Fear of new disaster after levee breached

HURRICANE Rita's rains sent water pouring through breaches in a patched levee yesterday, cascading into one of the city's lowest-lying neighbourhoods in a repeat of New Orleans's flooding nightmare.

But levees on other canals were holding their own.

Dozens of blocks in the city's Ninth Ward were under water as a waterfall at least 100 feet wide poured through a dyke that had been used to patch breaks in the Industrial Canal levee.

"Our worst fears came true," said Major Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard. "We have three significant breaches in the levee and the water is rising rapidly."

The levee on the other side of the Industrial Canal, which protected other sections of the city proper, were holding.

As the outer bands of the monster storm struck, forecasters said anywhere from three to five inches of rain could fall in New Orleans. That was dangerously close to the six inches of rain that corps officials say the levees patched after Katrina's onslaught could withstand.

Another concern is the storm surge accompanying Rita, which could send water rising as much as three to five feet above high tide.

The impoverished Ninth Ward neighbourhood was one of the areas of the city hit hardest by Katrina's floodwaters and finally had been pumped dry before the edge of Hurricane Rita moved in.

A spokeswoman for Mayor Ray Nagin said officials believed the neighbourhood had been cleared of residents. But throughout the day, water began rising again onto what remained - buckled homes, piles of rubble and mud-caked cars that Katrina had covered with up to 20 feet of water.

Refugees from the Lower Ninth Ward were housed at the Progressive Baptist church in Lafayette. They were watching the TV news as the canal levee was breached again, flooding their neighbourhood anew.

"It's like looking at a murder," Quentrell Jefferson said. "The first time is bad. After that, you numb up."

Farther east in St Bernard Parish - heavily flooded by Katrina - water from the Ninth Ward was threatening with one side, while a storm surge into Bayou Bienvenu was lapping at the top of a levee on the other.

"As long as we have an east wind it's going to continue to come in at the rate you're seeing it come in right here," said Detective Steve Guilliot.

The recovery of bodies was suspended yesterday but previous discoveries pushed the death toll from Hurricane Katrina to 841 in Louisiana, and 1,078 across the US Gulf Coast.

As many as 500,000 people in south-western Louisiana, many of them already displaced by Hurricane Katrina, were told to evacuate. A mandatory evacuation order is in effect for New Orleans on the eastern bank of the Mississippi. Police said people in the city's Algiers section on the other side of the river would be wise to get out, too. But thousands stayed.