The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' ongoing rebuilding effort of
New Orleans' levee system passed its first major test this week.
The infrastructure held its own during Hurricane Gustav, which
thankfully turned out to bruise, not batter the still-recovering
city three years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
While Gustav turned out to be far less of a threat than
anticipated, officials from the Army Corps of Engineers say the
storm was powerful enough to put the partially revitalized levee
and pump system to the test. "This was not a trivial storm,"
says Major Tim Kurgan, public affairs officer for the New
Orleans branch of the Army Corps of Engineers. "It drove a
12-foot storm surge into the Industrial Canal ... and the
ultimate field test of those [levee] walls is to fill them to
the top." Katrina is typically characterized as a 400-year storm
with a 28-ft to 30-ft storm surge that flooded and devastated
portions of the city. In comparison, experts are classifying
Gustav as somewhere in the vicinity