A Levee Overtops in a Sparsely Populated Area Outside of New Orleans
As Hurricane Ida barreled through Louisiana on Sunday, it dumped enough rain to exceed at least one levee southeast of New Orleans.
Around 5:30 p.m. Eastern time, Plaquemines Parish said on Facebook that it had received reports of a levee that had “overtopped” in the Braithwaite area, southeast of New Orleans, and urged those in the sparsely populated area to evacuate.
“SEEK HIGHER GROUND IMMEDIATELY,” the parish said.
A 10-foot-high surge topped the levee, although it has not yet been breached, said Ricky Boyett, spokesperson for the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans.
After the parish’s announcement, the Weather Service issued a flash flood emergency for the Braithwaite area, urging residents to seek higher ground.
“It is a very serious situation,” said Hannah Linsey, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in New Orleans. “It takes a lot for a levee to be overtopped. It’s not something that happens very often at all.”
The flash flood emergency, which was in effect through 11 p.m., was issued for an area with a population of about 80 people. It wasn’t immediately clear how many people in the area had evacuated ahead of the storm.
“We had ordered a mandatory evacuation on Friday, so that’s why we think it was pretty desolate,” Kirk Lepine, the Plaquemines Parish president, said Sunday evening.
The community is outside the federal storm risk reduction system that is providing protection to the greater New Orleans area, said Christina Stephens, a spokesperson from the governor’s office in a statement. The National Hurricane Center had cautioned that overtopping of local levees was possible in areas outside the risk reduction system.
The levee near Braithwaite is not one of the levees built by the Army Corps of Engineers; it is maintained by the Plaquemines Parish, according to Boyett. The corps is currently constructing new levees in the parish that can reach as high as 30 feet depending on elevation.
The overtopping “wasn’t a surprise,” Boyett added. “That’s an area that is subjected to some pretty high surges.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
