As the Army Corps of Engineers prepares to open the Bonnet Carre' Spillway, a crowd is building around the control structure, to see a rare sight in the flatlands of south Louisiana: rushing water. Unfortunately for these early birds, a heavy fog is obscuring the view of the control structure. "I'm 64 years old, so I thought I ought...
As the Army Corps of Engineers prepares to open the Bonnet Carre' Spillway, a crowd is building around the control structure, to see a rare sight in the flatlands of south Louisiana: rushing water.
Unfortunately for these early birds, a heavy fog is obscuring the view of the control structure.
"I'm 64 years old, so I thought I ought to see it once," said Roland Bourge of Houma. His friend, Roland Adams of Destrehan, has seen the sight several times.
"I wanted to bring my grandson, but he's in school," Adams said.
This is the 10th opening of the spillway. The last was in 2008.
Roland Weber of St. John the Baptist Parish, said he has seen several openings when he worked at nearby Shell Chemical.
"People do crazy things," he said. "I saw a couple of people go through the gates in a kayak. They didn't realize that the water goes straight down. They were lucky that somebody was on the other side and pulled them out.
The spillway control structure was completed in 1931. Only a portion of its 350 bays are expected to be opened today, but more are expected to follow because of a dangerous rise in the Mississippi River, caused by weeks of raid in the upper Mississippi River valley.