Katrina's aftermath

If you survive, you get a TV. One that was probably going to be completely annhilated by 10 ft of water. Just hope that it doesn't reach the second level of your home, assuming you have one.

>but i guess if you can get a small radio and some batteries you can listen to the news...<

Looking through websites, I know two of the TV stations are off the air completely with their transponders destroyed. Everyone else fled town while they had the chance. Plus that giant bridge is down too. Its a mess.

(edit: it was pretty disturbing to see the WWIT folks run off, apparently after one was told about her family and the other ran to a copter. they were replaced during a replayed bit in about a minute with little actual explaination)

"It's downtown Baghdad," the housewife said. "It's insane. I've wanted to come here for 10 years. I thought this was a sophisticated city. I guess not."

not the best time to judge, really...

Here's an older story from the Times-Picayune speculating on what could happen if 'the big one' hit. More than slightly prescient.

The debris, largely the remains of about 70 camps smashed by the waves of a storm surge more than 7 feet above sea level, showed that Georges, a Category 2 storm that only grazed New Orleans, had pushed waves to within a foot of the top of the levees. A stronger storm on a slightly different course -- such as the path Georges was on just 16 hours before landfall -- could have realized emergency officials' worst-case scenario: hundreds of billions of gallons of lake water pouring over the levees into an area averaging 5 feet below sea level with no natural means of drainage.

That would turn the city and the east bank of Jefferson Parish into a lake as much as 30 feet deep, fouled with chemicals and waste from ruined septic systems, businesses and homes. Such a flood could trap hundreds of thousands of people in buildings and in vehicles. At the same time, high winds and tornadoes would tear at everything left standing. Between 25,000 and 100,000 people would die, said John Clizbe, national vice president for disaster services with the American Red Cross.

"A catastrophic hurricane represents 10 or 15 atomic bombs in terms of the energy it releases," said Joseph Suhayda, a Louisiana State University engineer who is studying ways to limit hurricane damage in the New Orleans area. "Think about it. New York lost two big buildings. Multiply that by 10 or 20 or 30 in the area impacted and the people lost, and we know what could happen."

Hundreds of thousands would be left homeless, and it would take months to dry out the area and begin to make it livable. But there wouldn't be much for residents to come home to. The local economy would be in ruins.

The scene has been played out for years in computer models and emergency-operations simulations. Officials at the local, state and national level are convinced the risk is genuine and are devising plans for alleviating the aftermath of a disaster that could leave the city uninhabitable for six months or more. The Army Corps of Engineers has begun a study to see whether the levees should be raised to counter the threat. But officials say that right now, nothing can stop "the big one."

xp

>"To be honest with you, people who are oppressed all their lives, man, it's an opportunity to get back at society," he said.<

He's not exactly wrong, you know.

Knowing rotten mother nature luck, there could be another hurricane hit in the area before the end of the year. :( It won't matter how strong the hurricane would be at that point.

Officials at LSU and local hospitals say they are triaging thousands of people being brought from outside the Baton Rouge area for medical care. The people are being bused in.

--

The American Red Cross says it has thousands of volunteers mobilized for the hurricane. Spokesman Bradley Hague said it's the "largest single mobilization that we've done for any single natural disaster." The organization has set up operational headquarters in Baton Rouge.

--The Environmental Protection Agency dispatched emergency crews to Louisiana and Texas because of concern about oil and chemical spills.

--The Coast Guard closed ports and waterways along the Gulf Coast and positioned craft around the area to conduct post-hurricane search and rescue operations.

--The Agriculture Department said its Food and Nutrition Service would provide meals and other commodities, such as infant formula, distilled water for babies and emergency food stamps.

--The Defense Department dispatched emergency coordinators to Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi to provide communications equipment, search and rescue operations, medical teams and other emergency assistance.

--The Health and Human Services Department sent 38 doctors and nurses to Jackson, Mississippi, to be used where needed, and 30 pallets of medical supplies to the region, including first aid materials, sterile gloves and oxygen tanks.

Some six-thousand National Guard personnel from Louisiana and Mississippi who would otherwise be available to help deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are in Iraq.

Even so, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said the states have adequate National Guard units to handle the hurricane needs. He said about six-thousand-500 National Guard troops were available in Louisiana, about seven-thousand in Mississippi, nearly ten-thousand in Alabama and about eight-thousand-200 in Florida.

--

Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard says there is no plumbing and the sanitary situation is getting nasty. He told WAFB-TV that he is carrying around a bag for his own human waste.

Regarding the last bit: EURGH.

i was gonna say. they shouldn't break their backs cleaning up the city when hurricane season isn't even over yet.

This may come as a shock, but not everyone here is from Great Britain.

Put me down for that crazy information fetish too, I guess.

the bbc is good for american news because it's not quite as tainted by conservative interests as u.s. cable news is.

It's a fair assessment. I'd say this, though -- w/r/t Iraq, I find it important to document what is going on, a continuing acknowledgement and bitter, sick anger. There are thousands of people who have died now, our fellow citizens, far more Iraqis, others, and the decisions and mindsets of the people currently in charge of our government are part and parcel in terms of how this will get resolved, what if anything will come of what's been happening now for almost two and a half years. If it is pornography to observe what is being said, how it's being said, where the second thoughts are emerging among that horrific clique of hawks, the emerging sense that 'mistakes were made' -- and that people are dead because of it -- then call it that if you must. But I will watch and I will call attention to it because I want it documented, even in this own small one-person way of mine. We are not living in a cocoon, but I think our government is doing its best to pretend we should. I find that contemptible -- and whatever else I think about it, without pretending I've never used understatement and sarcasm about it all before, I don't find anything at all about Iraq simply 'most unfun.'

As for Katrina, you can call it my realization that this is getting worse all the time. No, I won't be posting about it forever. But it is happening right now, and I admit my attention is on it, and perhaps some of the information might be useful to other folks. Perhaps I am wrong.

Finally, the reason for said BBC 'fetish' is simple -- when 9/11 happened, I realized that CNN and other mainstream American media outlets would swiftly become unwatchable, their sites unreadable. I felt the jingoism coalescing almost immediately. Since that time I rely on the BBC site for basic world news, and while they obviously have their own biases at work which it would be foolish to ignore, I have not chosen to look back.

Jeff Parish President. Residents will probably be allowed back in town in a week, with identification only, but only to get essentials and clothing. You will then be asked to leave and not come back for one month.

holy shit.

http://www.abc-cafe.com/chrisfennessy/images/splash_page/BHH2001.jpg

yes, that's exactly it. it's not snobbishness -- all those cgi american flags and that bombastic music is egregious and nauseating.

are, i should say.

There are several reports that the Uptown area remains unflooded, particularly around Magazine and Jefferson (at least to Webster), and along Baronne Street (though it was unclear where on Baronne).

If you think Ned only dwells on "misery" then you might be dwelling on it yourself. You obviously havent' seen the hundreds of positive and sunny posts that Ned makes all over the place that have nothing to do with death, nor destruction. I should say am most familiar with Ned of ILM, but still.

i'm finding it hard to pay attention to much else.

I hope Rock Hardy is doing fine.

(old point bar)

Someone repost the photo of Tom DeLay and that little boy.

never forget:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iaej_HbaqZU&feature=youtu.be

You could say Alden McDonald triumphed over adversity, too. Today he runs the country’s third-largest black-owned bank, according to the Federal Reserve. But despite his personal success, McDonald is still focused on the eastern half of that map that he marked up at our first meeting. There, the recovery is far from complete — and in some areas things are worse than before the storm. In this frustration, he represents what might be called the black Katrina narrative, a counterpoint to the jubilant accounts of Landrieu and other New Orleans boosters. This version of the story begins by noting that an African-American homeowner was more than three times more likely than a white one to live in a flooded part of town. Where Landrieu sees black and white coming together, many African-Americans recollect a different New Orleans: rifle-carrying sheriffs and police officers barricading a bridge out of an overwhelmed city because they didn’t want the largely black crowds walking through their predominantly white suburbs; a white congressman overheard saying that God had finally accomplished what others couldn’t by clearing out public housing; a prominent resident from the Uptown part of the city telling a Wall Street Journal reporter that in rebuilding, things would be ‘‘done in a completely different way, demographically, geographically and politically’’ — or he and his friends weren’t moving back.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/magazine/why-new-orleans-black-residents-are-still-under-water-after-katrina.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-3&action=click&contentCollection=Magazine®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article&_r=0

10 years ago right now i was sitting in standstill traffic on I-10. harry lee, who was sheriff of jefferson parish and a local celebrity, came on the radio not to calm people or offer evacuation tips but to let everyone know that his birthday party, planned for that evening, had been postponed.

ten years and one day, actually--i left early, partially to try and avoid traffic but also because i was totally happy for an excuse not to go to work that day (expecting to be home on monday like everyone else)