Residents fault corps for flood

NEW ORLEANS — Calling much of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation in southeast Louisiana “one of the most predictable and preventable catastrophes in American history,” five New Orleans area residents who lost their homes — and one who also lost his business in the flooding — filed a federal civil lawsuit Tuesday against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The suit claims the corps was negligent in its design, construction, maintenance and operation of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet.

The suit seeks an unspecified amount of damages but was not filed as a class action. It has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr.

“Absent the exacerbating effect of the MR-GO, aptly nicknamed the ‘Hurricane Highway,’ Katrina would have been an endurable event in New Orleans’ history rather than the obliterating force that destroyed lives and businesses, displaced thousands of people, and devastated much of a great American city known for its historic grace and beauty,” the suit alleges.

The plaintiffs include an elderly couple who lived in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward, two others who lived in Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish and a New Orleans East resident. They are represented by lawyers from Louisiana, Florida and California.

Corps spokeswoman Amanda Jones said it does not comment on ongoing legal matters. She also said corps attorneys had not seen the suit.

Pierce O’Donnell of Los Angeles, one of the lead trial attorneys in the case, said the suit seeks a definitive determination of liability against the corps and “just compensation” for the plaintiffs’ losses of their homes, personal property, income and peace of mind.

“Today, my friends, the second Battle of New Orleans has begun. The foe is not a foreign government. Tragically, it is our own government,” O’Donnell said at a news conference outside U.S. District Court in New Orleans. Four of the plaintiffs attended the news conference and held signs demanding “Hold the Corps Accountable!”

Anthony Franz Jr., 77, said the home that he and his 72-year-old wife, Lucille, shared in the Lower 9th Ward had 2‰ to 3 feet of flood water on the second floor — meaning the water in the street was 16 to 20 feet deep. Now, they’re renting an apartment in Harahan in neighboring Jefferson Parish.

“I’m scared to go back,” Lucille Franz said after the news conference. Her 78-year-old sister drowned at St. Rita’s Nursing Home during the storm.

Anthony Franz said he was retired and the mortgage on his home was paid off, but the Katrina-related flooding washed his comfortable retirement away.

“We’re up the creek. That’s what makes it so hard. It just wipes you out,” he said.

O’Donnell said a win for the named plaintiffs would potentially benefit hundreds of thousands of residents, and the ultimate recovery could run into the tens of billions of dollars and be the largest ever against the U.S. government. The plaintiffs’ attorneys hope to persuade Congress to establish a Katrina Victims’ Compensation Fund similar to the fund set up for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Because the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet is a navigable waterway rather than a flood-control structure, O’Donnell contends the corps cannot claim immunity from being sued under the Mississippi Flood Control Act of 1928.

The suit alleges that the “epic destructive forces of the MR-GO during Hurricane Katrina — and the drowning of the Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans East, and St. Bernard Parish — were foreseeable and foreseen consequences of two fatally defective conditions known by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for decades.”

Those conditions are as follows:

The destruction of the marshlands surrounding the gulf outlet that “greatly intensified a huge east-west storm surge resulting in the inundation of much of New Orleans.”

The “funnel effect stemming from the MR-GO’s faulty design that accelerated the force and strength of the storm surge to epic proportions.”

The deep-draft outlet navigation channel runs along the eastern edge of St. Bernard Parish.