Levee failure fears rise as Rita rains down on New Orleans

OUTER bands of rain from Hurricane Rita began falling in New Orleans yesterday and forecasts of between eight and 13 centimetres of rainfall in the coming days raised fears the patched levee system could fail and flood the city all over again.

A direct hit from Hurricane Rita was still unlikely, but the Category 4 storm veered on a more northerly course toward a Saturday landfall in Texas that put New Orleans on the eastern edge of tropical storm warning.

Rita’s rains and a predicted one-metre storm surge could bring New Orleans dangerously close to predictions that the fractured levees can only handle up to 15cm of rain and a storm surge of three to 3.5 metres.