Dang

While looking for something else, I spotted an image of something I'd blogged about but had never seen before and thought, "Dang, no wonder it made so much noise."

To be completely honest, with all of the wild stories coming out of New Orleans although it had been and was still mentioned occasionally, I wasn't really sure if the darned thing even existed.

It does. And now efforts are underway to remove an empty grain barge from New Orleans, that arrived IN the city during Katrina via flooding from the Industrial Canal.

Bad design probably is the primary reason for the initial flooding along the Industrial Canal.

Katrina's first storm surges apparently shot up the Gulf Outlet and neighboring Lake Borgne from the southeast, then overtopped levees along the Outlet and the Industrial Canal. The floodwaters eventually breached the Industrial Canal's levees, and officials believe a large portion of the Outlet's levees have been destroyed as well.

"That funnel was a back door into New Orleans," said G. Paul Kemp, an oceanographer at the LSU Hurricane Center. "I don't think there's much doubt that was the initial cause of the disaster."

Think for a second about how much water and force that's required to move a barge that big. (See that little white spec on the ground in front of the barge in the image on the bottom left? That's a person.)

Imagine, too, the sound an out-of-control barge might make as it slams into and punches through an already weakened and failing levee wall.

Might it not be BOOM!?

As big as that barge is, it is still dwarfed by the size of southern breach at the Industrial Canal.