Now CNN is reporting a two-foot breach in a levee somewhere.

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Now CNN is reporting a two-foot breach in a levee somewhere.

That's the two-block breach the mayor was talking about. By the 17th St Canal.

And I'm hearing conflicting reports on the Twin Spans. One transportation department guy said that the damage was severe but fixable and that it looks like a stairstep all the way up. The mayor is talking like it's gone.

Peak storm surge at Biloxi is now being reported as reaching 33 feet, which would equal or exceed Camille's surge.

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Sections of the I-10 twin bridges linking St. Tammany and Orleans parishes over Lake Pontchartrain have been “severely damaged’’ in both directions, some knocked out, Louisiana highway officials said.

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Let me find something distracting. I just realized that my current shiny thing is not really for everyone and the you've seen my backup shiny thing.

About an hour ago, I thought I was ready to go to bed and then sleeplessness just bodyslammed me.

Also Jon Stewart was a repeat. It has nothing to do with NOLA, it just that I was hoping for something new on my tv.

The problem is, if you have sex with an older woman and then, you compare that experience with your first amateur gropings with a girl your own age. The problem occurs that the sex with the older woman was better. Even if it was a crime. - John Irving

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This is my neighborhood:

Dozens of residents evacuated to the dry land of the Filmore Street bridge over the Marconi Canal were stranded between the flooded neighborhood on their right, and the flooded City Park on their left, hours after they had been plucked from rooftops or second-story windows.

Firefighters who saved them tried to request an RTA bus to come for the refugees, but said there was no working communications to do so.

Ed Gruber, who lives in the 6300 block of Canal Boulevard, said he became desperate when the rising water chased he, his wife, Helen, and their neighbor Mildred K. Harrison to the second floor of their home. When Gruber saw a boat pass by, he flagged it down with a light, and the three of them escaped from a second-story window.

On the lakefront, pleasure boats were stacked on top of each other like cordwood in the municipal marina and yacht harbor. The Robert E. Lee shopping center was under 7 feet of water. Plantation Coffeehouse on Canal Boulevard was the same. Hines Elementary School had 8 feet of water inside.

Indeed, the entire business district along Harrison Avenue had water to the rooflines in many places.

My grade school is on Harrison.

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And this is where we got married.

Tom Roche, owner of the Elms Mansion reception hall on St. Charles Avenue, bicycled above the flooded Carrollton exchange on the interstate. He and his three sons rode out Katrina on the sixth floor of Baptist Memorial hospital, where his wife works as a nurse.

“She convinced me to stay at the hospital,” he said. “I usually stay at the Elms.”

Earlier in the afternoon, Roche was relieved to find his business largely intact. “It was fine,” he said. “We boarded it up well. There was a little roof damage, a little water in the basement, but no structural damage.”

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I'm going to bed. I'm weather-geeked out, and all I can think about is Gilbert White, the patron saint of floodplain management.

"The broad problem of flood-loss reduction is that the rate at which flood losses are being eliminated by construction of engineering or land-treatment works is of about the same magnitude as the rate at which new property is being subjected to damage."

In English, the problem with building levees and flood-control systems is that people move into the floodplain, so that when the flood-control system fails you get far, far more damage than if you hadn't built the flood-control system in the first place.

I really should have paid attention more in my hydrology class.

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I'm not sure the exact locations that FPL serves but this is surprisingly good for a timeline on getting electricity back.

As of Monday, more than 70 percent of the 1 million homes and businesses left in the dark by the storm had regained power. FPL said last week that, by today, 90 percent of its powerless customers would be back on the grid, and the rest by Friday.

The 200 ft. break in the levee holding back Lake Pontchartrain is frightening. I worry that there is so much potential damage to property and people that can occur from flooding and then water damage and water-bourne illnesses.

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My stomach hurts.

I think I'm going to turn on the TV and try to fall asleep on the couch.

Cass, I sort of skimmed past earlier Natter posts, but I hope you're feeling better. I would personally not mind a little flexeril myself right now, wink wink, nudge nudge.

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In English, the problem with building levees and flood-control systems is that people move into the floodplain, so that when the flood-control system fails you get far, far more damage than if you hadn't built the flood-control system in the first place.

I have lived in many places where areas that were consistantly destroyed by flash floods went from being left alone, to being made into golf courses (because they are easily rebuilt and actual property isn't destroyed when the flash floods come as they always do), to now having homes built there. And then people are shocked when it is all washed away. Or killed when they are washed away too.

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