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A levee failure during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. A breach in a dike during the North Sea flood of 1953.. A levee breach or levee failure (also known as dyke breach or dyke failure) is a situation where a levee (or dyke) fails or is intentionally breached, causing the previously contained water to flood the land behind the levee.
Levee breaches in the federally built Hurricane Protection System and the resulting flooding that occurred on August 29, 2005 in the New Orleans vicinity. On Monday, August 29, 2005, there were over 50 failures of the levees and flood walls protecting New Orleans, Louisiana, and its suburbs following passage of Hurricane Katrina.
Both natural and man-made levees can fail in a number of ways. Factors that cause levee failure include overtopping, erosion, structural failures, and levee saturation. The most frequent (and dangerous) is a levee breach. Here, a part of the levee actually breaks or is eroded away, leaving a large opening for water to flood land otherwise ...
The breach at the 17th Street Canal Levee, a levee-floodwall combination, was found to be about 300 feet (100 m) long. The Corps began operating on an initial hypothesis that the force of the water overtopped the floodwall and scoured the structure from behind and then moved the levee wall horizontally about 20 feet (6.1 m).
This story—50 years in the making—is heart-wrenching. Millions of dollars were squandered in building a levee system with respect to these outfall canals which was known to be inadequate by the corps's own calculations. [49] Duval's decision left the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board and Orleans Levee District as defendants in the lawsuit ...
On 29 August 2005, Hurricane Katrina passed to the east of New Orleans, the Corps's flood protection failed catastrophically with levee breaches in over 50 places. The levee failures caused massive flooding in New Orleans with associated property loss and drownings.
The levee failure contributed to extensive flooding in the New Orleans area and surrounding parishes. About 80% of all structures in Orleans Parish sustained water damage . Over 204,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, and more than 800,000 citizens displaced —the greatest displacement in the United States since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. [ 1 ]
The LSU report subsequently found that overtopping did not occur, rather, design failures precipited the levee failures. By late 2007, several investigations were completed that included analysis of the question of whether the barge had a causative role in one or more of the failures in the floodwalls atop the Industrial Canal levees, or ...