New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. III: The 17th Street Drainage Canal
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VIEW THE ORIGINAL ARTICLEPublication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 134, Issue 5
Abstract
The failure of the levee and floodwall section on the east bank of the 17th Street drainage canal was one of the most catastrophic breaches that occurred during Hurricane Katrina. It produced a breach that rapidly scoured a flow pathway below sea level, so that after the storm surge had largely subsided, floodwaters still continued to stream in through this breach for the next two and a half days. This particular failure contributed massively to the overall flooding of the Metropolitan Orleans East Bank protected basin. Slightly more than half of the loss of life, and a similar fraction of the overall damages, occurred in this heavily populated basin. There are a number of important geotechnical and geoforensic lessons associated with this failure. Accordingly, this paper is dedicated solely to investigating this single failure. Geological and geotechnical details, such as a thin layer of sensitive clay that was laid down by a previous hurricane, proper strength characterization of soils at and beyond the toe of the levee, and recognition of a water-filled gap on the inboard side of the sheet pile cutoff wall are judged to be among the most critical factors in understanding this failure. The lessons learned from this study are of importance for similar flood protection systems throughout other regions of the United States and the world.
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Acknowledgments
The studies reported herein would not have been possible without the generous help of many individuals and organizations. A more-detailed and extensive acknowledgement is presented in the first of the companion papers and for the sake of brevity is not repeated here. This project was supported, in large part, by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. CMS-0413327 and CMS-0611632. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF. Additional support was provided by the Center for Information Technology Research in the Service of Society at the University of California at Berkeley. In addition, several senior members of the investigation team contributed from their own discretionary resources. All of this support is gratefully acknowledged.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 134 • Issue 5 • May 2008
Pages: 740 - 761
Copyright
© 2008 ASCE.
History
Received: May 10, 2007
Accepted: Jan 23, 2008
Published online: May 1, 2008
Published in print: May 2008
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