Hurricane Francine suddenly dropped an incredible amount of rain on New Orleans
Hurricane Francine rapidly strengthened before making landfall in Louisiana on Wednesday, knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people, flooding a cemetery and dumping rain on New Orleans, a city that relies on a uniquely complicated network of canals and pumps to get the water out.
More than 7 inches (18 centimeters) of rain fell in some areas, outpacing its drainage system. Water rose fast in some spots, forcing an emergency room nurse to rescue a pickup truck driver minutes before water covered his vehicle.
“Effectively, the swamp of centuries ago comes back to life, and communities built on those drained lowlands get water in their houses and cars” during bad storms, said Richard Campanella, a professor at Tulane University’s School of Architecture and author of the book “Draining New Orleans.”
New Orleans was shaped by flooding and has long struggled to keep homes dry and the water out. Residents were cautioned to conserve water to reduce stress on the sewer system, although drinking water was never affected. By Thursday, officials said they had emptied out the rain, but that job requires an immense amount of infrastructure vital to keeping New Orleans habitable.
Here is why the city struggles with downpours and how officials fight floodwaters:
Hurricane Katrina showed how bad it can get. A breach in the levy flooded most of the city, stranding residents on rooftops and killing almost 1,400 people. For weeks, pumps worked to drain the flood.
Afterwards, the federal government invested more than $14 billion on a 133-mile massive protection system of levees, pumps and other infrastructure designed to keep the water out. Hurricanes create storm surges that those walls are meant to stop, and Francine didn’t come close to challenging the design. Initial estimates of storm surge at the lakefront of Lake Pontchartrain were about 3 to 5 feet.
“The walls at that location were about 16 feet.
