intended to deplight size the corps budget. neither demint nor the corps would discuss the proposal oovps. even with pressure from some lawmakers, shrinking budgets and a daunting challenge from mother nature, the corps is preparing for what comes after this year s historic flooding. there s going to be an extraordinary concern about the main purpose that the corps of engineers has which is the saving of human life. what we will be looking the do is to understand evermore effectively how the water moves in the main channel, in the mississippi river, how long will it be before people can get back into their homes and reclaim their lives. that was casey wian reporting. the u.s. army corps of engineers will open one bay of the morganza spillway at the top of the hour and we ll take you there live as it happens. tens of thousands of people risking their lives to flee the
captions by vitac www.vitac.com hello. you re in the cnn newsroom this saturday, may 14th, i m fredricka whitfield. saving two of louisiana s biggest cities at the sacrifice of flooding homes and farmland. that s what will likely happen as the u.s. army corps of engineers opens the morganza spillway beginning an hour from now. while opening the gaelts would slowly divert floodwaters from baton rouge and new orleans, areas in yellow could get up to 20 feet of water, in green up to 15 feet. the morganza spillway hasn t been opened in nearly 40 years. but for the u.s. army corps of engineers, it s a necessary move to protect major cities. they re going to open it slowly so people and wildlife are not caught by surprise. there s a slow opening for a lot of reasons. one is from an engineering perspective. the water will come out of here pretty quickly. you don t want to scour the back side of this structure. from an environmental perspective, ofb yous think there are lots
lawmakers shrinking budgets and a daunting challenge from mother nature, the corps is preparing important what comes after this year s historic flood. it is going to be an extraordinary concern about the main purpose that the corps of engineers has which is the saving of human life. what we will be looking to do is to understand ever more effectively how water moves in the main channel, main mississippi river, how will it how long it will be until people to get back into their homes and be able to reclaim their lives. reporter: reclaiming those lives will take some time. flood waters in vicksburg haven t even peaked yet and expected to be around another month, wolf. really, really depressing shot of the water around that building where you are. thanks very much. we will check back with you. we wish all the folks there only, only the best of luck. facebook gets busted trying to spread negative news stories about google. we are going to give you the details. i will talk to a to
woman she is. our hearts go our to her family. path i an brown at the breaking news desk, thank you. thank you. harris: right now crews battling the wildfires in texas, getting a bit of a break, light rain and cooler temperatures moving in for some of them, giving them help in efforts to contain the flames. certainly is not the case for all parts of the state right now, but it is helping in some areas. and even where the weather is helping, mother nature was cooperation may not last very long. joining us is victoria koenig with the texas forest service. victoria, are you with us? yes ma am, i am, good morning. harris: good morning. this has been a long already and dry season for you guys. good news as water moves in. how long of a window do you have? well, we re looking at a rather short window. we anticipate that the weather that is givingas break right now is going to start the dry line is going to start making its way through texas.
little bit of movement releases energy and that displaces the water and the water moves in the form of a wave towards the shorelines. that s a tremendous amount of energy transferred into the water and it slams into the being e buildings and objects. it tosses huge ships as if they were toys. it produces an enormous amount of damage. the damage to the technical infrastructure because again japan is an industrial nation. so much like the refinery fires and the roads and bridges that were destroyed. this is different than the haitian earthquake in the sense where haiti didn t have that infrastructu infrastructure. besides the loss of life and the people s lives that were disrupted for many months, we have this enormous