New Orleans taking wait-and-see approach

updated 12:52 p.m. ET Sept. 22, 2005

NEW ORLEANS - Despite warnings that another hurricane could swamp the city all over again, New Orleans residents weren’t rushing to board evacuation buses Wednesday as forecasts raised hopes Hurricane Rita could pass them by.

Only one person showed up at the convention center early Wednesday to catch a bus out, heeding Mayor Ray Nagin’s mandatory evacuation for the estimated 400 to 500 residents were left in neighborhoods on the east bank of the Mississippi River. A voluntary evacuation was called for many more residents in Algiers, a residential area on the west bank that reopened to residents earlier this week.

The modest response came as forecasts called for Hurricane Rita to veer away from the Louisiana coast and hit the central Texas coast by the weekend.

Still, the Army Corps of Engineers continued pumping the water left behind by Hurricane Katrina and readying the city’s fractured levee system in case the new storm took a sharp right turn. And engineers warned residents that the patched-up levees can only handle up to 6 inches of rain and a storm surge of 10 to 12 feet.

“The protection is very tenuous at best,” said Dave Wurtzel, the Corps official responsible for repairing the 17th Street Canal levee, which ruptured during Katrina caused the worst of the floods.

Hoping to get a break
Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who declared a state of emergency, told Louisianans to pray for a break from Rita even as the death toll from Katrina in the state rose to 799. That pushed the overall toll across the Gulf Coast states past the 1,000 milestone — to 1,036.

“I just feel so defeated,” said Christina Pascal, manager of a condominium complex in the city’s Warehouse District.

Army Corps spokesman Mitch Frazier said the city was only about 10 percent flooded, down from 80 percent, with just isolated ponds left in sections of the city. In one area of eastern New Orleans, near the Six Flags amusement park, the floodwaters were still 4 to 6 feet deep.

And while the city is still on target to be completely dry by end of the month, Frazier said that all depends on Rita. “We’re making preparations now and prepositioning pumps and doing everything we can possibly do to prepared for another storm.”

Rita could bring a storm surge of 12 feet or more, enough to send water from Lake Pontchartrain pouring back into New Orleans neighborhoods that were only recently pumped dry. Frazier said the Corps expected to decide later Wednesday whether to close off the makeshift barriers erected across the canals to hold back the lake water.

Rita’s renewed threat to the levees forced the mayor to suspend the phased reopening of the city.

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