Some experts recently clarified what it means for New Orleanians to be protected from a 100 year storm. At the annual Tulane Engineering Forum, Rick Anderson, chief actuary for California-based Risk Management Solutions, said 100-year storm protection does not translate into a “100-year guarantee.’’ He adds that 100-year protection means there is a 39.4 percent probability of failure during a 50-year span.
I am not a math genius, but even I can figure out that Congress has authorized the Corps to rebuild levees, which for my 17 year old son have a 40% probability of failing during his lifetime.
Forty percent is very very high! Clearly we need a better level of protection. We should demand Senate Bill 2826 which will determine that our flood protection is simply not robust enough.
Click here to Demand the 8/29 Investigation
Sandy Rosenthal
Founder Levees.Org
Click here for the expert’s statements on 100 year protection.
Sandy is right. According to actuary Rick Anderson (see “expert’s statements”), this protection translates into a 39.4% chance of occurrence over 50 years.
But there’s more: The 100-year flood standard reflects flooding caused by either rain or upstream rivercourse overflow, NOT HURRICANES. This point is critical: The direction and effect of a storm surge cannot be pre-determined in the way that a river flood can be. Hurricanes move unpredictably and can approach from many different locations at every possible angle and at different speeds. Even the quadrant of the storm that strikes land affects the storm surge.
A really good question to ask right now is how the Corps determined the “100-year flood”. After all that has transpired, I’m suspicious that our buddies in the Army are yet again trying to elude accountability by smearing lipstick on their warthog.