that those folks in the lower lying parishes, where the damage was far more devastating than perhaps some of the northern what we call parishes in louisiana, it is go to take longer. we re not a point yet where we could give a specific date because there is so much damage. not just to entergy facilities but we have to work with both our federal and state and lokele partners to really not just assess the damage, but figure out how we re going to prioritize bringing those communities back up. and so it is not just an entergy, but we ll give our times of restoration as we complete more of the work with our partners. so that is to be determined because they re damage was far more severe than some of the areas where we have clear line of sight. absolutely. so every official i ve talked to said thank god for the upgrades to the levee system.
across you saw the high tension stuff going down across mississippi like it did once in the delaware river which is a hell of a lot wider than the mississippi river. so we have to it seems to me we could save a whole lot of money and a whole lot of pain pain for our constituents if we build back and build it back in a better way. and it will create i realize i m selling as i m talking, to, it will create significant good, paying jobs. not $15 an hour jobs, but jobs at prevailing wag and generates economic growth. i hope we don t go about deciding you and i talked a lot about it, the levee system and the one the federal government did. that was a lot of money, but think of how much money it saved. how many lives it saved. i hope you ll think about that.
hour and no matter how old the structure is, we re in the process of setting up our points of distribution to get our residents food and water and ice and tarps so we could begin the process of dry proofing what structures remain. we re in the process of dewatering three separate communities due to over topping of the levee system. the storm surge here was upwards of 14 feet. jesus. and it did cross some flood walls and things like that. 14 feet. i remember people storm surge is vertical. that is 14 feet high. imagine the wall of water. news are communities that are continually battered by storms like this. they re low-lying. can they be rebuilt? should they? yes, we have a magnificent levee system here. there is no storms flooding in the south, we have 18 foot
proactively fortify and expand the levee system. they stabilized barriers, reinforced walls with steel. they overhauled pumping stations to reduce flooding. they built a $1 billion surge wall at a key inflection point that extends more than 2 miles long and more than 26 feet high. to avoid the scenario that unfolded 16 years to the day when storm surges overtook the barrier, and it worked. the system is not perfect. there are many who think the erosion of the swampland is something that has to be demt with as well. civil engineers argue there s more to be done to fortify the city, but we manage to avoid the kind of massive failure that happened during katrina, which again that s really good, important stuff. goes to show how important investments and infrastructure can be and why more investments are needed to avoid situations like we saw over the weekend when an electrical tower crumppled in the storm.
looting or vandalism. there is a task force of guardsmen, sheriff s deputies and sheriff s deputies out on the street and they learned from mistakes that led to chaos after hurricane katrina. back to you. bret: mike tobin, thanks. getting a new look at the damage left behind from hurricane ida. this look from the sky. senior correspondent casey stegall is in baton rouge tonight. good evening, casey. bret, good evening. we spent the better part of the day up in a black hawk helicopter with the u.s. army corps of engineers and the purpose of the mission was really two fold, to give the top brass of the corps of engineers an upclose and personal look at the damage but also to survey the levee system and get better what communities need to help speed up their community. they plan on cutting some of the levees to allow standing water to drain back into lake pontchartrain. south of new orleans in la fit,