Times-Picayune: Flooding Timeline/Interactive Map

Bob Marshall in Sunday's Times-Picayune provides a timeline of the flood protection system failures that lead to the inundation of New Orleans, Old Metairie, St. Bernard Parish, and Plaquemines Parish.

Also included is a nifty interactive map (a flash animation) that illustrates the flooding by time increment.

What's amazing to me is that none of the flooding within the City of New Orleans was officially stated by the media until the early hours of Tuesday, 3o August. The timeline states all flooding was underway by 10:30am on the 29th, the day of KTMB landfall. From my evacuation location in Colfax, LA, I recall feeling pretty confident about the flooding situation within New Orleans in the afternoon of the 29th based on what was stated online, on the radio, and on television. In reality, the place was drowning.

Some points from the article:

The costliest natural disaster in the nation’s history began early Monday, Aug. 29, with a small leak near the Interstate 10 High-Rise about 4:30 a.m. and climaxed with the horrific collapse of floodwalls along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals between 9:30 and 10:30 a.m.

Researchers now say as many as 30 breaches in the system accounted for 84 percent of the metro area flooding, with most of the water coming from the big gaps along the 17th Street, London Avenue and Industrial canals, as well as holes in the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet and Gulf Intracoastal Waterway levees and a gap in the Orleans Avenue outfall canal that flooded much of the City Park area.

St. Bernard Parish: 89 percent of the flooding came through breaches in the MR-GO levees on the eastern side of the parish and from the Industrial Canal, also called the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal, on its northern end.

Eastern New Orleans: 63 percent of the flooding came from breaches along the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and the Industrial Canal.

The rest of New Orleans: 87 percent came through the holes in the 17th Street, London Avenue and Industrial canals, as well as the gap in the Orleans Avenue Outfall Canal.


Read the full article.

TAGS: Katrina, New Orleans, NOLA, Flooding, 17th Street Canal, St. Bernard, New Orleans East