Is the Big Easy Ready for Another Big One?

New Orleans, La., Aug. 28, 2006 — -- After one year and nearly $1 billion in repairs, is New Orleans ready for another hurricane?

Evacuation plans are set, and the city is better equipped to meet another hit by a hurricane of Katrina's force: The Army Corps of Engineers has equipped the city with an $800 million arsenal, 220 miles of repaired and reinforced levees and flood walls, and temporary floodgates and pumps.

"The elements that we rebuilt are bigger and stronger than they were prior to the storm," says Dan Hitchings, regional director of the Army Corps of Engineers.

But dozens of other engineers, after analyzing Katrina's destruction in a study funded by the National Science Foundation, express pessimism.

"We can expect another disaster. Rupture of the walls, and again, catastrophic flooding. ...Today, that levee is not nearly as competent [or] strong as it should be," says University of California Berkeley engineer Robert Bea, who took part in the study.

And even Hitchings admitted just a few days ago he could not guarantee the levees would hold if another Katrina returns, even though the Army Corps is confident that it has strengthened the levees' weakest links. Still, the Army Corps concedes, more can be done.

"Even if the walls withstood the force which, at this point, they will, the water's still going to come over the top of them," says Hitchings.

Some neighborhoods could face up to 6 feet of flooding, but the Army Corps of Engineers believes that next time there will be no breaches because those broken levees are fixed with new metal pilings 70 feet into the ground. Meantime, the Department of Homeland Security has an evacuation plan set to a timeline based on the predicted landfall of a hurricane:

Fifty hours before landfall, residents with no way out will be evacuated.

Forty hours before a possible flood, low-lying neighborhoods will be evacuated.

Thirty hours before landfall, a citywide, mandatory evacuation will take place.

Other changes in the the plan include:

The Superdome will not be used as a shelter.

The Convention Center will be used only as a command post.

Airlines will be asked to help already-ticketed tourists who want to bail out early.

Trains will be used, especially to evacuate the elderly.

City director Col. Terry Ebbert, of the Department.of Homeland Security, is optimistic it can get everyone out in time. "We're the only city in the United States that, today, has trains sitting right now, ready to take citizens out of the city of New Orleans in an evacuation."

Trains, planes, and buses, floodgates, walls and pumps. Is it enough to protect New Orleans?The city hopes it never finds out.