Contradicting official theory, Jesse Jackson says a barge caused the levee breach. I guess he did not want to totally offend Farrakhan by simply saying it was not bombed!

The Poverty Pimps must be finding that making up their own theories is more profitable than agreeing with everyone else that the massive Category 4 hurricane caused it, given the levee was made to handle up to a Category 3.

update (10/16/2005 9:02PM ET): Reporter Rob Redding Jr. has interviewed Jackson and also found Cornel West is not buying into the “blown up” theory. Regarding Farrakhan’s claim about a bomb Jackson said:
“I don’t know where he gets his information from,”

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“I don’t know where he gets his information from,” Rev. Jesse Jackson told Redding News Review. “All houses on that side are just wiped out like a bomb hit it. I would think for those who say they heard a bomb that huge barge hitting that wall could have sounded like a bomb.”

Jackson also said he did not think that the gaping hole that barge left was intentional.

“I have no evidence it was intentional,” he said. “I do not know the intent, I know the evidence.”
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Concrete cracking

Robert Bea, a professor at the University of California’s Berkeley campus, said he can understand why some residents believe the levees were bombed.

“Those people heard those explosions, I’m almost certain, but it was not man-made, directly,” said Bea, who led a National Science Foundation investigation of the levee failures.

Poor craftsmanship — not dynamite — contributed to the largest civil engineering disaster in U.S. history, Bea said.

But from the cracking of concrete to the deafening sounds of a huge barge slamming against the Industrial Canal floodwall, residents had plenty of reason to believe their community was under siege, Bea said.

Bea offers a timeline that links the noises mistaken for explosions to the real-world events that caused them.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Plaquemines Parish on Aug. 29 at 6:10 a.m. and continued up the coast toward Mississippi. By 7 a.m., storm surge had blown past levees and was flooding eastern New Orleans. The levees along the north side of the Intracoastal Waterway were soon disintegrating. The Industrial Canal levees were overtopped on both sides and then began belching water through a breach to the east.

The force of the surge that made its way up the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet and into the Intracoastal Waterway slammed into the Industrial Canal like someone trying to break down a door, Bea said. Shortly before 8 a.m., residents would have started to hear what they mistook for gunfire, as concrete supporting the Industrial Canal levee starting cracking apart.

“The water is sitting there, pushing like hell,” Bea said. And then came the loudest boom of all, caused by a barge riding at anchor in the Industrial Canal.

As the canal rose, the barge fought to rise, too. The ropes securing it eventually gave way and the vessel slammed over and over into the floodwall.

“It’s obvious that the barge wasn’t properly tied up,” Bea said.

As winds between 100 and 140 mph rushed through the canal, the breach widened to the length of a football field and the barge slid through. The sounds must have been horrific, Bea said.
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