Lightning strikes and other electrical issues took several pumps out of service during the July 10 sudden rainstorm in New Orleans and a pair of canals were pushed near, or over, the brink, Sewerage & Water Board officials said Tuesday.

The problems, however, did not significantly impact the drainage system’s operations or significantly worsen the flooding New Orleans saw as a major thunderstorm struck the city in advance of Hurricane Barry, S&WB Executive Director Ghassan Korban said at a City Council hearing.

Instead, he blamed an intensity of rain nearly twice that of the Aug. 5, 2017, flood that swamped parts of the city and led to a shakeup of the S&WB's management, including Korban's eventual hiring. The July 10 rain overwhelmed the system and would have done so even without any of the power issues that were seen, he said.

Asked by Councilman Jay H. Banks whether any pumping system could handle the amount of water the city received, Korban replied, “I would have to take a leap of faith and say no, it does not exist. The enormity of the number of the pumps you would need and the space these pumps would be required to occupy, it would be a mammoth effort and so impractical and costly.”

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The most extended problems occurred at Drainage Pump Station 5, in the Lower 9th Ward, where electrical issues took two of the four pumps offline, Korban said. The S&WB still does not know what caused those problems and has stationed additional staff and electricians at the station to investigate the problem.

Lightning strikes also caused power problems that temporarily took pumps offline at Drainage Pump Station 1. Located in Broadmoor, that station drains much of the area from Uptown to the Central Business District.

The strikes took two of the pumps offline while operators were preparing to turn on more pumps to keep up with the rainfall, meaning that even as two pumps shut down, others were being turned on, Korban said. Another strike briefly shut down another pump at the station later, he said.

Operators continued turning on pumps at the station, eventually restarting some of the ones that were taken offline. By the end, six of the seven pumps at the station were operating, he said.

The final pump could not be turned on because the canal connecting Pump Station 1 to Drainage Pump Station 6, which pushes water from other stations to Lake Pontchartrain, was full to the brim, Korban said.

“While we had more capacity, the consequence (of using it) would have been to overload” the Palmetto Canal, he said. “It’s a balancing act. When the pump operator sees the canal peaking, they know they cannot pump (more water) into it.”

Another canal, near the Lafitte Greenway, was also backed up and did overflow its banks during the storm, he said.

Other pump stations also saw intermittent problems because of lightning strikes, he said.

Overall, Korban said, the issues may have contributed an inch or two of water to the level of flooding in the city.

A separate problem cropped up when a water main that runs under Pump Station 6 broke early last week, Korban said. The pumps require water to operate, and while the station has other supplies, the break would have left it without any redundancy, he said.

Crews were able to repair the line before the July 10 storm, allowing the pump station to operate as normal, he said.

“The water main break happened during dry weather and had no impact whatsoever on the operation,” he said.

With about 8.5 inches of rain falling in some areas of the city over three hours, the July 10 storm was about twice as intense as the 2017 storm.

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That would be enough to classify it as a storm with a 1 percent chance of occurring each year, Korban said. That measure is typically used by meteorologists to describe the intensity of a storm; the lower the percentage chance, the more severe the storm is.

Most of the system is designed to handle storms with a 50 percent chance of occurring each year. The Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project is aimed at providing enough capacity in some areas to handle a storm with a 10 percent chance of occurring each year.

Overall, the S&WB estimates that about 4.9 billion gallons of rain were dumped on New Orleans over the course of three hours, enough to fill the Mercedes-Benz Superdome more than five times, Korban said.

Council members did not raise any issues Tuesday with how the S&WB performed during the storm.

“This last display starting Wednesday through Barry, the systems worked as intended, and you all are to be commended for that,” Banks said.