Security barriers that had protected pedestrians on Bourbon Street in New Orleans were in the process of being replaced ahead of the Super Bowl next month.
“Bollards were not up because they are near completion, with the expectation of being completed before the Super Bowl,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell said during a news conference on Wednesday.
City records show the project began Nov. 18, AP reports, with temporary asphalt patches added to the places where the columns were removed.
A witness, Jimmy Cothran, told NBC News that he had been surprised to see that the metal barricades that usually block off Bourbon Street were not deployed on New Year’s Eve. “They weren’t up, so you still kind of had to watch your back for cars,” he said.
The bollards were placed on Bourbon Street several years ago to guard against an attack like the one in Nice, France, in 2016, which killed more than 80 people when a truck plowed through a crowd of pedestrians. But the bollards soon malfunctioned, clogged with Mardi Gras beads, and the police found them inefficient, Cantrell said at the news conference.
Hosting the Super Bowl gave the city “an opportunity to go further and deeper with infrastructure improvements,” including replacing the bollards, she said.
An engineer who worked on the bollard replacement project, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the team was not authorized to speak publicly, said there was “a mad dash to rush this job” so it could be done in time for the Super Bowl.
The engineer said that when the bollards were originally installed several years ago, hydraulic roadblocks were added during construction to ensure Bourbon Street remained protected. This time, the engineer did not see those types of barriers; instead, there were simpler ones like orange traffic drums, the engineer said.
The city Public Works Department, which is overseeing the bollard replacement project, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
The city said on its website that the bollards on Bourbon Street from Canal Street to St. Ann Street would be replaced with “new removable stainless-steel bollards” that could be securely locked behind each crosswalk. (NBC News)
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The terrorist who plowed through a crowd of revelers on New Year’s Day was able to evade other barriers law enforcement had placed, including their patrol vehicles, by driving onto the sidewalk.
“We did indeed have a plan, but the terrorist defeated it,” New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said.
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