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Battered New Orleans copes with floods again
By Andy Sullivan
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 24 (Reuters) - Surging waters from Hurricane Rita poured 8 feet of water into a New Orleans neighborhood on Saturday and engineers tried to patch weakened levees that had proven vulnerable for the second time in a month.
Officials said they knew of no deaths from the renewed flooding and had not encountered anybody trapped on rooftops in several passes through the flooded neighborhoods.
"The good thing is there was no human life in jeopardy," said New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Eddie Compass. "Everybody heeded the warning and evacuated."
But the flooding meant a new setback for a city that had barely begun to recover and dry out from Hurricane Katrina, which stranded thousands of residents in chaotic conditions nearly four weeks ago.
The Army Corps of Engineers said it planned to drop sandbags on a 30-foot-wide (9-meter) waterfall that poured into the lower Ninth Ward, where up to 8 feet of water swallowed abandoned cars and pushed into houses, leaving only rooftops showing.
"It certainly was deja vu all over again but, again, we've got to deal with the situation," Col. Duane Gapinski told CNN.
On the opposite side of the Industrial Canal flood waters appeared to have receded and the Army Corps brought in trucks to dump boulders on damaged sections of the levees. High winds and flooding had kept the helicopters and dump trucks at bay on Friday.
Once those sections are patched the Army Corps will be able to pump the water out, spokesman Mitch Frazier said.
Pumps were already functioning in some parts of New Orleans and neighboring St. Bernard Parish, he said.
As Rita's 120 mph (193 kph) winds slammed into the Texas-Louisiana border early on Saturday, the National Weather Service said New Orleans could still face torrential rains and tides about 5 feet above normal.
Heavy rain could lead to more flooding across the city as storm drains are still choked with debris from Katrina.
Corps officials had sealed off two canals to prevent a repeat of the flooding in neighborhoods near Lake Pontchartrain. Those barriers held back the surging lake on Friday while one road along the shoreline was under water.
(c) Reuters 2005.