No guarantee levees will hold, official says

Sunday, August 27, 2006 The public is keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Ernesto. NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Despite aggressive efforts to repair the New Orleans levee system after the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, it isn't clear yet whether it could withstand a hurricane with a heavy storm surge this year, the head of the Army Corps of Engineers conceded Saturday. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock said the agency was carefully tracking Tropical Storm Ernesto, which was in the Caribbean and projected to reach hurricane strength today. It was on track to enter the Gulf of Mexico, but it's too early to tell whether it would strike the southern United States. Strock was confident the Corps had done all it could to repair and reinforce 220 miles of levee walls, but he said many variables would determine whether the levees could withstand a major hurricane striking near New Orleans, as Katrina did Aug. 29, 2005. "To pinpoint it to one thing and say 'yes' or 'no' is very difficult," said Strock. Much would depend on where the hurricane made landfall, wind speed, rainfall and other factors, he said. The biggest concern would be water levels so high that they could cascade over the levee walls, weakening them to the point of breaching. New storm Ernesto attracted the public's attention during a weekend of events marking the anniversary of Katrina. Driving rain soaked people gathered outside the Superdome for one observance, but the storms were not related to Ernesto. Bari Landry, who lives in a New Orleans neighborhood heavily flooded by Katrina, said that after seeing Ernesto's possible storm track she decided to reserve a hotel room in Houston for Thursday through Saturday. "There may be panic, but we know the drill," she said. Gov. Kathleen Blanco said state officials were keeping an eye on Ernesto. "It's critical we make the right call for the right reason," she said, cautioning that they want to ward off the chance of unnecessary evacuations. Mandatory evacuation in the parishes below New Orleans would kick in when the storm was 50 hours from the coast, New Orleans Homeland Security chief Terry Ebbert said. New Orleans would begin mandatory evacuation at the 40-hour mark. Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.