At least one escapee from New Orleans is claiming that case
I cannot confirm the veracity of this, however, about two hours ago, I read a report from someone who had gotten out of New Orleans a few hours before the official evacuation order had been put out, and he has put forward the following claim:
I just learned a construction barge rebuilding the Hammond Hwy bridge at Bucktown broke loose from the bridge and punched a hole in the New Orleans-side of the levee. It is entirely possible that were it not for this incident, the system in the main part of New Orleans aside from New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth WOULD NOT HAVE FLOODED!
And here is a Google Maps Hybrid version of that Bridge area before the flooding and the CNN map of almost the same area, with the levee breach indicated.
I will admit from all I've read over the years that levees and other such defenses have a tendency to fail catastrophically when they reach their breaking point so a two block breach may be the realistic results of such a normal failure of that system. However, if this failure was facilitated by a collision with the construction barge, then this event takes on a new scope as something which may have been harder to prevent through levee improvement.
I am no Bush apologist, but if the barge theory proves correct, then this failure may have still happened with or without the billion dollar improvement to the system, because I don't know that levees are designed to take a such a hit. Granted, there were two other levee breaks of lesser severity in other parts of the city which indicate the system was still lacking.
At the moment, this may all just be idle speculation, however, it did seem worthy of reporting to the rest of you..