From Vicksburg War Room to Front Lines in New Orleans , the Fight Goes On
About a week after hurricane Katrina passed to the east of New Orleans, with her counterclockwise winds whipping up Lake Pontchartrain with enough force to breach the city�s levee system in several places, the Army Corps of Engineers had good news. The Corps and its contractors had plugged the worst leak and started a large pump station that was pushing water through the 17th St. Canal back into the lake. The Corps also reported progress on other major breaches at the London Canal and the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal. While construction crews are slowly regaining access that will enable them to plug the remaining breaches, others have deliberately cut levees to the south and east: two in St. Bernards Parish and two more in Plaquemines Parish. The fissures allow water trapped inside levees to flow out and reach a state of equilibrium with the water outside the perimeter.
�I believe that we may have turned a corner last night,� said a weary Alfred C. Naomi, a hurricane protection system project manager who has been working on a drainage plan�the Corps calls it unwatering�since the storm pierced city floodwalls. Naomi is among a cadre of approximately 60 people from the Corps� New Orleans District who have been putting in 12-16 hour days in a �war room� in the Corps� Mississippi Valley District headquarters in Vicksburg. By Aug. 31, an estimated 80% of the city was submerged. The estimate for the amount of time required to drain the city ranged from 30-80 days. Naomi is optimistic that, barring another major storm event, the job won�t take that long. �Once we get more pumps going, you�ll see the water level drop rapidly. I think much of the city will be drained within weeks.�