As Waters Cascaded, City Flood Walls Held

Unfinished New Orleans Barriers Tested

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 1 -- There was no clearer sign of the threat looming over New Orleans than the waters that rose and raged Monday in one of the city's central waterways.

Pushed by the howling winds of Hurricane Gustav, the water in the Industrial Canal, which bisects the city, climbed more than 10 feet. Waves cascaded spectacularly over the 12-foot concrete barriers holding the water back. Spray touched the faces of National Guard troops standing on a bridge 60 feet above. Police officers stopped to take pictures. Some people living near the canal, having stayed behind in defiance of the evacuation order, called to be rescued once they saw the threat.

Yet the catastrophic flooding that devastated the city when Katrina struck in 2005 -- partly because those same flood walls on the Industrial Canal collapsed -- has not happened with Gustav. In the first serious test of the New Orleans floodworks since Katrina, the waters driven by Gustav rose high enough to slosh over levees and flood walls, but they did not overwhelm the region's partially rebuilt network of flood barriers, federal officials said.

"The system has certainly been tested," said Maj. Gen. Don T. Riley of the Army Corps of Engineers, in an interview from Washington.

"So far I've been all right," said Clarence Rodriguez, a construction worker who lives in a shotgun house just two blocks from the Industrial Canal and ignored the mandatory evacuation order.

Many homes in his neighborhood remain abandoned, some still bearing the spray-painted marks left by rescuers seeking the dead after Katrina. When the Industrial Canal walls collapsed during Katrina, the water roared into the Lower Ninth Ward, pushing entire blocks of houses off their foundations.

"I just make my way, hour by hour, minute by minute," Rodriguez said.

But while officials reiterated that New Orleans had "dodged a bullet," Riley and others cautioned that until the floodwaters fully recede and an official assessment is conducted, it is too early to declare success.

In nearby Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, the parish president, Billy Nungesser, reported to state officials that floodwaters had overtopped and were threatening a parish levee. He asked again that residents of two communities there, White Ditch and Scarsdale, flee the area.

About 300 to 400 homes are imperiled by the Plaquemines levee, said Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), but he added that if there is a breach, the damage will be contained to that area. "This is not on the same order of magnitude as Katrina," Jindal said.

Elsewhere in Louisiana, most of which is not protected by the vast floodworks that shield New Orleans, there were reports of widespread flooding. "There are 100,000 who live where there's no hurricane protection at all," Riley said, referring to some of the hard-hit areas around Houma.

Exactly how much federally funded protection New Orleans and other parts of southern Louisiana should receive is a matter of heated debate across the state.