This appeared in the Times-Pic last Sunday:
Four pumps ran without vibration or pulsation during tests Saturday at the 17th Street Canal, leading an Army Corps of Engineers official to declare enough pumps will be functioning on all three New Orleans outfall canals when the 2007 hurricane season begins June 1….
Great story, right? Happy, happy. Joy, and, quite possibly, joy.
But if only Ms. Grissett had sleuthed a bit more. Yo, check it:
The Army Corps of Engineers, rushing to meet President Bush’s promise to protect New Orleans by the start of the 2006 hurricane season, installed defective flood-control pumps last year despite warnings from its own expert that the equipment would fail during a storm, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The 2006 hurricane season turned out to be mild, and the new pumps were never pressed into action. But the Corps and the politically connected manufacturer of the equipment are still struggling to get the 34 heavy-duty pumps working properly….
Of course, both stories reach similar conclusions: the pumps are being fixed, and everything should be fine by June 1. And of course, I’m not a journalist, so I don’t know everything that the Times-Pic reporter went through to get her story. But still, given everything that the AP dug up, it seems like Ms. Grissett–who’s presumably a local and presumably has an interest in the city’s well-being–overlooked an awwwwwful lotta junk, n’est-ce pas?
Now, I understand not wanting to scare people. I understand wanting to focus on the positive and to put folks at ease (especially when said folks are your subscription base). But I tend to draw the line at willful blindness. What happened to those ginormous nads Mr. Phelps & Co. grew in Katrina’s wake?
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