Rita Breaches New Orleans... learned from Katrina

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 23 - Rain from Hurricane Rita sent water running over the top of a patched levee into one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods of the city this morning, quickly submerging cars and flooding empty homes wrested from their foundations.

The water rose so quickly that it had reached windows of houses up to three blocks east of the levee by late morning.

The breaches confirmed the city's fears - that its weakened levee system could not protect it against a tidal surge along Lake Pontchartrain. Hurricane Katrina had caused breaks in the levee when it hit 24 days ago.

But since then the low-lying area has been evacuated, and Dave Wheeler, operations chief of FEMA's urban search and rescue team in New Orleans, said that 95 to 98 percent of the Lower Ninth Ward had been checked for survivors and cleared.