I swore I wouldn’t post on this, but just minutes ago, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (who is doing an amazing job) announced that the 17th Street Levee that breached earlier in the day was unable to be plugged and the water in the area around it will now rise rapidly again 9 feet or 3 feet above ground water–the vast majority of the city is below sea level and only very few areas are above 4 feet of sea level.
There is very little you can do, but what you can do, is found in one place.
It seems likely that there are still thousands left in the city.
Water pressure is powerful stuff.
I responded to a case of major flooding in an engine room on an aircraft carrier. A well-intentioned individual had removed the first valve (6″ or 8″) from the sea well below the waterline.
We fought it for hours, but eventually had to use divers to plug it from the outside.