Katrina Analysis Has Designers Building Faster and Smarter
June 1 is Judgment Day for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That's when the world's most powerful organization of civil engineers has pledged to deliver on its promise to restore the hurricane protections defeated last fall when Hurricane Katrina inundated an estimated 151 sq miles of New Orleans and neighboring parishes.
The Corps will deliver, "but a lot of work is going to go on beyond that date as we continue to make the system better," says Col. Lewis Setliff,commander of the Corps' Memphis District. Setliff heads Task Force Guardian, a strike team gathered from around the Corps to manage the effort to rebuild the system in 10 months to be as good, or better, than it was when Katrina ripped through it, on Aug. 29, 2005.