[StBernard] St. Bernard Levee Breach Measured in Miles

[Westley Annis]

AP Story published in the Houston Chronicle

BATON ROUGE, LA. - Hurricane Katrina's "destruction" of St. Bernard 
Parish apparently was caused by levee failure along a 76-mile-long 
shipping channel opened in 1965, the man in charge of pumping out the 
area said Tuesday.

The levees along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, supposed to hold 
back up to 17 1/2 feet of water, apparently were the biggest stretch 
lost. When other levees or floodwalls broke and flooded New Orleans, 
those breaks were measured in hundreds of feet. This failure may stretch 
for miles.

St. Bernard Parish, which had 65,500 residents, is a 1,794-square-mile 
fringe of water, marsh and land. Only 45 square miles were inhabited, 
according to Col. Duane Gapinski, in charge of "unwatering" New Orleans 
and nearby parishes.

"I think about 95 percent of the parish was under water. I would say 
it's pretty well destroyed," said Col. Richard Baumy of the St. Bernard 
Parish Sheriff's Office. "You've got to see it to believe it."

<http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3352880>