9/23 Industrial Canal Breach and Possible Others.
Friday, September 23, 2005
From MSNBC:
Caption reads Water flows through a breach in the repaired Inner Harbor Canal toward the Ninth Ward District Friday in New Orleans.
Anyone got a longitude and latitude on this? (KC approximation: Lat 29.978333240947077, Lon -90.02085221140939.) Anyone want to send me the image on a Google Earth satellite image? Or do some complicated thing like place it on the Katrina image and that on a pre-hurricane season satellite picture?
I think the breach is in the general area of the Florida Avenue Bridge and Surkote Road, as shown below. Can anyone confirm? Here's a closer shot from a screengrab from CNN streaming video:
Leveen clearly broken. The CNN reporter also mentioned another broken levee in the Chantilly (he pronounced it something like Chintilly?) Gentilly area. There are other reports of multiple breaches, but none I can find that name locations. Here's another view of the same breach.
Above is the Google Maps satellite image of the area before the hurricanes. Below is the Digital Globe August 31st, 10AM image showing one the Industrial Canal breaches. (The bigger one is further south.) I can't tell if the new breach is in the same spot as in the 8/31 image, butit looks to me like it's not.
The New York Times provides the best explanation I've seen so far of multiple breaches, but so far all the images I've seen are of the same one. (We don't have TV reception, so I'm not watching TV.)
One break in the levee was in the lower Ninth Ward, on the east side of the canal. The storm sent e water rising so quickly that it had reached windows of houses up to three blocks east of the levee by late morning. Dozens of blocks in New Orleans's Ninth Ward were under water.
Later today, another break was found in the Upper Ninth Ward, on the west side of the levee.
Here's another shot of that breach found on the LA Times site:
I'm not sure if this next photo (found on the CNN site at 6AM 9/24) is a breach or just overtopping, but it is clearly not the same spot.
UPDATE 9/24, 7:46PM: I see the Washington Post has another view of the same breach, described in the caption as a 30-yard breach on the east side of the Lower Ninth Ward:
From the Times-Picayune (via my sister, who called to tell me about it):
New flooding in Orleans as water pours through levee
(AP) Hurricane Rita's steady rains sent water pouring through breaches in 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.
And Flood waters move into Plaquemines Parish; St. Bernard still dry
Plaquemines Parish officials said Hurricane Rita has begun to push water into the parish's lower regions, with storm surge from Hurricane Rita pushing into areas south of Port Sulphur.
The flooding is in the same areas totally devastated last month by Hurricane Katrina.
Sheriff Jiff Hingle said that as of 10 a.m. officials have reports of water blocking Louisiana 23 in Port Sulphur. . . .
On the east bank, Hingle said there are also reports of water starting to erode a temporary repair on a marsh levee. Hingle said the temporary repair at East Pointe a la Hache was beginning to fail, although he didn't know how seriuous the flooding would be. . . .
Meanwhile in St. Bernard Parish, officials said Friday morning the levees were holding, although they had received reports of water creeping through the Lower 9th Ward from the Industrial Canal.