I've got a waterproof 220V pump 150 feet down in my back yard. No long shaft. Power has got to be the problem.
Incompetence and corruption are the problem. New pumps already on hand, but never installed, no money? How the f__k could you not prioritize something like that? Total incompetence and corruption are the only answer. Dirt levees? Never heard of concrete retaining walls i.e. dirt filled levees? Total and complete incompetence, typical libs.
"I've got a waterproof 220V pump 150 feet down in my back yard. No long shaft. Power has got to be the problem."
You're absolutely right - but what of the generators? They had only less than a day of fuel?
If big things were made the same way as small things, they would be prohibitively expensive and inefficient. Making pumps that could function in a flooded city would certainly have been possible (simplest method being to build a waterproof wall around the pumping station, and using a small pump to keep it dry).
The bigger question, though, is what would be the purpose of spending even $10,000/pump on such an improvement? If the pumps are able to withstand a moderate rise in water level, a flood beyond that would suggest one thing: a breached levee. And if that happens, it doesn't matter whether the pumps are working or not.
Simply put: once a levy is breached, there is no possible amount of pumping that will prevent the waters on both sides from reaching equilibrium. Even if one had enough pumps to remove a foot of water per minute (that's 720 times what the NO pumps could do if working) it wouldn't take very many days before the levees were letting through more than that.