Katrina's aftermath

Hi Brendan, I only have a moment must
get to a meeting, but wanted to post summary of Governor and Army Corps news conference from my perspective but dont have time to see if you have covered this yet.

They are planning to try to close the largest breach in the levee with whatever measures will be effective over the long run, Army Corps is thinking of using large shipping containers filled with sand, and or large sand bags, they will be brining in large cranes, barges, air asssets,
and manpower, and should be at it by tomorrow. The largest breach is 300 ft plus and there is a smaller one as well.

The water has been rising all day, early AM it ws knee deep at the KatrinaDome, by afternoon it was thigh deep. They are contemplating, planning to see about evacuating all the 25,000 to 30,000 (count according to a registered nurse in the Dome @ mid day)
somewhere else for now they are brining in all the people they rescue to the Dome.

They say that the entire city will have to be evauced, but the biggest challenge according to the FEMA Head of staff on scene is that there is little or no dry land to move them to in the city. They will see about building tent cities, temp housing, bringing in dormatory barges, and locateing them in the neightborhoods peopel are from as much as possible so that they can attend school, church etc. He said they will have to "recreate" New Orleans.
He , the Army Corp head said that they have the authorization or will get the authroization to do whatever needs to be done.

The double long bridge to Slidelle is totally broken in countless places, I counted over a hundred breaks or missing sections, the briges were built in sections and many of them are tilted, or just gone, missing, from both spans, though there are intact lengths, quite long, so neither is complete at this point. There is at least one car stuck out on the span.

There is NO power in the city, and no operating sewers, and growing looting and loss of order. Most of the city, up to 80% is under differeing depths of water, but according to some reports the flow is slowing. There are thousands who need rescuing, but the authorities will concentrate on the life threatening situations, and on brining in supplies to feed and water these people in the city before trying to organize evac.

The Dome is getting tough, at least one hospital is evacing its cases to the dome, Tulane is evacing as they will lose even their temp generators soon.
The dome cannot be cooled with the temp generators they have and they will lose them soon to water rising.

There are fires buring several commercial structures that I observed and a large fire in the distance possibly at the oil facilities. The police and presumably fire units cannot navigate the streets due to water, and the fire units planned to station their units on the elevated freeway sections in the event the water rose as it is.

The Governor sounds pretty stable considering the pressures and the stress, she is determined to rebuild and to save all that can be saved. The Army Corp staff and FEMA both sound excellent and well organized, The National Guard is still 50% in the USA, and they say they have the assets they need for now, some of the neighboring states are sending help from their guaards. There is general shock among the people I sense, including the news media and I appologize for being so hard on them in past posts, they are unprepared for such catastrophic conditions and are doing the best they can. Everyone involved should get traumtaic stress support asap, especially the Governor and the high staff. There are many airlifts underway, I saw Coast Guard and Army units, and this is working well it appears, but what will be done with many of these people? There will be a great many.

The rest of the coast I did not have time to get much imput on but I sense that it may be even worse, but unreachable, many parts of it were totally wiped out, I saw one fly over that showed total devastation, just foundations and rubble to the East.

In general I think finally the scope of the disaster is getting through to the top leaders and to some of the people, thoiugh many will still be in shock. Keep up the news sharing, you are doing great. I will check back soon.

haha that's still a few feet taller than most people.

a second one, or the same one that was reported this morning?

This type of thing is what made me wonder about blowing out the levees sooner rather than later.

if anyone knows, is there still water flowing into the french quarter? what's the water level there now?

http://www.foxnews.com/images/175841/10_1_083005_katrina_stormsurge3.jpg

When the levee breaks...

You are not alone.

This is nothing compared to most people's connections to the area, but I can mentally connect some of the pictures I'm seeing to sites I've been to on my summer road trip from spring 2002...(this is literally the day after I stayed at 3's place in Athens)... I distinctly remember being on that bridge in Mobile where the oil rig crashed into, for example.

it will take a long time, if the communities hit by ivan last year are any indication.

I think that's the way nature wanted it all along. Lake Pontchartrain is getting its way.

Although, while we all know better, there shouldn't be any finality re: sentiments relating to the city of New Orleans itself. This tragedy is unprecedented no doubt.. this is not unlike what happened in Anchorage in 1964 (The 9.0 Prince William Sound earthquake that pretty much devastated the city, even though the quake itself was relatively far away.).. but Anchorage is alive today. New Orleans is hangin' on and will remain alive.

This scientist says global warming has nothing to do with it. Der Spiegel says Katrina is emblematic of future environmental catastrophes.

Conclusion: expect this to be politicized in the following weeks and months.

Conclusion 2: this might be worthy of a separate thread.

Explain how this is unprecedented?

I mean, I've been through really mean earthquakes in L.A., but none of them ever "destroyed" L.A.

(Not to discount the large number of very small cities that get smashed by tornadoes every year.. )

(And, duh, not to discount the tsunami from half a year ago, which still dwarfs Katrina's aftermath.. as painful as it looks right now.)

Not that I want to turn this into a pet issue or anything, but it seems so obvious to me. Hurricane season is FUCKING BRUTAL every year now.
Incidentally, the Central Pacific Hurricane Season will actually be below average this year. Only two or three storms are projected to form there.

Well, it's pretty unprecedented for New Orleans, for starters.

Well, it's not Babylon. It takes a lot to kill a city. But it's fucking devastated, that's all I'm saying.

My God, who does? Who wants their friends and loved ones, or ANYONE'S friends and loved ones, to be fucking weather refugees? Or worse?

which is why the "our tsunami" rhetoric bugs me -- what, are we ENVIOUS of their disaster? do we need to reappropriate it so we can turn the sympathy we extended to them back upon ourselves? i mean, i realize this is a major catastrophe, but people were saying "our tsunami" before anything even happened.

I can't get either right now, though really I'm not too surprised...

also, how long before the early statements of "Oh don't worry; we've got ALL the National Guard we need" are visibly disproven?

Conclusion: expect this to be politicized in the following weeks and months.

...and will come up during next year's election cycle, when people start pointing figures about slashed funding, lack of troops, etc

i say it with wuv. i do think your unrepentant anglophilia is a little quirky, but hey, so is madonna's.

I was in for a while, but cut it off. You're not missing anything major. It's a bunch of clueless local newscasters. The one woman who kept pointing to a barbecue she saw as evidence of the local spirit, again and again, despite protests that that they were only doing it to get their food warm for a change... she pissed me off.