New Orleans' Ninth Ward under water again (Nola.com)

9/23/2005, 2:06 p.m. CT By MICHELLE ROBERTS and BRETT MARTEL The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Hurricane Rita's steady rains sent water pouring through breaches in a patched levee Friday, cascading into one of the city's lowest-lying neighborhoods in a devastating repeat of New Orleans' flooding nightmare. But levees on other canals were holding their own.

Dozens of blocks in the Ninth Ward were under water as a waterfall at least 100 feet wide poured over and through a dike that had been used to patch breaks in the Industrial Canal levee.

"Our worst fears came true," said Maj. Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard.

"We have three significant breaches in the levee and the water is rising rapidly," he said. "At daybreak I found substantial breaks and they've grown larger."

The levee on the other side of the Industrial Canal, which protected other sections of the city proper, were holding.

And at the 17th Street Canal, where the Lakeview area was flooded after Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the fix was holding. "I'm certain this area is secure," said David Wurtzel, a Corps project engineer. "All of our monitors and gauges are holding steady."

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