Big Easy floods as pumps fail
Heavy rains overwhelmed New Orleans’ pumping systems Thursday, flooding side streets and major arteries and raising new worries about the city’s vulnerabilities after Hurricane Katrina.
The rains were part of the same massive storm that shut down parts of the Mountain West and Plains this week.
The New Orleans area got more than 4 inches of rain Wednesday and Thursday. And, said Brenda Thornton, a spokeswoman for the city’s Sewerage and Water Board, that was too much for the water pumping system to handle.
The system gave out during Hurricane Katrina, and since has been repaired. In a statement Thursday, city officials said that all of the pumps but one were “operational” – adding that debris-clogged storm drains might have been part of the problem.
David Shaver, 62, watched Thursday morning as 1 1/2 feet of water coursed in front of his home on Palmer Avenue Uptown. His house, like many others on the street, is raised more than 2 feet off the ground and came through the storm just fine.
Still it was an unsettling moment for the nurse anesthetist, who only moved back into his Katrina-damaged house a month ago.
“It’s ominous,” he said. “This happened before the storm and it was just kind of fun. We called it the Palmer river. But it wasn’t fun today.”
A number of streets, including major arterials, were shut down, creating traffic snarls and forcing residents to zigzag across the city. Detective John Ray of the New Orleans Police Department, who surveyed the city in a police cruiser, said that while some streets were passable, others had as much as 3 feet of water.
Three high schools were flooded, and the school system closed down early.
“We’re used to this – whenever we have rain nonstop, the pumps can’t handle so much at one time,” said Dominican Sister Lorraine Torres, 74, a longtime New Orleans resident. “But this was nothing compared to Katrina.”
The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch until noon today for parts of east-central and southeastern Louisiana. The community of Larose, about 60 miles south of New Orleans, got an estimated 10 to 12 inches of rain, meteorologist Fred Zeigler said.