Some of the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board's drainage pumps were knocked offline during last Wednesday's flooding rain.
S&WB officials told New Orleans City Council members during a hearing today that as four pumps worked to move water from one drainage canal to another at Drainage Pumping Station 1, at Broad St. and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., a lightning strike interrupted power for two of them. As an operator at the station attempted to bring another pump online, another lightning strike took out a third pump.
The Sewerage & Water Board says the operator was able to get two other pumps online, and eventually had as many pumps operating at once as possible that station, which moves water down the line to other stations, including Drainage Pumping Station 6 which moves water to Lake Pontchartrain via the 17th St. Canal.
Drainage Pumping Station 5 in the Lower 9th Ward also appears to have had a voltage-related issue that too two of four pumps offline. The Sewerage & Water Board is still investigating the particulars of that incident.
Sewerage & Water Board leader Ghassan Korban told the council the pumps should not have been offline long enough to exacerbate the flooding the city experienced that day.