NEW ORLEANS, Sept 23: The hardest-hit part of New Orleans was flooded again on Friday as Hurricane Rita’s fierce winds pushed water over a fragile levee, less than a month after Hurricane Katrina submerged most of the city.

Engineers have worked to close breaches in canal walls broken by Katrina on Aug 29 across the city, dumping sandbags, crushed stone and gravel, and sheet metal in some cases, to close the gaps.

But in the impoverished ninth ward, officials only partly filled the breach in the Industrial Canal, placing sandbags and gravel that fell short of the top of the levee wall, an Army Corps of Engineers official acknowledged.

The official, Dan Hitchings, said the water was only flowing over filling placed by engineers.

“Looking back, we should have put another foot (0.3 meter) on it,” Hitchings told reporters in the state capital Baton Rouge. Engineers had placed sandbags, crushed stone, soil and heavy gravel in the gap, he said.

He said authorities suspect there is also a small breach in another part of the canal and that water was seeping through, but crews were unable to access the site to verify it.

The water was flowing into the ninth ward and toward the suburb of St. Bernard Parish, officials said. It was waist deep in some areas.

There was no flooding, however, in the north of the city where the 17th Street Canal and London Outfall Canal off Lake Pontchartrain had breached, said Louisiana transportation and development secretary Johnny Bradberry.—AFP