BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Military helicopters on Thursday dropped sandbags into the levee breach that sent floodwaters from Lake Pontchartrain pouring into New Orleans, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers general said.
The 150 sandbags, each weighing 3,000 pounds, were part of a temporary plan aimed at plugging the hole in the levee. The next step: Drop about 250 concrete road barriers into the area and seal the spot where swirling waters toppled the floodwall.
"We're dumping things into the hole, just to stem the tide," said Brig. Gen. Robert Crear, commander of the crew working to fix the floodwall.
The lake's levels have dropped about 2 1/2 feet over the past two days, about equal to the water level in flooded areas on the other side of the levee, said Johnny Bradberry, head of the state Department of Transportation and Development.
Contractors also had finished building a road that will make it easier to get heavy equipment to the levee.
In a separate project on the main canal breach, contractors tried to close the gap by building retaining walls, aiming to cut off the opening to the lake.
"In the next day, day and a half, it will be completely isolated from the lake," Bradberry said.
The pilings need to go down more than 30 feet to fully block the flow of water, according to Michael B. Rogers, another official with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Normally, the canal's function is to allow rainwater to be pumped out of the bowl-shaped city and into the lake. Blocking the canal and using the sandbags and concrete to fill breaches is a temporary fix; engineers will eventually have to rebuild at least parts of the canal.
Once those projects are done, the Corps will move on to the most important safeguard against further flooding: repairing the city's huge pumping system, which can pump 690,000 gallons of water per minute.
The Corps also planned to punch breaches into other parts of the levee system along Lake Pontchartrain, allowing water to flow back out of New Orleans and into the lake, Rogers said.
Engineers have been unable to reach another levee break on the other side of the city, though water is not flowing into New Orleans from that hole.
I just wanted to put in my 2 cents worth.
It seems that every liberal I have ever met supports building codes to prevent poor ignorant people from building ramshackle homes and trying to live in them. It seems to me that we need a federal building code that will prevent people from siting cities within 20 miles of the coast that are less than 20 feet above sea level.
This code should prevent siting new cities and well as re-building ones that have beeen destroyed by mother nature.
My heart goes out to all the citizens of New Orleans and I support providing assistance to each and every one of them who needs it to relocate to a safe city.
But for the American taxpayer to pay to rebuild the city of New Orleans in the current location would only compound the tragedy Mother nature has wrought.
In light of all the predictions of liberals that global warming is going to raise the sea levels around the glode, we need this new "building code" right away.
If this post seems harsh or mean spirited, please use your head and realize that the meanest thing we could do to another generation is to build cities in locations like New Orleans.
Who do we owe the site of New Orleans? The French. And we know the wisdom of the French.
Best Wishes,