Words Whispered in Water: Why the Levees Broke in Hurricane Katrina

by Sandy Rosenthal

Overview

“Anyone who is interested in Hurricane Katrina, and in America’s failing infrastructure, will want to read this book . . . a fast-paced narrative.” —Scott G. Knowles, Drexel University

2020 Nautilus Silver Winner

In the aftermath of one of the worst disasters in US history, Words Whispered in Water tells the story of one woman’s fight, against all odds, to expose a mammoth federal agency—and win.

In 2005, the entire world watched as a major US city was nearly wiped off the map. The levees ruptured and New Orleans drowned. But while newscasters attributed the New Orleans flood to “natural catastrophes” and other types of disasters, citizen investigator Sandy Rosenthal set out to expose the true culprit and compel the media and government to tell the truth. This is her story.

When the protective steel flood-walls broke, the Army Corps of Engineers—with cooperation from big media—turned the blame elsewhere. In the chaotic aftermath, Rosenthal heroically exposes the federal agency’s egregious design errors and changes the narrative surrounding the New Orleans flood. This engaging and revealing tale of man versus nature and man versus man is a horror story, a mystery, and David and Goliath story all in one.

“Reveals what it takes to hold the powerful to account.” —Publishers Weekly

“There are only a few civilians that fight like real warriors. Sandy Rosenthal is one of them.” —Russel L. Honoré, Lieutenant General, United States Army (Ret.)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642503289
Publisher:	Mango Media
Publication date:	07/22/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	340
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Sandy Rosenthal is an American civic activist and founder of Levees.Org, an organization dedicated to educating the American public about levee failures and flooding in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Most recently, Rosenthal was awarded Outstanding Social Entrepreneur of the Year from Tulane University for her efforts. She is a founding member of the mentoring program Laurel Eagles. When she’s not advocating for safe levees, she’s practicing with her Mardi Gras parading group, the Divine Revelers of Terpsichore.

She currently lives in New Orleans with her two dogs, Twinkie and Cupcake.

Read an Excerpt

From Words Whispered in Water

Prologue

Just before the eye passed east of New Orleans, hurricane surge entered the 17th Street Canal, the largest drainage canal in the city. Floodwalls groaned against the surge’s weight despite supporting steel pilings anchored into thick, earthen levees. The mighty 17th Street Canal could move nearly 10,000 cubic feet of water per second, enough to drain an Olympic-size swimming pool every nine seconds.

But, on this particular Monday morning (August 29, 2005), something was wrong. A section of the floodwall atop the levee had begun to tilt. The steel pilings were too short, and water was flowing into the exposed open gap. Then, the entire section of the floodwall and the levee slid sideways, unleashing a furious blast of briny water into the nearby neighborhood of homeowners.

Eighteen years earlier, the US Army Corps of Engineers had decided that driving steel pilings deeper than 16 feet was a waste of money. Originally, the design for the canal’s proposed new floodwalls had called for expensive steel pilings driven 46 feet into the ground. But the agency was behind schedule, and costs were rising. In response, the Army Corps conducted a large-scale test study to find ways to save money on steel.

Tragically, they missed a warning sign.

During the test study, when the steel pilings were subjected to a test water surge, they had tilted. No one noticed the menacing tilt because the pilings were underneath a tarp. As a result, the engineers determined that they needed to drive down the steel pilings only 16 feet instead of 46. The Army Corps used this alternate engineering rule for new floodwalls on the 17th Street Canal and several other canals across the city. The new rule saved the Army Corps a total of $100 million.

In 2000, the new floodwalls were installed. But they were destined to fail.
When they collapsed five years later — at a fraction of the water pressure they were designed to contain—hundreds died instantly and thousands more died within months. New Orleans was devastated to the tune of well over $27 billion because floodwalls were not correctly designed and built by the Army Corps.         

At 7:08 p.m., EST the day after the floodwalls broke (August 30, 2005), the Army Corps went into full-time, damage-control mode. Its spokespersons told big media outlets that the hurricane storm surge was just too great. Water had flowed over the 17th Street Canal’s floodwall and caused it to collapse. Their story line over the course of the next two years would be that nature caused the destruction of New Orleans, and New Orleanians themselves were responsible for their loss and suffering due to their own stupidity (they live below sea level) and sloth (the local levee officials were lazy). The Army Corps’ primary mission had become rewriting history and duping the American people.

They almost got away with it.

Table of Contents

Major Levee Studies 15

Prologue 17

1 Goodbye, New Orleans 19

2 The Flood 37

3 The Fairy Tale 69

4 The Face of the Monster 83

5 The Force to Be Reckoned With 115

6 Figuring Out the Allies 163

7 Foiling the Ruse 205

8 Facing Off with the Army Corps 231

9 Bayoneting the Wounded 265

10 A Major Coup 269

Epilogue 303

List of Acronyms 304

Acknowledgements 306

About the Author 307

Endnotes 308

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“[S]hows how an individual has the power to change big government agencies that may seem invincible.... Her drive is remarkable and it is impressive how she became so knowledgeable about all the intricacies that led to the failure of the levees....Words Whispered in Water [proves] how the voice of concerned individuals can change the status quo, and potentially save many lives by kindling the structural changes that are needed to better protect society.”
— Paulina Concha Larrauri, Columbia Water Center, Columbia University

“Political activist Rosenthal delivers a blow-by-blow account of her fight to hold the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers accountable for the flooding of New Orleans… Chronicles her growing suspicions that the media and the U.S. Army were misrepresenting the causes of the flooding…Reveals what it takes to hold the powerful to account.”
—Publishers Weekly

“For years, Sandy Rosenthal has been the go-to source for any reporter seeking to understand the truth about flood protection in New Orleans: what really happened to the levees following Hurricane Katrina and the steps taken (and those that still need to happen) to protect the area and its residents. Read the inside story for yourself in this readable, engaging tale of how Rosenthal began investigating the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers shortly after Katrina and her efforts to hold accountable the Corps and other public officials.”
—Gary Rivlin, author of Katrina: After the Flood

“Part memoir, part exposé, Rosenthal employs the surgical precision of a investigative journalist and the craft of a memoirist to expose the flaws, natural and human, behind the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Fueled by personal history and a fierce sense of social advocacy, Rosenthal goes beyond the received Katrina narrative and the media that advanced that narrative to uncover corruption, bureaucracy and a failing infrastructure. Rosenthal balances the deeply personal with a keen documentarian's eye to create an engaging and compelling account. Incisive, exhaustively researched and deeply engaging, Rosenthal offers an enlightening and cautionary account within a riveting and compelling read.”
—The Eric Hoffer Award Program

“A fast-paced documentary about a dedicated person’s journey after the greatest engineering failure in history. It is also a book that every engineer should read because within the pages is a revelation, an indictment of a blundering bureaucracy.”
—Stephen Estopinal, Xavier Review

“Putting herself in the path of the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the local media, academia, and entrenched political interests in order to get to the truth about the New Orleans levee system took guts, as well as masterful community organizing. Anyone who is interested in Hurricane Katrina, and in America’s failing infrastructure, will want to read this book told in a fast-paced narrative.”
—Scott G. Knowles, head of the Department of History at Drexel University and author of The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America

“Sandy Rosenthal’s account of the founding of levees.org after the flood of New Orleans is an invaluable memoir of the making of an activist. In a world crying out for citizen action around increasingly desperate climate issues, her story is timely and instructive—and even hopeful.”
—Michael Tisserand, author of the award-winning The Kingdom of Zydeco

“Saving New Orleans is not enough for Sandy Rosenthal. Since the federal levees failed New Orleans in 2005, she has made it her business to tell threatened communities around the country that the Army Corps of Engineers is doing a woeful job of maintaining our infrastructure and guarding our safety. Ignore her at your own peril.”
—Lolis Eric Elie, former Times-Picayune columnist and producer of Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

“Sandy is a New Orleans hero. Her advocacy on behalf of flood protection has changed this city for the better. My own book drew upon some of her research. Sandy can rally people to action like I've never seen and is relentless in her efforts to hold government and political leaders accountable.”
—James Cobb, author Flood of Lies: The St. Rita's Tragedy

“For someone like me, who moved to New Orleans after Katrina, one of the biggest challenges of understanding New Orleans has been to understand what happened in that flood, and why, and what it means. I don’t know of any individual who has done more to elucidate these matters than Sandy Rosenthal. Her scrupulous and ferocious focus on the facts has been a necessary tonic for the city and a help for its citizens. Sunshine is the best disinfectant and Sandy, in those terms, has been a huge source of light.”
—Thomas Beller, associate professor of English and director of Creative Writing at Tulane, author, and contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Times

“An inspiring memoir and gripping detective story, Words Whispered in Water investigates the cause of the 2005 New Orleans flood in all of its muddied complexity. In this era of climate breakdown and failing infrastructure, Rosenthal's book is more than a history lesson. It’s a master class in citizen advocacy and a rousing call to action.”
—Robert Verchick, former EPA official in the Obama administration and author of Facing Catastrophe

“As I traveled through New Orleans in early January of 2006, there were no birds, no dogs, no children, no streetlights, no mail...but there were, I discovered as I drove around the haunted cityscape, yard signs in neighborhoods—seemingly everywhere—that said ‘Hold the Corps Accountable.’ They were, I soon learned, the work of Sandy Rosenthal, whose newly constructed Levees.org suspected, before two university investigations made it uncomfortably clear, that ‘Katrina’ was no natural disaster. Sandy is bright, dedicated, and fearless—a bad combination if you're an Army Corps of Engineers PR person. As those university investigations' results became known, at least to locals, Sandy turned her efforts to doing what would seem normal in other disasters but was ridiculously challenging locally—erecting monuments at key points of system failure to commemorate those who lost their homes, their livelihoods, or their lives through the mis- and mal-feasance of this mysterious federal super-agency. She has fought for her city, and her community, harder than most soldiers fight in war. And, with a new Corps-built system starting to reveal its own problems, she's not through fighting yet.”
—Harry Shearer, actor, producer, and voice of The Simpsons

“For all the myths and misinformation that circulated after Hurricane Katrina, there are still people across the country who don’t know that it was the collapse of the levees, not the hurricane itself, that drowned New Orleans. Sandy Rosenthal overcame hurricane hardships to establish, with a computer whiz of a son, the Levees.org website to get the story out and arouse the public. The lengths the Army Corps went through to silence her or deflect the truth and the stumbling blocks she experienced along the way are all here in a quick-moving tale. It makes for a gripping read.”
—Roberta Brandes Gratz, award-winning journalist and author of We’re Still Here Ya Bastards

“Sandy Rosenthal is a courageous and indefatigable warrior for justice.”
—Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“There are only a few civilians that fight like real warriors. Sandy Rosenthal is one of them. I've personally watched Rosenthal stand up for justice against big money companies with deep pockets. Even when the odds were stacked overwhelmingly against her, she came out the victor. Sandy's determined quest to put the truth about the massive flooding of New Orleans in 2005 in front of the American people is a story that needs to be told…and one that includes important lessons for holding powerful institutions accountable.”
—Russel L. Honore, Lieutenant General, United States Army (Ret.)

“Everyone alive at the time remembers the live-on-TV horror of Hurricane Katrina and the deadly drowning of a great city, New Orleans. The ‘who, what, and why’ of the catastrophe was thereafter carefully PR managed to protect the interests of the powerful, especially the notorious Army Corps of Engineers, shifting the blame to Nature and the city itself. It took a tireless, driven citizen movement to set the record right, confronting the failures of scientists and journalists as well as the devious smears, attacks and propaganda of the powerful. Sandy Rosenthal led their fight and tells the story here. The truth of Hurricane Katrina has been terribly incomplete but is now unspun and revealed in this heroic book, Words Whispered in Water.”
—John Stauber, author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You!

“Sandy Rosenthal is a New Orleans citizen investigator turned published author whose debut book Words Whispered in Water exposes the truth behind the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Rosenthal’s journey to activism is rooted in her deep commitment and love for her city…her convictions and steadfast investigative prowess ultimately brings the truth to light.”
— Chelsea-Rae Abbate, The Twisted Library

“Something I don’t think is discussed enough is the courage of people who not only live through disaster but fight back afterwards. Sandy Rosenthal is exactly this kind of courageous person. After Katrina and the federal levee failure, she created an organization called levees.org. Their purpose was to hold the Army Corps of Engineers accountable for their central role in the flood. Rosenthal’s book is gripping, shocking, and infuriating. It’s an absolute must-read for anyone interested in understanding the role of the Corps in the creation of our national risk.”
—Disasterology

“Words Whispered in Water is a riveting account of a tragic natural disaster. I would recommend this read to anyone interested in being more informed about the political decision-making processes that can seem insignificant one day and become life-changing the next. A truly informative and enlightening book...”
—The Literary Titan

“Sandy’s book tells her courageous story of seeking information and truth why the levees failed [and] who was responsible…. a David versus Goliath since many of the government and professional entities did not like her conclusions and actively worked to keep her from telling it.”
—Ricardo Pineda, water resources engineer (ret), California Department of Water Resources

Editorial Reviews

11/16/2020

Political activist Rosenthal delivers a blow-by-blow account of her fight to hold the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers accountable for the flooding of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Though the Corps sought to blame the disaster on the size of the storm surge and negligence by local officials, Rosenthal writes, the fault actually lies with poorly constructed floodwalls that collapsed “at a fraction of the water pressure they were designed to contain.” Rosenthal shares stories of friends and neighbors whose homes were damaged in the storm (hers was relatively unscathed) and chronicles her growing suspicions that the media and the U.S. Army were misrepresenting the causes of the flooding. She formed a grassroots organization to push for university-based studies of the structural integrity of the levees, which revealed that the Corps of Engineers covered up problems with its floodwalls. Hurricane victims sued in federal court, and in 2009 the Corps was found liable for poor maintenance of its Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet. Rosenthal dives deep into the technical details of flood control and the tactics and strategies of her campaign. This granular account reveals what it takes to hold the powerful to account. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly