‘Our worst fears came true,’ official says as flooding swamps Ninth Ward
NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Rita’s steady rains sent water pouring over a patched levee Friday, cascading into one of the city’s lowest-lying neighborhoods in a devastating repeat of New Orleans’ flooding nightmare.
“Our worst fears came true,” said Maj. Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard.
“We have three significant breaches in the levee and the water is rising rapidly,” he said. “At daybreak I found substantial breaks and they’ve grown larger.”
Dozens of blocks in the Ninth Ward were under water as a waterfall at least 30 feet wide poured over and through a dike that had been used to patch breaks in the Industrial Canal levee. On the street that runs parallel to the canal, the water ran waist-deep and was rising fast. Guidry said water was rising about three inches a minute.
Water also poured out from under the canal's western barrier, which faces the historic French Quarter roughly three miles away.
An official with the New Orleans Fire Department said flooding reached a mile inland west of the canal. It also reached as far north as Interstate 10, which divides the city.
The impoverished Ninth Ward was one of the areas of the city hit hardest by Katrina’s floodwaters and finally had been pumped dry before Hurricane Rita struck.
Throughout Friday morning, water began rising again onto buckled homes, piles of rubble and mud-caked cars that Katrina had covered with up to 20 feet of water.
[Link - MSNBC]
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