posted
Looks like Brown of FEMA is on his way out. It's telling when spokesmen don't say "he enjoys the presidnt's confidence" etc.
If he lied on his resume, he deserves to be scapegoated. Even if he didn't, he doesn't seem qualified for the job.
quote: But today, the chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, declined repeated opportunities to say that Mr. Brown still enjoyed the president's full confidence. "We appreciate all those who are working around the clock, and that's the way I would answer it," Mr. McClellan said.
With each passing day since the storm pounded the Gulf Coast, the criticism of Mr. Brown, a lawyer whose credentials indicated no emergency-response experience when he became head of FEMA two years ago, has only increased.
Several days into the crisis, Mr. Brown acknowledged in an interview with Paula Zahn of CNN that he was not aware that thousands of New Orleans residents were huddled in the city's convention center under increasingly dire circumstances.
As recently as Thursday there was obvious disarray within FEMA, as agency spokesmen in Baton Rouge and Washington gave conflicting answers on whether the agency would proceed with plans to use debit cards to distribute financial aid to people dislocated by the storm.
Mr. Brown's standing was further clouded when Time magazine reported on its Web site Thursday that he had embellished some of his credentials. When he was asked today whether he had done so, and whether he would resign from FEMA, Mr. Brown was silent.
quote:de Spang, I think Steve (who is a civil engineer himself) was saying to take the dredge down to bedrock. They *have* to anchor large buildings on bedrock, most of the time. It appears bedrock is about 70 feet under the actual city of New Orleans.
This isn't always the case. Only for buildings of a certain size (here when I say size, I really mean weight) does the substructure (the base that supports the steel columns) have to go all the way down to the bedrock. For smaller buildings, putting the substructure on clay is fine.
I have no idea what the soil beneath New Orleans looks like, specifically where the clay starts and where the bedrock starts. But 70 feet, that's a long way down.
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posted
Are you guys talking about shoring up the city or just the levees?
I'm thinking of the way they built the Aswan dam in Egypt, by drilling holes and filling them with cement. The issue being that the ground was made of sand pretty much all the way down to bedrock, and water would simply tunnel its way under the dam. By drilling holes side by side they were able to make a continuous curtain under the entire length of the dam, but without the expense of excavating down to bedrock.
In New Orleans' case that wouldn't be necessary, since the soil is not permeable (at least, the natural barrier doesn't leak). So all that would be necessary is to drill piers down to bedrock at reasonable intervals, to keep the levees from sinking. If it's 70 feet that's no big deal for a drilled hole.
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