Flood barriers holding firm as hurricane hits

Thursday 30 August 2012

HURRICANE Isaac drove water over the top of a levee in a rural town south of New Orleans yesterday, but multibillion-dollar barriers built to protect the city after the 2005 Katrina disaster were not breached, officials said.

STORM: The Hurricane caused chaos.

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SCOTT MALONE and KATHY FINN new orleans

The slow-moving hurricane was felt along the Gulf Coast, threatening to flood towns in Mississippi and Louisiana with storm surges of up to 12ft and top sustained winds up to 75 miles an hour.

However, New Orleans Mayor Mitchell Landrieu said: "The federal levee system is fine.

"There are no risks. It is holding exactly as we expected it to and is performing exactly as it should. There are no people on rooftops from flooding that even approximates what happened during Katrina."Police and National Guard units, many wielding automatic assault rifles, patrolled the deserted downtown quarter of the port city, which normally bustles with tourists.Street signs and large parts of trees littered the streets and power was cut intermittently, but authorities reported no security problems.But in low-lying rural Plaquemines Parish, which stretches south-east from New Orleans, water toppled over an 8ft- high levee between the Braithwaite and White Ditch districts.Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said about 2000 residents had been ordered to evacuate but only about half were confirmed to have left before Isaac made landfall.Isaac was wobbling north-westward at 6mph, a slow pace that increases the threat of rain-induced flooding.Mr Nungesser said: "We have reports of people on their roofs and attics and 12ft to 14ft of water. This has delivered more of a punch than people thought."Plaquemines Parish is cut in two lengthwise by the Mississippi River as it flows to the Gulf of Mexico. Much of it lies outside the greater New Orleans levee system, and projects to bolster protection were not complete.Isaac weakened slightly as it moved slowly inland over southeastern Louisiana, the US National Hurricane Centre said, packing maximum sustained winds of 75mph.The storm was the first test for the £9 billion flood defence system of walls, floodgates, levees and pumps built after Katrina's storm surge. Katrina left large parts of New Orleans swamped and killed 1800 people, in the costliest natural disaster in US history.Hundreds in and around New Orleans drowned in 2005 and many survivors waited for days to be plucked from their rooftops by helicopters. New Orleans endured days of deadly disorder and widespread looting.At its peak Katrina was a category five hurricane, the most destructive possible, while Isaac is a less destructive category one. However, it has already killed at least 23 people and caused significant flooding and damage in Haiti and the Dominican Republic before skirting the southern tip of Florida on Sunday and heading across the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.It spared Tampa, Florida, where the Republican National Convention is being held. But it forced party leaders to reshuffle the schedule and tone down what some might have seen as excess celebration about Mitt Romney's presidential nomination.Hurricane Isaac has already caused up to $1bn (£632m) in economic losses for offshore energy properties and up to $1.5bn in insured losses onshore in Louisiana and neighbouring states, disaster modeller Eqecat said.But David Zelinsky, a meteorologist at the Miami-based Hurricane Centre, has cautioned the hurricane will not be going away anytime soon.

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Flood barriers holding firm as hurricane hits

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