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New Surge Spills Over Repaired Levees
A recently drained street, seen from a drawbridge at Poland and Claiborne streets, is once again awash as the edges of Hurricane Rita pushed water over repaired levees in New Orleans. Some levees were breached again.
(By Nikki Kahn -- The Washington Post)
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At the Florida Avenue bridge leading into the upper Ninth Ward, a street made passable early this week was once again a lake Friday afternoon with canal water lashing up onto the east side of the bridge.
Standing atop the Florida Avenue bridge, Dale Stapleton, a maintenance unit supervisor for the Corps, eyed another small breach in the levee close to the New Orleans shipyard. "We're trying to get some equipment through this city and to that location," he said. "We hope to get some rock and sandbags in -- whatever we could use."
But a second round of repairs to the major breaks will have to wait until Rita passes. Twenty helicopters positioned at Fort Rucker in Alabama -- a 70-minute flight from New Orleans -- will drop sandbags into the gaps when the weather improves, probably Saturday afternoon, Caldwell said.
About 6,500 members of the 82nd Airborne remain in New Orleans and will assist with a new round of search-and-rescue efforts.
Meanwhile, in Washington, Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), the chairman of the Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, joined Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) in pushing the White House to spend more money on Corps water projects. Within a few hours of the levee breaches, Domenici and Reid had fired off a letter to Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget, requesting an additional $1.7 billion for the Corps.
"The renewed flooding in New Orleans just proves that Congress and the White House cannot be penny wise and pound foolish with the Corps and its mission right now," they wrote.
But Wagenaar said the problem with his agency's patched-up levees was not a matter of money but a matter of time. Three days ago, the Corps had hired a contractor to raise the temporary levees two to three more feet -- but the work had not yet been begun.
Grunwald reported from Washington.
