Many believe that the flooding of New Orleans during Katrina had to do with the water overtopping the levees and the flood walls. This is not true. The city was flooded by the incompetence of the US Army Corps of Engineers. Everyone in the city knows this to be true.

The 17th Street Canal had flood walls of sheet piling that did not extend all the way to the clay soil. People who lived along the New Orleans side of this flood wall had been complaining for years of the water bubbling up in their back yards. And nothing was done about it.

So the Corps knew there were problems. When enough water came into the canal from the Lake Pontchartrain a portion of the wall could not longer withstand the pressure and collapse sending water into the city and flooded the below sea level portions and remained there until it could be pumped out and until the breach in the wall could be fixed which took days of helicopters dropping huge sand bags along the breach until it was finally filled.

There were other flood walls too that failed all caused by the Corps terrible design, mismanagement and incompetence. Despite what you may have heard from the news media Hurricane Katrina did not flood the city of New Orleans. The US Army Corps of Engineers did.