Posted on 09/06/2005 5:38:32 AM PDT by Mike Fieschko
BATON ROUGE, United States (AFP) - US troops staved off an even deeper calamity than the one which befell New Orleans, fighting off a second levee breach on the 17th Street canal in the critical hours after Hurricane Katrina.Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Mouton of the US Army Corps of Engineers told AFP Monday that had their bid failed to bolster defences on the west bank of the canal, double the amount of water could have been dumped on the city.
The revelation came hours after Army engineers succeeded in sealing the 200 feet (60 metre) breach on the east bank, through which swollen waters inundated 80 percent of the city and are believed to have killed thousands of people.
"There was a weakness in a levee that was potentially a breach," Mouton said, adding that the volume of water which coursed into the city could have "doubled" if the levee had broken and flooded Jefferson parish.
Army engineers were out on the levee as soon as the Hurricane Katrina roared through a week ago, using heavy equipment to press fresh earth up against the levee to stabilise it.
Flood waters surged through the hole in the eastern bank of the levee, swamping Orleans parish, which is formed in a 'bowl' much of which is below sea level, to the same height as Lake Pontchartrain northwest of the city.
Thousands of people were forced to take to the attics and roofs of their houses, to flee steadily rising flood waters. Many of those who defied Katrina were trapped.
The massive round-the-clock project to fill the football pitch-sized hole in the east bank levee saw contractors drive piles into the gap, and huge twin-rotor Chinook helicopters dump hundreds of bags full of sand, cement, and bits of torn up roadways into the hole.
Hours before workers closed the breach late Sunday, gunmen opened fire on a team of contractors travelling to the site on the 17th Street canal, sparking a gunbattle with police.
"Work was completed on repairing the breach on the 17th Street canal on Sunday night," Cleo Allen, spokeswoman for Louisiana's Department of Transportation and Development said Monday.
"They are now pumping water out of the canal and into the lake," Allen said, at the emergency operations center coordinating hurricane relief, 70 miles (120 kilometres) from New Orleans.
Engineers, who plan to blow holes in strategic points further down the levee to allow water to seep out, have calculated it will take between 36 and 80 days to drain the city.
That means it will be months before authorities can clean up the mess left by a toxic soup of floodwater, gasoline, sewage and other contaminants, which are posing a foul health hazard for the city.
Workers, coordinated by the Army Corps of Engineers, had previously sealed the canal from Lake Pontchartrain.
Military engineers were forced to build a temporary road to the site of the canal, after finding their route to the project blocked by debris and floodwaters.
The floods which engulfed New Orleans left an almost Biblical scene of destruction, compared by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to an atomic bomb strike.
"This is probably the worst catastrophe, or set of catastrophes certainly that I'm aware of in the history of the country. It was a devastating hurricane followed by a devastating flood," Chertoff said on Saturday.
"That perfect storm combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners and maybe anybody's foresight," he said as President George W. Bush's administration came under intense fire for its handling of the disaster.
But many observers say the set of events which shattered New Orleans had been predicted for years, in academic studies and probes by local newspapers.
Some local officials have also accused officials in Washington of cutting funds which could have been used to bolster flood defences to the vulnerable city.
If they rebuild it will eventually flood again.....
This isn't possible. I heard on CNN that the military and federal gov't wasted days before they showed up. If that's true, how'd they save the city in the hours after the levee first broke?
Well, except that every science magazine and meterologist in the country has been predicting it for years. I'm not sure why Chertoff is being so kind to the mayor and governor.
What - and have people believe that Bush is not as racist or incompetent as democrats want people to believe?
I wonder if there's AIDS bacteria in that water - *SHUDDER*
Sen Landrieu obviously ignored or more likely was uninformed when she went after the Army Corps of Enginners with George Stephanopolis.
AIDS is a virus. I doubt that it lives outside the body in the water. However, hepatitis does. Feel better now?
From WWL Updates
Updates as they come in on Katrina
08:41 AM CDT on Tuesday, September 6, 2005 / Tom Planchet
8:40 A.M. - Jefferson Parish Emergency Operations Center chief Dr. Walter Maestri: Can we build a levee system to prevent this from happening again? I don't know. To rebuild the system to protect us from this type of storm would be astronomical.
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html
Actually the flood waters would have still stabilized at the level of the lake, which they did. The water in New Orleans got about as high as it was going to go.
I taking it they are saying the billions spent on the Big Dig in Boston s/h/b spent on the levees. Waiting for a response from the senators from MA.
But the part of the city on the side of the canal that didn't breach would have also flooded to lake level.
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