we don t use it very often but it has a peak capacity of 19,140 cubic feet per second. you are talking about roughly 8.5 million gallons per minute. what that does is allow us to rapidly remove water from inside the system so that the municipal drainage can keep up with the street drainage. it is a complicated system of checks and balances so to speak. what it does when we have to run it and this is only the second time the flood authority has ever had to run this thing for a storm event, it allows us to get the level of protection that the federal government designed and provided us. it is a stunning amount of water to be able to pump. absolutely extraordinary. i did read the authority manages i think 80 miles of levees, the flood walls, the structures, i think 70 or 68 gates, three pumping stations. just how expensive and complicated is this system?
reporter: good to be back with you, michael. what appears to be happening is things getting more dangerous in kabul in these final hours of the u.s. drawdown. that deadline of course is on tuesday august 31st. what we know is that as many as five rockets have been fired in the last few hours at hamid karzai international airport. that would be monday local time in kabul. and just before midnight here on the east coast of the united states. that s according to a u.s. official. now, the u.s. official also says that what s known as the c-ram defense system which has been installed at the airport engaged with those rockets. now, what that system is designed to do is essentially to shoot down incoming rocket artillery or mortar fire. that s what the ram in fact stands for. so that engaged with those rockets, presumably taking them out, because this same source is telling us there are no reports of casualties at this time. the source, michael, did not say who they believe to be behind
holding up? the federal government invested 4. #$4.7 billion in th flood protection system in louisiana for just this reason. so far they are performing as designed. they are being tested and we are being pushed. this is a monster storm. i credit the national weather service because they were right the whole time they told us what would happen so we were able to prepare for it the right way. and the levees are doing the flood walls, pump stations, all of these components, this complex system that new orleans is doing exactly what it was supposed to do. right. i think this has been a record wet year for louisiana, new orleans, second wettest on record. now this massive amount of rain, the storm surge on top of that. just how much water can the pumping system handle? what we do is the perimeter defense. one of our components is the west closure complex. the largest pump station in the world.
the system was very complicated. the west closure alone was 1.1 billion. like i said, the entire system of greater new orleans was 14.7. with the authority on the west bank managers about $3.5 billion worth of infrastructure. so we it is a lot to manage. 80 miles of levees and flood walls, the hurricane protection levees, the mississippi river, so a full-time job. we start preparing for hurricane season on the last day of hurricane season, start preparing for the next one. we do that every year. my team performed flawlessly. the levees have done their job albeit they are pushed to their limit because this is a record-setting storm in every aspect imaginable. but we have a great support network, partners at the federal level, with the corps of engineers, the state level with governor edwards, and everybody down has been nothing but
with the louisiana hurricane, there is a system that basically protects, a hurricane protection system here in louisiana. we ve been talking with officials from that system and they ve told us that the levees, the floodgates, the surge gates are all closed and holding very well. they ve been heavily fortified since hurricane katrina in 2005. those levees and gates are holding well. they do not expect them to fail. that is the good news tonight. the bad news is the rain is still pounding and we re still getting flooding here in new orleans and there is a flash flood emergency at least until midnight local time here in new orleans. now you talk about the darkness here, and the fact that anybody who has power is going to be using a generator. that is a kind of a point of danger as well because officials told us that last year when hurricane laura came through here, when they lost 25 people, due to that hurricane, nine of those deaths were attributed to