Levee Breach In New Orleans
KAGAN: With Hurricane Rita on the way, big concerns in New Orleans about the levees. Can they hold? We're getting news that there's already a levee breach in New Orleans. With more on this, let's go right to New Orleans and our Mary Snow. Mary.</s>MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Daryn, this is what the Army Corps of Engineers was fearing. The rain is just really starting here in New Orleans. And as you mentioned, we are hearing word now from the Army Corps of Engineers that water is overtopping the Industrial Canal Levee. The Army Corps of Engineers is saying that this structure is still intact, but it has triggered some flooding in the ninth ward. Our photographer who is on the site is reporting about two feet of water in the lower ninth ward. Now, flooding had been anticipated, but not at this early stage. What forecasters had been saying or engineers had been saying is that they were expecting about three to five inches of rain over a couple of days. But the rain is just starting here and there is flooding already. We are being told that the Army Corps of Engineers has been monitoring these levees throughout the night and, of course, through today and crews in the past couple days have really been racing to shore up the levee structures and the canals leading into these areas. So this is the first task that these levees that breached since Hurricane Katrina three weeks ago that devastated this city and this is the first significant rainfall since then. Daryn.</s>KAGAN: And the ninth ward, to remind our viewers, in is one of the hardest hit areas in the aftermath of Katrina and that flooding, Mary.</s>SNOW: Absolutely. We had flown over it just yesterday. We were there the other day. It is just decimated in that area. It is right off the Industrial Canal Levee. What had been going on there in the past couple days were search and rescue teams. They were recovering they were looking to see if anyone was there. They were mostly recovering bodies. They had to stop those efforts yesterday when it started raining. They were the only people in that area up to this point. So there's no one living there.</s>KAGAN: All right, Mary Snow live from New Orleans. Once again, a levee breach impacting the ninth ward neighborhood. More on that just ahead. Mary, thank you. And we're going to take a look at what the Red Cross is doing. Is it overwhelmed by what it had to do with Katrina. What does it have to offer for the victims of Rita? We'll get to that after this break.