Devastation, Death Haunt The Lower 9th Ward

[Rose Siding]

snip>
"The thing that blew me away was the barge," Thompson said, referring to the dark red barge that appeared to have to blown through the levee a few hundreds yards north of the Claiborne Avenue bridge and now sat in the middle of the neighborhood, atop the wreckage of homes and cars. Next to it sat a short yellow school bus, the kind used for disabled students. "Anybody there didn't get out. It's beyond anything I've ever seen. I'm an artist and I couldn't even begin to draw it."

"It just looked like toothpicks everywhere" from the viewpoint of the bridge, Andrade said. The day after Katrina smacked the city, Daniel Weber, who had watched his wife drown, wept and screamed about the barge, how it had "just killed so many people."

He had barely escaped by floating on a piece of wood until rescued 14 hours later.

"It's just not right, it's not right," he sobbed. "It just came rushing in so fast. I was looking at the levee, and water was just splashing over it a little - and then, BOOM! The barge hit, and it filled up in less than five minutes."

http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tporleans/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tporleans/archives/2005_09_17.html#080533

[Mistress Quickly]

1. Is that the explosion

people said they heard?

[FloridaPat]

2. Those barges and floating casinos did a lot of damage. And I

imagine a barge hitting concrete would make a lot of noise.

[intheflow]

3. This is extraordinary first hand accounts.

It makes it sound as though the levee gave way because of the barge.