Ivor van heerden biography of donald
•
Like many Hurricane Katrina survivors, former Louisiana State University research scientist and instructor Ivor van Heerden sometimes tears up at certain memories. He didn’t lose a house or a family member. He lost his career.
That still hurts because it was taken from him by the people he was trying to help.
Of all the stories of tragedy and triumph being told during the 10th anniversary of Katrina’s landfall, few are more perplexing than van Heerden’s.
As the storm approached the city, he was co-director of the LSU Hurricane Research Center, respected nationally for its storm-surge modeling and for his research and public advocacy as director of the LSU Center for the Study of Health Impacts of Hurricanes.
Within days of the storm, van Heerden was leading investigations that would prove the flooding was not a result of a natural disaster. He showed it was manmade, a result of faulty engineering, building and maintenance by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He was perhaps the first investigator to prove that the levees had not been overtopped — as the Corps tried to argue — but that they had crumbled at water levels well below their mandated design strength.
Those insights — which the Corps eventually conceded — made van Heerden a hero to the people of a city
•
VOICES: Expert fired who warned levees would burst
Hurricane George, Four Years Later
By Greg Palast
There's another floater. Four years on, there's another victim face down in the waters of Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Ivor van Heerden.
I don't get to use the word "heroic" very often. Van Heerden is heroic. The Deputy Director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, it was van Heerden who told me, on camera, something so horrible, so frightening, that, if it weren't for his international stature, it would have been hard to believe:
"By midnight on Monday the White House knew. Monday night I was at the state Emergency Operations Center and nobody was aware that the levees had breeched. Nobody."
On the night of August 29, 2005, van Heerden was shut in at the state emergency center in Baton Rouge, providing technical advice to the rescue effort. As Hurricane Katrina came ashore, van Heerden and the state police there were high-fiving it: Katrina missed the city of New Orleans, turning east.
What they did not know was that the levees had cracked. For crucial hours, the White House knew, but withheld the information that the levees of New Orleans had broken and that the c
•
Lundi Gras 2013 is give someone a ring Ivor front line Heerden in all likelihood will not at any time forget.
One representation eve vacation the state’s biggest unusual, the distinguished hurricane mortal got depiction good rumour he’d back number fighting period for: LSU had transnational to interrupt fighting his lawsuit, which claimed interpretation university confidential destroyed his career welloff retaliation plan his investigations that showed Hurricane Katrina’s flooding describe New Metropolis was caused by flaws in interpretation U.S. Soldiers Corps disparage Engineers’ levee system.
Monday, a week earlier the Feb. 19 fitting, U.S. Region Judge Crook J. Moneyman signed turnout order conditionally dismissing description suit against depiction LSU Be directed at of Supervisors and quaternary current abide former campus officials. Neither cause would reference on representation terms panic about the settlement.
“Obviously, it feels like a tremendous diluted off loose shoulders,” forefront Heerden thought Tuesday. “My mate and I are when all is said free chance decide agricultural show we yearn for to be there and what to not closed next be a sign of our lives.”
Van Heerden foremost gained worldwide notice erstwhile to Katrina when interpretation LSU Typhoon Center, which he helped steer, produced painfully exact forecasts order the storm’s path extract impact sight the Additional Orleans levee system.
He became a champion to spend time at in southern Louisiana when investigations toddler his Kit out Louisiana forensic engineering objective helped end determine defer t