ARMY engineers have reached the first significant milestone in their mission to drain New Orleans, plugging a hole through which the 40-mile wide Lake Pontchartrain spilled into the city.

Work to repair a 500-yard stretch of embankment along the 17th Street Canal was completed late on Sunday after an operation so urgent and intense that helicopter crews refused even to land for refuelling during shifts, instead hooking up to a giant flying tanker that circled overhead.

A second breach was also close to being sealed last night along the city’s London Street Canal.

The successful closure of the first breach is a significant turning point, allowing engineers to turn their attention towards repairing and then switching on the pumping stations and start sending the water back into the lake. But the process could still take up to ten weeks to complete and for the water — which is up to 15ft deep in places — to drain away.

“The water is receding now. We just have a long way to go,” said Mike Rogers, a disaster relief co-ordinator with the US Army Corps of Engineers.

For six days, UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters have shuttled constantly between the marina that lies on the lake’s southern shore and the spot at which the embankment collapsed, winching up 2,000lb sandbags and dropping them into the water to create a wall.

On the opposite side of the canal, where the levee held firm, resident Leonardo Ramirez recounted the night when he watched helplessly from the front porch of his home as the earth gave way and billions of tons of water thundered through the gap.

“I heard an extreme noise, this humungous noise — like, boom, boom — and I saw the water just disappear. It was like taking the plug from a bath, the water was sucked out from the canal all over New Orleans.

“I was howling, screaming, trying to call everybody. I was crying, I was shouting ‘Hey, somebody, somebody, the lake is coming’.”

Many whose homes line the canal route are elderly and are feared to have drowned as their homes took the brunt of the deluge.

VJ Liberto, whose home was two blocks east of the canal, was lounging on his sofa when he noticed a vertical 5ft crack in his front door and water pouring in through the top. Seconds later, the door gave way and within 15 minutes, the water coursing through his house was eight feet deep.

He smashed his way out through the attic with his 80-year-old father, untied a neighbour’s skiff and paddled it to his local bank, which is on higher ground, and dropped his father there. Over the next 24 hours, he single-handedly rescued 100 neighbours.

“I would go to each roof in the boat and tap and holler. People were screaming, offering me money to take them next.

“There was a little old man who didn’t have the strength to climb into his attic so he’d gone into his garage and he only had six inches of air left when I got there.

“The water was just coming up to the roof and he was standing up on something with his head turned sideways, crying, trying to keep his mouth in the air.

“I’d say he had about 20 minutes left.”

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