What did I say about most of what we thought we knew after week one turning out to be wrong?

Experts Say Faulty Levees Caused Much Of Flooding
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 20 — Louisiana’s top hurricane experts have rejected the official explanations for the floodwall collapses that inundated much of New Orleans, concluding that Hurricane Katrina’s storm surges were much smaller than authorities have suggested and that the city’s flood- protection system should have kept most of the city dry.
But with the help of complex computer models and stark visual evidence, scientists and engineers at Louisiana State University’s Hurricane Center have concluded that Katrina’s surges did not come close to overtopping those barriers. That would make faulty design, inadequate construction or some combination of the two the likely cause of the breaching of the floodwalls along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals — and the flooding of most of New Orleans…[snip]
The center’s researchers agree that Katrina’s initial surge from the southeast overwhelmed floodwalls along the New Orleans Industrial Canal, flooding the city’s Lower Ninth Ward as well as St. Bernard Parish. They believe that a little-used Army Corps navigation canal known as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet helped amplify that surge, although they acknowledge that this surge was larger than the system was designed to control.

This is your must-read article of the day. Then, read my article about the Army Corps of Engineers and Katrina when the new issue of NRODT comes out Friday.

Also, if you have the time and you’re really interested in these issues, take a look at the LSU Hurricane Center’s Web site for lots of interesting animated graphics and satellite pictures exploring how the storm surge affected New Orleans.

UPDATE: Several readers had problems finding the area of the LSU Web site that had the animated graphics. Sorry about that. It’s here.