Wendell Curole
Appearances
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
We're not going to spend our money on the bank and fix one problem and spend so much money we can't do our other problems. You know, it's just calculated risk the whole time.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
No, there was no shiny buttons or big sales pitch. No fireworks. None at all, because it's not about getting attention. It's about just getting the facts across.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
They are part of the Army. That's what I'm saying. They have bigger guns than us. I'm not a fool. I may look like it, I may act like it, but I'm not.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
And if they don't give it, start building. And we'll see. If they stop us, they stop us. If they don't, we've got more protection.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
It is a race because every season I got a new hurricane season coming and nobody knows what's behind the curtain. You know, is it a tiger or a lamb? You don't know, but you better act like it's a tiger, okay?
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
It's a lot wetter down here. It's the opposite. Our land over here was brought here by water. That's how wet it is.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
I do this channel changing, waiting for somebody to send some good news. Please, somebody, see something that's not going to come here. But by the time it got close, that thing just headed, I mean, right for the parish line. I couldn't tell what was going to happen.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
I mean, you get so disoriented because when the storm's hitting, it's so dark, you don't know if it's day or night. And I lost complete track of day and night, complete track of it. And I'm looking into the darkness and little tiny pieces of leaves are hitting on the glass, getting ripped.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
I tell the guys, I say, look, no matter what happens, if we can see grass on the ground tomorrow, which means floodwaters didn't come in, it's a good day, nothing else matters.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
When things calmed down, I mean, it really hit me that, wow, I mean, you couldn't ask for us to have been more successful. We couldn't have been more lucky. We couldn't have handled a worse storm than this. This was pretty much close to the worst that this system can take.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
And I guarantee you, if we had listened to the Corps and done everything that they wanted us to do, our levee would have been four to five feet lower than it was for Hurricane Ida, and we would have lost people's lives.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
I see the crowd, and I'm just going to drive by. I didn't think anything about it. But they flagged me down and said, Wendell, thank you. It all worked.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
When you build a project this big, there's so many people that are involved in getting this done. So when people clap for me, it's for everybody.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
You know, the Midwest is the nation's bread basket. South Louisiana is a seafood platter. Arguably more delicious than a bread basket. I know it. You don't hear people traveling to Milwaukee for the tremendous meal.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
It's not solving everything. It's minimizing the loss of life and the loss of property. Minimize it. You don't control God. You know, our levee's at 19 feet or whatever height it is. God wants to throw 23 feet at us. He does it, okay? You don't control that. All you can do is what can you afford to build and how well can you build it and do the best you can with that.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
You look to the left and you see a regular town, streets, you know, pretty typical trees. But you look to the right, the landscape is mostly water.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
The big picture is that the land is sinking and open water from the Gulf keeps increasing, so there's less to slow down any wave action.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
And that's what a levee is. It's just like a ridge, but it's an artificial ridge. It was made by man.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
I mean, every day of the year, I think about what could cause a problem for this levee. Everything from having armadillos dig holes in it to people riding too many horses or having cows on it. Anything that takes away the resilience of the levee, we got to stop.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
The way I looked at it is that, man, I'm not going to sit on my hands with money in the bank. We don't want money in the bank. We want money on the bank, okay? Because you flood from a hurricane, your city is destroyed.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
When I took the job, I said, look, this is life and death for people. I had to tell myself from the beginning, people can die. You've got to make sure you do the best job possible.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
If you read Zin Su, the Chinese general, well, to me, everything's a battle. Everything's football, okay? And so you learn about the enemies. I want to know everything about hurricanes and everything about levees and everything about the engineering that goes to it.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
Yeah, I've been cursed at. I've been threatened a couple of times. And that's not too bad. But one time, I knew this guy was not totally stable and threatened me. And that concerned me a little bit.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
I mean, I love New Orleans. I remember driving into the city at night with no lights, to not have any lights, and then just drive around. I mean, no people before people could start coming back. It tears at your soul.
Planet Money
There Will Be Flood
And so the Corps just wanted to make sure everything was done by the letter, dot the I's, cross the T's, and do it to our standards or nothing at all. Because that had happened.