New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. III: The 17th Street Drainage Canal
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.
Recommended Citation
R. B. Seed and R. Bea and A. Athanasopoulos-Zekkos and G. P. Boutwell and J. D. Bray and C. Cheung and D. A. Cobos-Roa and L. F. Harder and R. E. Moss and J. M. Pestana and M. F. Reimer and J. D. Rogers and R. Storesund and X. Vera-Grunauer and J. Wartman, "New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. III: The 17th Street Drainage Canal," Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, vol. 134, no. 5, pp. 740 - 761, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), May 2008.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)1090-0241(2008)134:5(740)
Department(s)
Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering
Keywords and Phrases
Drainage; Failures; Hurricanes; Levees; Louisiana; Failure analysis; Flood damage; Geotechnical engineering; Scour; Hurricane Katrina; Drainage; canal; flood control; sheet piled wall; soil strength; storm surge; New Orleans; North America; United States
Geographic Coverage
New Orleans, Louisiana
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
1090-0241
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2008 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 May 2008
