percentage of engineers do and when they ignore their
responsibility to public safety and protection of environment, innocent
people get killed because of failure of their design.
Fortunately, our great democracy has mechanisms in place to prevent such
criminal acts and that is the judiciary. In this case, once again,
our judicial system, protected the society from criminally negligent
engineers who try to keep their jobs or gain financially at the expense
of public safety.
Regards.
"Hassan"
Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, Ph.D., P.E., Professor
UC Berkeley
==============================
From: Richard Calvert <RichardC@lbbe.com>
To: "seaint@seaint.org" <seaint@seaint.org>
Subject: RE: Federal judge rules Corps of Engineers liable for flood damage
...
They knew there was a problem. If you or I knew one of our structures
could fail, we certainly couldn't use the excuse "well no one was
willing to pay me to fix it" ...
===============================
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