[StBernard] NOAA: New Orleans at risk from Cat. 2 hurricane

Westley Annis Westley at da-parish.com
Wed Jun 18 09:04:21 EDT 2008


* By CAIN BURDEAU
* Associated Press writer
* Published: Jun 17, 2008 - UPDATED: 11:10 a.m.


Despite a massive effort to repair and upgrade flood defenses since
Hurricane Katrina, storm surge could pour over levees in New Orleans if a
strong Category 2 or higher hurricane strikes the city, the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration said Monday.

While the forecast uses what officials say is the most accurate and complete
picture yet of the region's levee heights, they said they weren't surprised
by findings that reaffirm the area surrounding New Orleans is among the
nation's most hurricane-vulnerable. The forecast released Monday represents
the first time the yearly storm surge predictions have used levee heights
based on global positioning system technology.

A team led by Roy Dokka, the director of the Center for Geoinformatics at
Louisiana State University, traveled 1,000 miles of levees, flood walls and
other coastal features since Katrina with GPS technology mounted on vehicles
to obtain the new measurements.

"They are more correct than they have ever been before," Wilson Shaffer, a
hurricane modeling expert with NOAA's National Weather Service, said of the
levee-height measurements.

To predict how strong a storm would be to overpower a levee, researchers
factor in variables including topography and a storm's wind speeds, size and
intensity. The projections on storm surge are used by emergency planners,
builders, residents and the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps of Engineers is determining how high to build levees under a
congressional mandate to complete by 2011 a hurricane protection system
capable of handling a storm likely to hit over the next century. A strong
Category 2 likely would fall under that definition.

On Monday, the corps was unable to provide a breakdown on how much has been
spent so far on work to repel storm surge. Since Katrina, Congress has given
the corps about $7.1 billion to work with and it is considering giving the
corps $5.7 billion more.

"We have a long way to go," said Randy Cephus, a corps spokesman in New
Orleans. "There still remains risk and even once the system is complete,
there will always be risk."

Before Katrina hit nearly three years ago, levee heights were woefully
out-of-date and in many places far lower than officials thought they were,
Dokka said.

But, unfortunately, the new measurements, incorporating post-Katrina levee
upgrades, confirm an old story: the region remains at risk.

"In general, the pattern hasn't changed remarkably," said Stephen Baig, a
storm surge expert with NOAA's National Hurricane Center. "Somewhere between
a Category 2 and Category 3 overtopping occurs."

The NOAA storm surge estimates do not take into consideration possible
engineering failures, like the levee breaches that caused most of the misery
in New Orleans during Katrina, which was a category 3 upon landfall south of
New Orleans.

State officials were not surprised by the latest findings.

"All of coastal Louisiana is vulnerable and will continue to be vulnerable,"
said Jerome Zeringue, a top levee aide to Gov. Bobby Jindal.





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