This past week, news stations devoted several hourlong specials to the 2005 disaster of Hurricane Katrina.

As we remember the lives lost and the destruction wrought upon New Orleans one thing should be made clear: Hurricane Katrina was not just a natural disaster.

It was a man-made disaster.

We are all familiar with the delayed government response that contributed to the deaths of more than 1,800 civilians. On Sunday, President Barack Obama visited New Orleans, acknowledging the government’s failure to send relief in a timely manner.

But he failed to point out the core cause of the disaster: the failure of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build effective structures that could have prevented deadly flooding.

Though this detail has largely been overlooked in the corporate media rehash of Katrina coverage, a documentary released in 150 theaters yesterday exposes the root causes of the devastation caused by Katrina.

“The Big Uneasy,” created by actor and comedian Harry Shearer, exposes the failure of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to provide New Orleans with protection. He points to a July 2006 investigation on New Orleans’ flood systems by the UC Berkeley Independent Levee Investigation team.

This team called the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina, “the greatest man-made engineering catastrophe since Chernobyl.”

Their report cites errors in the design, construction, and maintenance of the levees. One of the authors of the report, engineering professor Raymond Seed, said if New Orleans had proper protection, Katrina would have done no more than “wet ankles.”

We haven’t heard this in the hourlong TV specials.

In Shearer’s film, whistleblowers who worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — the governmental agency responsible for installing and testing the pumps on the outfall canals of the levee system — reveal how the agency ignored warnings that the pumps constructed did not pass their own tests. Despite these warnings, the faulty pumps were installed anyway.

We’re not sure why the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ignored the warnings, but this agency has the power to protect New Orleans from experiencing the same tragedy.

However, nothing suggests that the agency will do anything different in the future, and it certainly won’t if news stories do not focus on the core causes of the disaster. News anchors replaying footage of themselves standing in water or interviewing survivors at the Superdome and Convention Center in New Orleans tell an important part of the story, but not the whole story.

As we remember the loss of lives and witness the continuing recovery in New Orleans, we should realize who is responsible and make sure this doesn’t happen again.

We want our tax dollars spent on hurricane protection that actually saves lives.