New Orleans passes test, faces challenge

Flood protection system still faulty, officials say

Louisiana State Trooper Mike Nicolini told a driver yesterday that he could not continue to New Orleans at a checkpoint at the Slidell/New Orleans Causeway. Those with certain placard designations were allowed into the city while others were redirected. (Essdras M Suarez/Globe Staff)

NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Katrina brought shame upon a fabled American city - and the nation. The infirm were abandoned. The lawless ran rampant. And vital government functions, most notably the protective network of levees, failed miserably.

Never again, proclaimed city, state, and federal leaders. So a blueprint was drafted to swiftly evacuate the poor and the weak. City leaders vowed to take a harsher tone in their evacuations orders. And an elaborate reconstruction of levees began, costing $2 billion so far.

"They have been preparing this since Katrina," said Allison Plyer, deputy director of the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, a local think tank. "It was not something they threw together 24 hours before Hurricane Gustav."

Things that should have happened did this time, as Gustav menaced the Gulf Coast: Evacuations flowed smoothly, critically ill hospital patients boarded military flights to safety, the levees held.

Gustav turned out to be no Katrina, but no matter: This time, New Orleans was determined it would not be guilty of manmade folly.

By the time the storm arrived Monday, authorities estimated 2 million people had fled - 800,000 more than from Katrina. And it was not only law-abiding citizens who decamped. So did the troublemakers.

Even if they had stayed, New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley said his department was ready.

"What happened during Katrina was an embarrassment," he said, noting the officers who looted and the 67 others who abandoned their posts.

This time, Riley's department was determined to redeem itself.

"We looked at this not only as a challenge, but - as horrific as it could be - as an opportunity, an opportunity to show the citizens and the world that we could handle this situation."

Still, even as evacuated residents awaited word that they can return to their largely undamaged homes, it was just as obvious that much remains to be done.

Most critically, the Corps of Engineers had not had enough time to reverse years of neglect, leaving broad swaths of the levee system vulnerable. And more than one-third of pump stations along the canals bisecting New Orleans - some a century old - need to be upgraded.

The urgency of that was evident yesterday when a levee was breached southeast of New Orleans.

But making the region better prepared for a hurricane is, ultimately, a cheaper - and smarter - investment than absorbing costs associated with emergencies, Plyer said.

It cost $65 million to evacuate 2 million Louisianans from Gustav, something that might not have been necessary if levees were already bolstered and if depleted wetlands that can defang a hurricane had been restored. But until that happens, officials here wanted to do everything they could to avoid what dogged them in 2005: national humiliation.

"They were all extraordinarily upset about government's ability to deal with what happened in Katrina," said Robert Blendon, of the Harvard School of Public Health, who met officials during leadership sessions after Katrina. "Many people in state and local government would say Katrina was the big failure of their lifetime."

The scenes were indelible: looting, crowds at the Superdome, and patients marooned in hospitals as water filled the city.

At Tulane Hospital, doctors and nurses never imagined all that could go wrong that was beyond their control, said Dr. Lee Hamm, executive vice dean of the Tulane School of Medicine.

"We didn't view it as our responsibility to arrange our own evacuation," said Hamm, who was working in the hospital during Katrina and again during Gustav. "It's sort of like if you got to the airport and somebody told you, 'Well, did you bring your plane and did you bring your pilot?' "

This time, as Gustav whirled closer, the plans were sharper, the messages stronger, the security tighter.

Instead of offering shelters of last resort - such as the Superdome during Katrina - the city opened no such refuges for Gustav. New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin not only ordered all residents to evacuate, but threatened to send looters to a state prison. And people seemed to listen, reassured their homes would be safe.

Only four arrests had been made as of yesterday.

But perhaps what pleased officials, and residents, most was that New Orleans' flood protection system held back Gustav's waters. In a city filled with uncertainty over the last three years - would tourists return, would neighborhoods be rebuilt, was it safe to even be here - no question loomed larger than this one: Could the city take a punch?

Katrina had not only devastated the city's infrastructure, but shredded floodwalls and levees. In all, according to the US Corps of Army Engineers, the killer storm damaged more than 220 miles of the flood protection system.

There were 50 breaches during Katrina, including five catastrophic holes ripped into floodwalls in New Orleans, and levee specialists were not surprised. It had long been known that the flood protection system was inadequate. But since 2005, the Corps has done $2 billion worth of work shoring up floodwalls and levees in south Louisiana.

Floodgates were installed on many city canals - two of which were breached in 2005 - to prevent a storm surge from rushing into the narrow waterways. Floodwalls that failed three years ago were replaced and built higher.

"I think it tested the existing hurricane system that was rebuilt after Katrina," said John Grieshaber, chief of execution support at the Hurricane Protection Office of the Army Corps of Engineers, "and I think it was an excellent test."

Others wonder just how much of a test this hurricane actually provided. Gustav's storm surge was small compared to Katrina and, in the end, made landfall more than 60 miles from New Orleans. Not close enough, said levee specialist Ray Seed, to know just how strong the system really is.

Gustav was a Category 2 storm when it came ashore; Katrina was a 3. Gustav has been responsible for fewer than a dozen deaths in Louisiana; Katrina killed 1,500.

A more intense storm might expose the vulnerabilities that still exist - and even the Corps concedes there are many. Neighborhoods east of downtown still lack the protection they need, and will not have it for at least three more years.

That alone is reason for concern, Seed said. "The system, this time, performed very well," said Seed, a civil engineering professor at the University of California-Berkeley and the author of a 2006 study dissecting New Orleans's levee problems.

"But it's important to understand this was not a real test. This is like a mid-term exam. We have a lot of work to do before the real test. Sooner or later, we'll get a big storm."