Within a few seconds in mid-December, engineers at a new research facility in Vicksburg, Miss., sealed a 2,000-cu-ft-per-second torrent of water pouring through a 40-ft-wide, eight-ft-deep levee breach using a 100-ft-long, 15-ft-dia., air- and water-filled fabric tube rolling in the stream.
The Dec. 15 event was the first full-scale demonstration of rapid levee repair technology developed by the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg and the Dept. of Homeland Security’s Advanced Research Projects Agency. Now researchers hope private interests will take the technology to an operational level.