The Times-Picayune has a fascinating account of what went on at Michoud during Katrina.
With the future of the nation’s manned space program hanging in the balance, 36 workers rode out the storm at the Michoud Assembly Facility, battling terrifying winds, torrential rain and a life-threatening storm surge. They managed to keep all four of the plant’s pumps operating throughout the storm, which prevented water from entering the factory’s main buildings.
And, perhaps most important, Michoud’s levees held firm even as other levees in the area broke under Katrina’s punishment and flooded 80 percent of the city. No one is sure yet whether the success of the levees was a function of better design, maintenance, nonstop pumping or just pure luck, but days after Katrina was gone, the Michoud site emerged as an island of green surrounded by a miles-wide wasteland of submerged neighborhoods and washed-out highways.
At one point during the storm, a string of runaway barges slammed into the concrete flood wall that rises from the levee protecting Michoud from the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet. The impact cracked the wall, but it didn’t break through the flood protection structure.
“If (the barges) had broke that wall, we would have been on top of (a roof) waiting for helicopters to rescue us,” said Joe Barrett, a Michoud equipment operator who stayed during the storm.
The plant sustained about $120 million in damage, Michoud spokesman Marion LaNasa said. NASA received $324.8 million from Congress in December for hurricane recovery efforts at Michoud and Stennis Space Center in nearby Hancock County, Miss., where shuttle engines are test-fired.
But the damage could have been much worse.
As Katrina roared through New Orleans on Aug. 29, a group of workers at Michoud known as the ride-out crew did everything they could to save the factory from the storm’s hardest punch.
They manned the plant’s four pumps until 4 a.m., when winds reached hurricane force at Michoud as Katrina’s eye approached southeastern Louisiana, said Malcolm Wood, the plant’s critical operations and maintenance manager, who headed the crew. Before leaving their post at the pump station, the workers filled the machines with fuel and left them running. Together, the pumps removed 250,000 gallons of water an hour from the 832-acre complex.
Looks like Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard could benefit from a lesson in pump operations from the Michoud rideout crew.
The storm dumped 14 inches of rain on the plant, and winds sent a 20-foot-high storm surge lapping over a 19 ?-foot-high levee protecting its southeastern side. But the pumps kept running, and the factory’s most critical buildings stayed dry…
Barrett and the other pump operators rode in a large dump truck to the pump station. As they approached, they saw the renegade string of barges pushed against a levee floodwall not far from where the station outflow pipes cross into the waterway.
Barrett noticed cracks in the wall, but no water was leaking through them. “That was a big eye-opener,” he said…
With roads flooded outside of the plant, helicopters became the only means of delivering supplies to the ride-out crew during the first week after the storm.
Shades of the power plant in Lucifer’s Hammer. I’m told that the MAF pumps not only kept the facility more or less dry, but protected part of the Folger’s coffee processing plant down the street from flooding, thanks to a low-lying portion of the plant being within the levees protecting Michoud.
The article makes a passing reference to the tank that was in the VAB at the time of the hurricane, and was hit by a falling chunk of the concrete roof. Rumor has it that it may not be worth the expense of stripping the foam from the LOx tank and putting it back through proof testing and X-ray inspection, given the short remaining life of the Shuttle program, and that as a result it may end up being the first full ET ever to be scrapped.