By Brian Thevenot and Chris Kirkham
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – In the months before the deadly New Orleans car attack on New Year's Day, the city measured the conditions of how an attacker could drive onto Bourbon Street at a different intersection in a Ford F-150 similar to the one used in the killings. 14 people and many injured.
Engineers found that such a van could enter a busy tourist area at speeds ranging from 12 to 70 mph — and yet city officials are installing new road barriers that can only withstand a 10-mph impact, according to an April engineering and city analysis. The bidding documents were reviewed by Reuters.
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Those new barriers, known as “bollards,” were not installed on Bourbon Street by New Year's but are scheduled to be completed by Feb. 9 NFL Super Bowl in New Orleans. Documents reviewed by Reuters, which have not been reported before, make it clear that the system will not be able to prevent attacks on vehicles at medium to high speeds.
In choosing the new bollard system, the city prioritized ease of use over the crash of the new bollard system due to chronic problems with the old one, according to documents and a source with direct knowledge of the city's Bourbon Street safety plan. Unlike other pedestrian-only areas, such as New York City's Times Square, Bourbon Street is open to regular traffic most of the day, requiring city officials to block sections of it from the surrounding streets every night.
Since the New Year's Day attack, New Orleans officials have faced scrutiny over whether they were leaving residents at risk as workers removed old bollards and installed new ones. But no barrier system would have prevented the deadly attack, according to the source and a Reuters review of city documents.
The city currently has no bollards at Canal and Bourbon streets, where the attacker entered, but the road was blocked by a police SUV cruiser that was parked on the side on New Year's Day.
Suspect in the attack Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a US veteran from Texas, exploited another vulnerability in the city's security systems: He wedged his seven-foot-wide pickup truck into the road between the wall of a drug store and a police car, slamming into the ground. accelerator and gap through the crowd at about 3:15 am
Jabbar died after the shootout with the police. State authorities said he had been indoctrinated and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group.
The city's safety modeling, in an engineering study done to help select a new curb system, only considered situations where a car enters Bourbon Street on the street — not on the sidewalk. The car couldn't fit into most of the Bourbon blocks on its narrow streets, with other barriers such as fire hydrants or balconies and streetlight gaps, the source said.
City officials will face “difficult meetings” about the continued failure of new bollards being installed now, the person said, which “wouldn't make a difference” by New Year's.
New Orleans city officials did not respond to detailed questions from Reuters about Bourbon Street safety planning and the decision to choose barriers with a 10-mph crash limit.
A person with direct knowledge of city security planning emphasized the difficulty all cities face in protecting against vehicular attacks while maintaining access for ordinary vehicles and pedestrians, including accessible streets for people with disabilities.
The source said officials selected a bollard system limited to 10-mph impacts from a company called 1-800-Bollards Inc. The City's bidding documents, dated August and September, called for an installer, calling it the “RCS8040 S10 removable bollard. .” An April engineering analysis by the city describes the same product as having an “S10” crash rating and states that it can stop a 5,000-pound vehicle going 10 mph.
“Crash ratings are specified as S10 (10mph impact), S20 (20mph impact), and S30 (30mph impact),” the engineering analysis says.
The source said a barrier of about 10 mph could slow down or seriously damage a fast moving vehicle.
Representatives for 1-800-Bollards Inc declined to comment.
Two cases of the Bourbon Street attack modeled by city-contracted engineers involved entering the street in a straight line, without turning, after building speed.
The study found that the 2015 F-150 can reach speeds of 50 mph by accelerating from a stop across Canal Street, a wide boulevard bordered by cart tracks. The same car can hit 70 mph entering from the opposite side of the section of Bourbon Street protected by bollards.
Jabbar drove a more dangerous weapon than the truck used in the report's scenarios – the new F-150 Lightning, an electric vehicle that is fast, heavy and quiet.
During big events like New Year's or Mardi Gras, the source said, the city's security plans want to park large vehicles at the end of Bourbon Street, which are more vulnerable to speeding vehicles. But these measures, the person said, don't work every day in a place full of tourists.
'BOURBON STREET JUICE'
Starting at least in 2020, city officials are studying how to replace New Orleans' failing system of roadblocks to protect against car crashes, the source said.
The city installed its first bollard system after coming under pressure in 2017 from government officials to protect Bourbon Street following a spate of car attacks around the world, including one in 2016 that killed 86 people and injured hundreds in Nice, France.
New Orleans initially selected a system called the Heald HT2 Matador that allows workers to move obstacles onto tracks in the street, according to city documents. A source told Reuters the project was chosen because it had already been purchased and priced by the federal government, allowing the city to install it quickly.
But barriers have become a problem under the rigors of Bourbon Street — and are often ineffective because the tracks become littered with trash, including Mardi Gras bead necklaces.
In addition, the lock and unlock mechanism was embedded in the road and was often soaked in what the source called “Bourbon Street juice” – a mixture of road tar, debris, rainwater, spilled drinks and the occasional cleaning provided to the visitor. take off its signature scent.
“To open it, you have to dip your hand in Bourbon Street juice,” the person said. “It was a disgusting job. You couldn't get anyone to do it.”
Heald, the manufacturer of the bollards, said in a statement that they had not been moved into place to block Bourbon Street before the attack, “therefore, they did not malfunction.”
The system is effective, says the company, with “basic maintenance and cleaning.”
LIGHTER-EIGHT BOLLARDS
Because of those issues, the city prioritized factors including ease of operation and maintenance over accident safety ratings in selecting the new system, according to the source and an April 2024 report from Mott MacDonald, an engineering firm hired by the city to evaluate the bollard pile. to choose from.
Representatives for Mott MacDonald had no comment.
The report presented three different standards for measuring the crashworthiness of bollard systems. It concluded that the maximum crash rating, which can withstand the impact of 15,000-pound vehicles traveling between 30 to 50 mph, is “not consistent” with the city's daily bollard moving requirements.
“Special lifting equipment such as a truck-mounted crane or a heavy machine may be required” to move such bollards on a daily basis, the report said.
The city chose 1-800-Bollards Inc.'s system of 10-mph-rated, lightweight stainless steel poles that drop into sidewalk foundations, in part because the bollards could be installed and removed daily by a single city crew, the source said. . Those posts weigh 44 pounds, the engineer's analysis says, while the same 20 mph bollards weigh 86 pounds.
The same report included modeling of the attack scenario. In addition to those showing speeds of about 50 mph and 70 mph, all other conditions showed that the F-150 could turn into the Bourbon between 12 mph and 20 mph without hitting a curb or running into the roadway — exceeding the crash rating of 10 mph. of the system the city chose.
The source said the main concern of city officials, along with French Quarter residents and business representatives, was protecting pedestrians from cars turning onto Bourbon on side streets at low speeds.
The report found different systems for different criteria. Ultimately the system chosen by the city received a reduction in its “safety rating” score because it “did not meet the specified project requirements.”
It received high marks for the weight of the bollards and their low cost.
(Reporting by Brian Thevenot in New Orleans and Chris Kirkham in Los Angeles; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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