They've Got To Get The Water Out Of New Orleans

Water from Lake Pontchartrain has stopped pouring into New Orleans over hurricane-damaged levees but nothing has been done so far to fill the mammoth breaches.

Officials were hoping repair work would begin later Wednesday with Army Chinook helicopters dropping 15,000-pound bags of sand into the 300-foot wide break in the levee.

Helicopters were to be used because the site can’t be reached by land or barge.

Experts from the Army Corps of Engineers were on the scene, assessing ways to repair the two breaches in levees on canals connected to Lake Pontchartrain.

"We're attempting to contract for materials, such as rock, super sand bags, cranes, and also for modes of transportation like barges and helicopters, to close the gap and stop the flow of water,"

They can't begin pumping the floodwaters out of New Orleans until the levee breaches are repaired.

If the levees can't be secured, stabilized, and repaired, New Orleans will be lost.