Hundreds Dead As Leaky Faucet Floods Army Corps of Engineers Headquarters
Damage done by a leaky faucet at Corps Headquarters on Friday. Officials say the death toll could have been much higher had not several employees cut out early for happy hour.
By MATTHEW MONROE
NEW ORLEANS—One month ago a faucet in the men’s bathroom on the second floor of the Army Corps of Engineers headquarters began to leak. A senior engineer at the Corps put a piece of Scotch tape over it and left it alone assuming it would probably be fine. One month later 210 Army Corps engineers are assumed dead.
The bathroom was little used as the 2nd story of the building was vacated. It was no longer needed when approximately half of the Army Corps of Engineers workers formerly stationed in the New Orleans office were deployed to Iraq to reinforce a sub-standard damn ominously threatening a Haliburton-owned golf course outside of Baghdad.
The water from the faucet slowly built up on the 2nd floor and was released in one fell swoop around 3:00 on Friday afternoon.
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January 24, 2008
Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Fred Bainer said the death toll would have been much worse had a large majority of the office workers not left work early on Friday to get a head start on the weekend. “Happy hour at Bruno’s probably saved 100 lives.”But unfortunately 210 of their co-workers stayed behind and are likely dead as a result of the leaky faucet. However, Bainer is confident this won’t happen again.
“Look, the tape fell off. Hundreds of our co-workers, our brothers, died. There’s nothing we can do about that now. But I assure everyone we have replaced the piece of Scotch tape with an even larger piece of masking tape. So problem solved.”
President Bush is expected to deploy rescue units to the flooded building within a month.
