New Orleans: Sandbagging Levee Failed: More flooding coming

[KeepItReal]

Just in from Mayor Nagin:

Pumps near breech are about to fail. Water level will be rising.

[NMDemDist2]

1. bummer those poor people nt

[ClintonTyree]

2. It's over..........

I knew it. It's all over. There's no saving the City of New Orleans now. :cry:

[bluetuesday]

3. scary

getting very very scary!

[annabanana]

4. damn

Can they get some big boat or barge into the lake in front of the breech?.... just to slow the flow?

[KeepItReal]

7. The Army Corps of Engineers should be on it. Just not successful.

This hurts.

[Endangered Specie]

26. That wouldnt work...

the water is probably not deep enough for a boat of significant size, and if it could, the water would simply push the boat out of the way or just go under the boat and lift it out of the way.

[AgadorSparticus]

5. oh no!! maybe there's some last minute miracle...

:cry:

[Eloriel]

6. Oh no. What does this mean, ultimately? Anyone know?

I mean, I understand real well that the level of the city (the bowl part) will end up even with the Lake, but DOES this mean the end of the city? Can it ever be reclaimed? Can the people who are still inside the city be evacuated still?

[Roland99]

8. It will take days if not WEEKS to get that water out of there.

[Kenroy]

9. I think...

heartbreakingly, that it IS the end of the city, certainly as we know it.

It just doesn't make sense to reclaim it and rebuild it, when this same thing will happen again.

I'm just broken-hearted.

[msongs]

10. answers to yer questions: no, yes, and yes. nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

35. It sounds to me like New Orleans as we know it is gone

Who knows what will be there a year from now.

[KeepItReal]

11. Reporter says he only saw 1 helicopter used in sandbagging effort

Damn.

[daleo]

12. If so, they couldn't have thought it had much of a chance

I suppose most of the helicopters may have been rescuing people. Still, one helicopter isn't going to move 3000 sandbags in a hurry. There are plenty of helicopters in Iraq, and plenty of sand too.

[Nikki Stone 1]

13. Any more on this?

:kick:

[KeepItReal]

17. They don't know when they will be able to plug the hole in levee

Army Corps of Engineers is working on a plan.

- per WWL TV in New Orleans

[ClintonTyree]

28. It's too damned late already.........

and they know it. They've already given up on it. If their entire "plan" depended on one helicopter to stem the flow there was never a "plan" to begin with.
They're letting it flood and equalize. After that, there's nothing that can be done. I hope everyone here got to visit New Orleans at least once, because it doesn't and will not exist ever again. Not where it sits at present anyway. The entire infrastructure will have to be rebuilt top to bottom and I can't see them doing that when this will just happen again. They'll actually have to relocate and rebuild this city.

Good-bye, New Orleans. It's been nice to know 'ya. I hope whatever city they build to copy you does you justice. This is terrible. It's all over. I'm REALLY crying right now. I loved that old City. I REALLY loved her.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

22. We wasted a whole bunch of helicopters and crew in Iraq. nt.

[Synnical]

14. There's one runway open at the airport

Why don't they start flying people out?



http://www.cnn.com/2005/TRAVEL/08/30/airport.status/

Tuesday, August 30, 2005; Posted: 3:52 p.m. EDT (19:52 GMT)

(CNN) -- Officials opened one runway at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Louisiana on Tuesday to emergency flights for Katrina relief, according to a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

"Runway 19 opened for emergency services at about 1:10 p.m. Central," said Roland Herwig, an FAA spokesman for the southwest region that includes Louisiana.

Emergency flights will operate only during daylight, Herwig said.

All airports in the New Orleans area were closed to commercial service Tuesday and also may be closed Wednesday.

[DLnyc]

23. could they fly people out?

If they fly in supplies (finally), I guess empty planes would be flying out. Could they put people on those planes?

[cascadiance]

15. Hmm... Maybe we should craft a video clip...

with a CG oil geyser in it being "found" by some New Orleans residents in the downtown area, so that we can get interest from this administration to send in the "A-Team" to "protect our assets" from damage and prioritize getting that levy shored up!

Gotta figure out how to keep egging them on to thinking that the oil find is real why they build it up, before we say "Oh well, sorry, it wasn't real.".

[DLnyc]

24. Maybe Colin Powell could talk it up at the UN?

[Geek_Girl]

16. For heaven's sake

They need to get every single person out of the city by boat, plane however. I know the coast guard is doing all they can but when is fema and government officials going to get it together and get these people out.

[KeepItReal]

19. They have been asking for boats all day.

They need regular people to chip in

I don't know where or at what level the mass Federal resources are.

[Geek_Girl]

29. I just don't understand this

were the hell are the emergency resources. The armed forces helped with the Asian Tsunami were are our armed forces national guard ect. To get these people out.

[geomon666]

18. He also said the city has about 15 hours

Before it's covered by at least 9 feet of water.

[SofaKingLiberal]

21. CNN just said an additional 12 to 15 feet could be expected.

[geomon666]

20. Satellite photo of flooded areas

Everything colored light blue...is the city under water.

[Nikki Stone 1]

25. From WWLTV--update on levees

Updates as they come in on Katrina

07:06 PM CDT on Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Tom Planchet

6:41 P.M. - Efforts to stop the levee break at the 17th Street Canal have ended unsuccessfully and the water is expected to soon overwhelm the pumps in that area, allowing water to pour into the east bank of Metairie and Orleans to an expected height of 12-15 feet.

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html

[Endangered Specie]

27. I think they knew the sandbag levee wasnt going to work...

you cant hold back a lake with sandbags, of course, they couldnt do 'anything' but ultimately if that water wants to flood those sandbags wont make an anthills difference.

[jimshoes]

34. I don't know how feasable this is

but couldn't they sink a barge or a small ship in front of that breach?

[leftchick]

30. I am afraid NO will never look the same

the genie is out of the bottle. :(

[Nikki Stone 1]

31. Probably not

Those levees should have been seen to.

[Drewskie]

32. 3000

3000 lbs is alot of weight, but not enough when all those tens of thousands of gallons of water are pouring through I suppose. The bags would get swept away a bit from the breach I'd imagine. It would have taken a huge crane and 50 ton cement blocks to clog that hole. There's also the issue of finding the sand, a dry place to fill the bags, refuel the coptor...

[brentspeak]

33. On the topic of levees:

Was there ever a way for the levees to have been made larger/reinforced prior to this disaster? Or is that an engineering impossibility?

[cascadiance]

36. How soon it can be fixed now is a big question...

But on the topic of whether it was feasible to make them better before, the answer was YES! And it is Bush's fault that they weren't made better, since he chose to earmark funding to Homeland Security and Iraq War rather than issue emergency funding to respond to requests to reinforce the levees and make them higher, much like at the last minute FEMA at his direction also refused to clean up the bark beetle infested trees on federal parklands here in California that made the wildfires a year ago infintely worse than they might have been, etc. The list goes on and is talked about in the following two threads on how this president's administration is criminally negligent and is largely responsible for the magnitude of these tragedies being worse than they might have been.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4520303

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4520414