When the Levee Breaks: Devestating Photographs

[LynneSin]

How the hell will they get the water out!

[H5N1]

1. wow, those are the first photos I have seen

like this entire tragedy, it leaves me speechless

[whistle]

2. The depth perspective I think fails to do justice to the severity....

...of the failure of the levee's engineered integrity. That break is well over 300 feet long and initially represented a five foot high collapse due the entire surface water pressure. Image a half gallon milk carton that you cut the top part off (that part where the carton comes together th form the top triangle where the spout is located. When the flat surface sides of the container do not have the reinforcement of the tapered top, the container will bulge around the top and actually decrease the capacity of water it can hold that spilling or even tearing the weakest part of the container. Water pressures at the surface are enormous because water being a liquid wants to flow or spread outward in the direction of least resistance.

Levees after all are simply dams which extend for miles, but the further upstream that the water is held back, the more pressure there is on the lower parts of the levees. I am not an engineer, but it seems to me that outward pressure at the surface of a contained body of water is directly proportional to the extent of surface the levee is attempting to hold back. Add to that the extreme added volume of seawater from a 25 to 30 foot high storm surge and the conditions for a disaster are really amplified.

Take an inflated kid-dy backyard venal plastic pool and you can really see the effects of even a minor release of air from the inflated sides which when fully inflated hold in all of the water even when filled to the top.

The country of Holland, like New Orleans has much of its coastal land protected from encroachment of the English Channel protected by a series of dikes and levees. They offered to provide assistance to New Orleans, but Bush so far has refused their help.