Engineers investigating canal levee and floodwall failures in New Orleans are going back to the toolbox after crews pulling sheetpile at one breach site found that non-invasive tests, which indicated the pilings were 7 feet too short, were wrong.
Seven pilings pulled Dec. 13 from either end of the site of a 455-ft breach of the 17th Street Canal that opened in Hurricane Katrina were found to have been long enough to pass the specified elevation of 17 ft below sea level. Two different nondestructive tests had showed them to extend only to -10 ft.