[StBernard] Engineering society accused of cover-ups in Katrina, WTC probes

[Westley Annis]

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The professional organization for engineers who build
the nation's roads, dams and bridges has been accused by fellow engineers of
covering up catastrophic design flaws while investigating national
disasters.


After the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the levee failures
caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the federal government paid the
American Society of Civil Engineers to investigate what went wrong.


Critics now accuse the group of covering up engineering mistakes,
downplaying the need to alter building standards, and using the
investigations to protect engineers and government agencies from lawsuits.
Similar accusations arose after both disasters, but the most recent
allegations have pressured the organization to convene an independent panel
to investigate.
"They want to make sure that they do things the right way and that they
learn lessons from the studies they do," said Sherwood Boelhert, a retired
Republican congressman from New York who heads the panel. He led the House
Science Committee for six years.


The panel is expected to issue a report by the end of April and may
recommend that the society stop taking money from government agencies for
disaster investigations.


The engineering group says it takes the allegations seriously, but it has
declined to comment until completion of the panel's report and an internal
ethics review.
In the World Trade Center case, critics contend the engineering society
wrongly concluded skyscrapers cannot withstand getting hit by airplanes. In
the hurricane investigation, it was accused of suggesting that the power of
the storm was as big a problem as the poorly designed levees.
The group has about 140,000 members and is based in Reston, Va. It sets
engineering standards and codes and publishes technical books and a glossy
magazine. Members testify regularly before Congress and issue an annual
report on the state of the nation's public-works projects.


The society got a $1.1 million grant from the Army Corps of Engineers to
study the levee failures. Similarly, the Federal Emergency Management Agency
paid the group about $257,000 to investigate the World Trade Center
collapse.
The engineers were not involved in investigating last year's bridge collapse
in Minneapolis.


The society issued a report last year that blamed the levee failures on poor
design and the Corps' use of incorrect engineering data.


Raymond Seed, a levee expert at the University of California, Berkeley, was
among the first to question the society's involvement. He was on a team
funded by the National Science Foundation to study the New Orleans flood.
Seed accused the engineering society and the Army Corps of collusion,
writing an Oct. 20 letter alleging that the two organizations worked
together "to promulgate misleading studies and statements, to subvert
appropriate independent investigations ... to literally attempt to change
some of the critical apparent answers regarding lessons to be learned."


Maj. Gen. Don Riley, the corps' director of civil works, disputed Seed's
allegations at a December meeting in New Orleans.


"He talks about the supposed cover-up," Riley said. "Well, our people live
here in New Orleans ... We don't stand behind our work. We live behind our
work."
In 2002, the society's report on the World Trade Center praised the
buildings for remaining standing long enough to allow tens thousands of
people to flee.
But, the report said, skyscrapers are not typically designed to withstand
airplane impacts. Instead of hardening buildings against such impacts, it
recommended improving aviation security and fire protection.


Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, a structural engineer and forensics expert, contends
his computer simulations disprove the society's findings that skyscrapers
could not be designed to withstand the impact of a jetliner.


Astaneh-Asl, who received money from the National Science Foundation to
investigate the collapse, insisted most New York skyscrapers built with
traditional designs would survive such an impact and prevent the kind of
fires that brought down the twin towers.


He also questioned the makeup of the society's investigation team. On the
team were the wife of the trade center's structural engineer and a
representative of the buildings' original design team.
"I call this moral corruption," said Astaneh-Asl, who is on the faculty at
the University of California, Berkeley.


Gene Corley, a forensics expert and team leader on the society's report,
said employing people with ties to the original builders was necessary
because they had access to information that was difficult to get any other
way.
Corley said the society's study was peer-reviewed and its credibility was
upheld by follow-up studies, including one by the National Institute of
Standards and Technology.


"I hope someone looks into the people making the accusations," Corley said.

 "That's a sordid tale."
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