binnenstad 1 meter onder water. net op het radionieuws. het regent er pas net...
staat ook op cnn:
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Water poured through a breached levee protecting New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward on Friday, flooding the low-lying but largely empty neighborhood that was devastated last month by Hurricane Katrina.
An 8-foot storm surge from approaching Hurricane Rita overtopped a damaged section of the Industrial Canal levee where the Army Corps of Engineers had made temporary repairs, Brig. Gen. Robert Crear said.
The rushing waters appeared to have pushed aside any sandbags or other temporary barricades that had been placed there to plug the breach.
The Army Corps of Engineers disputed that, saying water was overtopping the Industrial Canal levee but the barrier was still intact. The corps is "not worried right now," spokesman Mitch Frazier said. (Watch video of broken levee in New Orleans -- 3:52)
The 9th Ward had been expected to flood, but not until Hurricane Rita made landfall, which is expected early Saturday near the Louisiana-Texas border.
"We did not expect this early that we'd get this level of the surge," Crear said. "As you know, the surge was affected by the winds and we expect this to continue for several hours."
The floodwaters will be pumped out once they reach pump stations, Crear said.
The corps is positioning equipment and supplies "so that, when that situation gets better, we can move in and start working on the breach in earnest," he said.
Video showed water spilling through the break in the levee, quickly flooding both the 9th Ward and Lower 9th Ward, which are divided by the canal.
The corps will search the 9th Ward neighborhood with rescue boats. Lt. Gen. Russel Honore said. Helicopters have been grounded by Hurricane Rita's strengthening winds.
The neighborhood is almost empty, said CNN's Mary Snow, who accompanied a recovery crew Thursday.
"The only people that were there were emergency workers doing recovery missions," she said. "Some people had started to return home to get what they could, but they were being turned away."
Water was overtopping levees at two other locations, but those situations were under control, corps member Col. Rich Wagenaar told CNN.
The flooding in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward forced a skeleton crew of National Guard soldiers stationed there to evacuate, CNN photojournalist Alfredo DeLara said.
He reported the water was rising quickly and had reached several feet in some areas.
"We're talking 5 to 10 inches in the one to two minutes we were standing in this one spot," DeLara said. "There's nothing stopping that water from just pouring in."
The 9th Ward is the low-lying neighborhood that was inundated last month, when Katrina breached the levees, causing Lake Pontchartrain to flood the city. People were forced to their rooftops because of the high waters.
According to the National Hurricane Center, as much as 3 inches of rain could be dumped on New Orleans when Hurricane Rita sweeps across the Gulf coast -- a threshold that the Army Corps of Engineers has said may overwhelm that city's fragile levee system.
The Army Corps of Engineers said temporary structures of sandbag and gravel have plugged several of the breaches, but seepage is to be expected.
DeLara said the initial levee breach was caused when a barge in the Industrial Canal rammed the levee as Hurricane Katrina came ashore August 29.
"The concrete wall of the levee was already shattered," he said. "The Army Corps of Engineers placed a lot of sand here with helicopters, with earth-moving equipment and tried to shore it up, but it looks like it didn't hold."--
CNN's Carol Costello, Tracy Sabo, Mary Snow, Barbara Starr and Adaora Udoji contributed to this report.
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