Ivor van Heerden

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Ivor van Heerden is the deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center.

Van Heerden was born in South Africa. He created a hurricane modeling program at LSU. He was one of several hundred participants at the Hurricane Pam exercise in July 2004. He claims that his warnings during the Hurricane Pam exercise were ignored, which may have contributed to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. He has also taken the Army Corps of Engineers to task for their misdesigns which caused the Levee failures in Greater New Orleans, 2005. For a time LSU told him not to talk to the media with concerns that book The Storm was endangering federal grant money flowing to the university. [1]

In 2006 his book "The Storm" offered his analysis of Katrina and the levee disasters.

[edit] Quotes

"What bothers me the most is all the people who've died unnecessarily,"[2]

"Those FEMA officials wouldn't listen to me. Those Corps of Engineers people giggled in the back of the room when we tried to present information."[3]

When it was suggested that tents be prepared. "Their response to me was: 'Americans don't live in tents,' and that was about it."[4]