The winds whipping through NOLA could be a factor. Also, I don't know how many of those sandbags they had on standby.
I did hear them say earlier they couldn't send helicopters up because of 45mph gusts, but coast guard choppers are up shown on FNC now now making visual assessments of the industrial canal 'spillover';...
They could have sandbags all day. It's the harnesses that carrys the sandbags that's the problem. Once the the bag is dropped, they can't get the harness back.
Something to note that I read on another forum:
The western side doesn't look so hot, but whoever is east of the center is going to get raked in a really bad way.
And we're moving into the afternoon, and she's tightening up a little bit as the storm does it's afternoon/evening thing. Don't know what she'll be like at landfall, but she's borderline 3/4 right now, and no one to the east of landfall should be complacent...and with wobbly storm eyes, people need to keep an eye on the storm. You could guess wrong about which side you're going to end up on.