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According to Reuters, a $14.5 billion system of gates, floodwalls, and levees put in place by the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was able to prevent the city from being destroyed after Category 4 Hurricane Ida made landfall on August 29.
Hurricane Ida pummeled through the Gulf of Mexico into Louisiana on Sunday and came with torrential rain, high winds, and surge storms.
However, officials reported that the system functioned as planned once the storm came, and widespread flooding, which could’ve potentially devastated the city, was avoided.
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The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, which is the state agency that manages the Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System (HSDRRS), stated that the system had not been breached, and there were no reported water-pump problems.
“For the most part, all of our levees performed extremely well, especially the federal levees,” said Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, accounting for Port Fourchon, which is located about 60 miles south of New Orleans.
“But at the end of the day, the storm surge, the rain, the wind all had devastating impacts across southeast Louisiana,” Edwards added.
Torbjorn Tornqvist, a coastal geoscientist and professor at Tulane University said the system protecting New Orleans, which is one of the world’s most extensive public work systems and was built by the U.S. Army Corps, seemed to have had a great reaction to the hurricane, which has been its biggest test yet.
“It’s way better than it was during Katrina, but that doesn’t mean it can handle everything,” Tornqvist said.
Tornqvist said Ida wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been for New Orleans because it landed harshly on the area west of the city and due to the Mississippi River not being elevated in water levels prior to the storm.