This is totally off topic, except that she looks like a real monster from the sea. I hope that nobody on Tonmo is in the path of hurricane Katrina...she's huge and at 175 mph incredibly dangerous. Looks like New Orleans might catch the brunt of it

Agreed. The following report from NOAA is astounding and says it all. Thoughts and prayers are directed to everyone in that area.

http://weather.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/iwszone?Sites=:laz062

Urgent Weather Message for Orleans, LA
Top of pageTable of contents for Orleans, LA
WWUS74 KLIX 281550
NPWLIX

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005


DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED

HURRICANE KATRINA
A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED
STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT
LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL
FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY
DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL.
PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD
FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE
BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME
WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A
FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH
AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY
VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE
ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE
WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN
AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING
INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY
THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW
CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE
KILLED.

AN INLAND HURRICANE WIND WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR
HURRICANE FORCE...OR FREQUENT GUSTS AT OR ABOVE HURRICANE FORCE...ARE
CERTAIN WITHIN THE NEXT 12 TO 24 HOURS.

ONCE TROPICAL STORM AND HURRICANE FORCE WINDS ONSET...DO NOT VENTURE
OUTSIDE!

LAZ038-040-050-056>070-282100-
ASSUMPTION-LIVINGSTON-LOWER JEFFERSON-LOWER LAFOURCHE-
LOWER PLAQUEMINES-LOWER ST. BERNARD-LOWER TERREBONNE-ORLEANS-
ST. CHARLES-ST. JAMES-ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST-ST. TAMMANY-TANGIPAHOA-
UPPER JEFFERSON-UPPER LAFOURCHE-UPPER PLAQUEMINES-UPPER ST. BERNARD-
UPPER TERREBONNE-
1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005

Nasty stuff,

Hope everyone heeds the warnings. There is something to be said for living in a cold part of the world!

J

I have friends there that I've not been able to reach. Hopefully they're well away from the city by now! When FEMA authorities start using terms like 'biblical' to describe the level of damage it becomes truly terrifying.

This storm has a truly bad feel to it. Best wishes to all in its path.

Just saw the latest images...truly staggering !!! Hope everyone weathers it alright.

greg

I've just read so far 80 have been confirmed dead. This is dreadful news and I hope no-one here is affected.

Symapathies to all the families of the bereaved and dispossessed.

I've been home sick today and have been following all the rescues attempts and new developments. My heart goes out to all affected. The remenents are supposed to be in our area tomorrow.

Woah...:shock:

I'm afraid that it will be a long time before we have any kind of reliable numbers of the dead. There are so many area where homes were totally swept away by the storm surge. If anyone was trying to ride out the hurricane they didn't have a chance, and people are still trapped on roofs and in attics in heavily flooded areas. It's awful! The Guv of Mississippi said that a lot of people had hurricane fatigue, they've evacuated so many times before when the worst didn't happen that they no longer believed in the warnings. The boy who cried wolf syndrome.

How are they going to pump the water out of New Orleans? That doesn't look to be the kind of project that's only going to take a month or two. There's also a very real possibility that this year's hurricane season is not quite finished with the area yet. I'm hoping for the best, which I'm sure is still far worse than I could possibly imagine. What a silly place/way to build a city!

I hope that this disaster will at least serve to make us a little more sympathetic to the plight of others around the world who find themselves in similar situations, but with only the tiniest fraction of America's resources available to see them through. I think the Red Cross will be hearing from me pretty soon, even though I tend to be a bit of a misanthrope.

New Orleans knows a lot about pumping water out of the city, that's one of the things that's gotten them into this mess--they've been actively draining the city for dozens of years to prevent floods, which ends up compacting the soil and causing the city to settle deeper below sea level. Everything they have done to mitigate the natural hazards inherent to the area have only made them worse.

This was only a glancing blow. If people in New Orleans have "hurricane fatigue," they should think about relocating. It is almost inevitable that the city will be destroyed, perhaps in our lifetimes??

I hate to sound insensitive--indeed I have the utmost sympathy for anyone in the area without the economic means to get out of harm's way--but New Orleans is the ultimate example of man trying to subvert nature and paying for it with his own life.

Dan

New Orleans knows a lot about pumping water out of the city, that's one of the things that's gotten them into this mess--they've been actively draining the city for dozens of years to prevent floods, which ends up compacting the soil and causing the city to settle deeper below sea level. Everything they have done to mitigate the natural hazards inherent to the area have only made them worse.

This was only a glancing blow. If people in New Orleans have "hurricane fatigue," they should think about relocating. It is almost inevitable that the city will be destroyed, perhaps in our lifetimes??

I hate to sound insensitive--indeed I have the utmost sympathy for anyone in the area without the economic means to get out of harm's way--but New Orleans is the ultimate example of man trying to subvert nature and paying for it with his own life.

Dan

An excellent point.

P.S., don't you mean:
I hate to sound insensitive--indeed I have the utmost sympathy for anyone in the area without the economic means to get out of harm's way--but New Orleans is the ultimate example of humankind trying to subvert nature and paying for it with its own life.

Gender Sensitive, now!

<----- = The TRUE Dork! (Take that, um...!)

Cross-section of New Orleans. Quite unnatural.

http://www.tonmo.com/images/NOLA.jpg

Such a horrendous situation, it's really overwhelming.

I love New Orleans: amazing architecture, terrific cuisine, great people (just keep an eye on your wallet). This is just dreadful, tragic, and worst of all, completely expected. Like Venice, Italy, another city sinking due to the removal of groundwater, New Orleans has been facing this for a long, long time now, and the people of Southern Louisiana have all been aware of this inevitability. To their credit, they were about as ready as they could be under the circumstances, and a huge percentage - those able to - did evacuate to safety. Now the governor of Louisiana is considering the first total evacuation of an American city in about 140 years. But what happened in Biloxi was on a tsunami-like scale. Plus evidently 40% of the local population chose to ride it out at home. The storm surge was 30 feet. Dreadful.

Upset beyond belief here...too many great places gone. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed, and hope that all of the people do alright.

g

...Now the governor of Louisiana is considering the first total evacuation of an American city in about 140 years...

the decision has been made (http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/083005cccawwlevac.43bb0409.html). The levee is broken and they've abandoned efforts to fix it... water is rising up to 9 feet over the next 12 hours. Major catastrophe. Looked like New Orleans was spared the brunt of the storm (and they were), so there was initial encouragement, but the levees aren't holding up, which is making the worst fears realized for this one.

Time to give...boy, what a catastrophe !!!!

Yeah, we're giving.

"Canal Street". That would almost be funny if nobody actually lived or worked or owned any property there.

Yeah, we are going to tabulate how much we can donate tonight...wish I had worked a bit harder over the last month. I am letting this "over 40" lazy-thing hit me too hard...time for some buffing, I would say.

greg

From CNN: (http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/30/katrina/index.html)

The city had no power, no drinking water, dwindling food supplies, widespread looting, smoke rising on the horizon and the sounds of gunfire. At least one large building was ablaze Tuesday.
This is a disaster that will resonate for years to come. It's already brought out the worst in human nature: looting on the one hand, racist commentary from pundits on the other. Let's hope the better angels prevail, utimately.

Clem

i hear that it will whipe new orleans out

is a disaster that will resonate for years to come. It's already brought out the worst in human nature: looting on the one hand, racist commentary from pundits on the other. Let's hope the better angels prevail, utimately.

Clem

Luckily I've missed these particular pundits on this one. This is just horrible. Absolutely horrible.

Part of the problem lies in the diminishing wetland south of the city. Years worth of diverting the natural flow of the Mississippi have ended up sending the silt that flows down the river out into the gulf, rather than allowing the delta to build. On top of all the problems the flooding is causing right now, there is a huge potential problem considering the many, many petrochemical plants and refineries in the area. I haven't heard if any of them were seriously damaged by the storm, but even minor leaks can cause lots of problems, and the flood waters will carry that poison right into the gulf.

I worry that this is only the beginning of even more severe hurricane seasons. We Californians have seen our share of disasters as well. I hope that the survivors remain safe and can find food and shelter.

My in-laws in East Texas told us that Orange, TX has become a shelter town for Louisianans fleeing Katrina.

This is very sad indeed.

John

This is not getting any better. What was said about them toying with the balance of things, seems to be the case this morning. The waters coming back to where it rightfully belongs. Really is a shame.

The news today seems to be of the concensus that New Orleans may not be repairable...sad, but why weren't those levy's fixed earlier????

greg

I think its like the tsunami walls and breakers in Japan. They work, but only on a limited extent. However, it is something. I really think they thought it couldn't happen.

I come from the central valley region of California. During the 1980's and 1990's we suffered horrible floods that wiped out dozens of neighborhoods. I don't think people saw that coming, though a lot of conservationists warned that the reason we had such amazing farmland was that the entire area was a flood plain. People here called them "100-year" floods, meaning that we would only get them once every century or so.

Well, not exactly.

I really hope that New Orleans can get back on its feet someday.

John

What a sad day. New Orleans has always been my favorite US city to visit. I went last November, and sweetie's more recent response was "I should have gone with you. I'll never see it."

Here is an interesting and horrifying interview from 2002 with a hurricane specialist, pointing up the city's vulnerabilities:

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_neworleans.html

Sorseress is right about the other worries - contaminants, infection, and so on, all across the Gulf Coast. A friend who worked for the Red Cross makes sure to have water and first aid kits and packed bags all the time. She sent this url about disaster preparedness, and recommended adding a box of baby wipes to their list.

http://www.redcross.org/static/file_cont36_lang0_23.pdf

Melissa

that looks similar to the article in the October 2001 Scientific American... i dont imagine a 200 foot gap in a levee is particularly easy thing to patch... especially with water flowing through....

Hello,

I don't know if anyone here has any loved ones in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina, but here's a list of some sites I found that are trying to reconnect people. My heart goes out to those still at ground zero.

Craigslist (http://neworleans.craigslist.org/about/help/katrina_cl.html)
CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/hurricanes/list/)
WWLTV New Orleans (http://www.wwltv.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=16&sid=28245b14c7727df3df4bd2e188d4f473)
BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4202042.stm)
The Salvation Army (http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn.nsf)

The American Red Cross is also providing some survivor-finding assistance, which you can contact at (866) GET-INFO

I am worried about an old friend of mine, an LSU resident living in Metairie. I hope she got out okay.

Oh, and Melissa? Good idea about the disaster preparedness kit. I live in prime earthquake country, and its so easy for us to get cut off from supply lines and such. Stay safe, everyone.

John

i just heard on cnn that they are shooting looters on site.

If they had been more prepared for emergency relief I think there would have been less looting IMHO. When you are starving and thirsty and you can get food and water by looting, it is a powerful incentive to break the law. Once you start to break the law or see others doing so, a taboo is broken - more lawlessness follows. The norms of society erode like the edges of the levee.

Having a high proportion of the population armed probably doesn't help much.

Gave to the Red Cross yesterday. Hopefully the charities will remember me when the Pacific Northwest has an earthquake and the dykes here is the Fraser Valley liquify and collapse :(

I think it's still a pretty big step from looting to things like rape and shooting at hospitals. Some of those folks need to be put down.

Speaking of preparedness, how ready is the US to deal with another big storm or two, given that there are still months left in the hurricane season?

Probably just about as well as we were prepared to deal with this one.

The BBC reported that some looters were distributing food and water to people at the Convention Center (not the Superdome) and that gun shops were looted. It sounds like hell.

Interview with NO's mayor: http://www.atypical.net/mm/nagin.mp3

The fool who planned an evacuation relying on private transport (i.e. people's cars) - thereby damning a fifth of the city's residents - needs put down, too.

Melissa

Re: the emergency preparedness plan, that's absolutely the bare minimum. As we all know, 3 days worth of water per person wouldn't be enough, a week is probably more realistic. Also, if you have pets you need to be prepared for their needs too. The food that won't spoil is great, but if it's canned don't forget a manual can opener, if it's in dry form it needs to be in a waterproof container. If you want hot food a small sterno stove & a small pan plus waterproof matches should also be included. If you live anywhere near a nuclear power plant, or near military installations that might have radioactive materials on site you should also have iodine tablets. The thin survival blankets are great, don't take up much space, and when turned with the shiny side out will reflect the sun away from you, in cold weather they will also do a good job of keeping you warm, and they are waterproof. There are some crankable radios and flashlights available so if the battery charge wears out you can crank to get enough power to listen for a few minutes to know what's going on, or to get 10 minutes worth of light. If you live in tornado country you should definitely have a battery operated NOAA radio. The idea of having all your important papers in a water proof box ( and it should also be fireproof) is great, but for maximum protection, if you have trustworthy family living in other parts of the country you should make copies of all important papers for them to keep for you. When you live in earth quake country, don't forget to strap your water heater to the wall, as well as any tall, heavy furniture that could topple over. Having a wrench near your gas cut off lines sounds great, but having one chained to the pipe is even better. You won't have to look for it. Also in earthquake country, always have hard soled shoes by your bed, turned upside down so broken glass won't get into them. Everybody should also keep a flashlight with good batteries next to the bed, most bad disastors leave you in pitch black if they happen at night, and you'll be disoriented at best if awakened by one. Don't bother with a first aid kit that you buy at a store, they are essentially worthless. Get a cheap plastic toolbox and put your own together. It should include all the things that come in the commercial ones, except more of it, one or two triangular bandages, (easy and cheap to make), hydrogen peroxide, disposable gloves, sanitary napkins which are larger and much more absorbent for severe lacerations. 4x4s, and good quality tape, roller gauze, or better yet, cling. Scissors, good tweezers, If there's room a small flashlight. I'm sure I'm forgetting something....

Oh yeah, if you have kids, get up in the middle of the night and test the smoke detector. If they respond the way they are supposed to, great, but it's best to find out what they'll do before it's a matter of live and death.

Another point....really try to never let your gas gauge go below the halfway mark. When the power is out gas pumps can't run.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1508855/20050902/index.jhtml?headlines=true

Found this article today. Scary!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-1762363,00.html

That's part of what it means when you hear the phrase "I'm changing the climate, ask me how".

Here's the best article I've found yet about the Louisiana Delta and levees,etc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/opinion/02fischetti.html?ex=1125979200&en=2c3c8dabc73b0a9b&ei=5070

People are angry. People are very, very angry. Sure this was an act of nature, but when you listen to the condemnations by the former head of FEMA, and you learn about cuts in the budget to storm defenses carried out under both the Clinton and then Bush administrations, well, this was going to be bad, but did it have to be quite this bad? Where did the money that was cut from these vital protections go, exactly?

Here's the opinion of the Times-Picayune, in an open letter to the President:
From the Times-Picayune, dated September 3rd, 2005

OUR OPINIONS: An open letter to the President
Dear Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we’re going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don’t know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city’s death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren’t they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn’t suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."

That’s unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.




**

A Daughter of the Crescent City Speaks:
Body: Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans?
By ANNE RICE

WHAT do people really know about New Orleans?

Do they take away with them an awareness that it has always been not only a great white metropolis but also a great black city, a city where African-Americans have come together again and again to form the strongest African-American culture in the land?

The first literary magazine ever published in Louisiana was the work of black men, French-speaking poets and writers who brought together their work in three issues of a little book called L'Album Littéraire. That was in the 1840's, and by that time the city had a prosperous class of free black artisans, sculptors, businessmen, property owners, skilled laborers in all fields. Thousands of slaves lived on their own in the city, too, making a living at various jobs, and sending home a few dollars to their owners in the country at the end of the month.

This is not to diminish the horror of the slave market in the middle of the famous St. Louis Hotel, or the injustice of the slave labor on plantations from one end of the state to the other. It is merely to say that it was never all "have or have not" in this strange and beautiful city.

Later in the 19th century, as the Irish immigrants poured in by the thousands, filling the holds of ships that had emptied their cargoes of cotton in Liverpool, and as the German and Italian immigrants soon followed, a vital and complex culture emerged. Huge churches went up to serve the great faith of the city's European-born Catholics; convents and schools and orphanages were built for the newly arrived and the struggling; the city expanded in all directions with new neighborhoods of large, graceful houses, or areas of more humble cottages, even the smallest of which, with their floor-length shutters and deep-pitched roofs, possessed an undeniable Caribbean charm.

Through this all, black culture never declined in Louisiana. In fact, New Orleans became home to blacks in a way, perhaps, that few other American cities have ever been. Dillard University and Xavier University became two of the most outstanding black colleges in America; and once the battles of desegregation had been won, black New Orleanians entered all levels of life, building a visible middle class that is absent in far too many Western and Northern American cities to this day.

The influence of blacks on the music of the city and the nation is too immense and too well known to be described. It was black musicians coming down to New Orleans for work who nicknamed the city "the Big Easy" because it was a place where they could always find a job. But it's not fair to the nature of New Orleans to think of jazz and the blues as the poor man's music, or the music of the oppressed.

Something else was going on in New Orleans. The living was good there. The clock ticked more slowly; people laughed more easily; people kissed; people loved; there was joy.

Which is why so many New Orleanians, black and white, never went north. They didn't want to leave a place where they felt at home in neighborhoods that dated back centuries; they didn't want to leave families whose rounds of weddings, births and funerals had become the fabric of their lives. They didn't want to leave a city where tolerance had always been able to outweigh prejudice, where patience had always been able to outweigh rage. They didn't want to leave a place that was theirs.

And so New Orleans prospered, slowly, unevenly, but surely - home to Protestants and Catholics, including the Irish parading through the old neighborhood on St. Patrick's Day as they hand out cabbages and potatoes and onions to the eager crowds; including the Italians, with their lavish St. Joseph's altars spread out with cakes and cookies in homes and restaurants and churches every March; including the uptown traditionalists who seek to preserve the peace and beauty of the Garden District; including the Germans with their clubs and traditions; including the black population playing an ever increasing role in the city's civic affairs.

Now nature has done what the Civil War couldn't do. Nature has done what the labor riots of the 1920's couldn't do. Nature had done what "modern life" with its relentless pursuit of efficiency couldn't do. It has done what racism couldn't do, and what segregation couldn't do either. Nature has laid the city waste - with a scope that brings to mind the end of Pompeii.
•

I share this history for a reason - and to answer questions that have arisen these last few days. Almost as soon as the cameras began panning over the rooftops, and the helicopters began chopping free those trapped in their attics, a chorus of voices rose. "Why didn't they leave?" people asked both on and off camera. "Why did they stay there when they knew a storm was coming?" One reporter even asked me, "Why do people live in such a place?"

Then as conditions became unbearable, the looters took to the streets. Windows were smashed, jewelry snatched, stores broken open, water and food and televisions carried out by fierce and uninhibited crowds.

Now the voices grew even louder. How could these thieves loot and pillage in a time of such crisis? How could people shoot one another? Because the faces of those drowning and the faces of those looting were largely black faces, race came into the picture. What kind of people are these, the people of New Orleans, who stay in a city about to be flooded, and then turn on one another?

Well, here's an answer. Thousands didn't leave New Orleans because they couldn't leave. They didn't have the money. They didn't have the vehicles. They didn't have any place to go. They are the poor, black and white, who dwell in any city in great numbers; and they did what they felt they could do - they huddled together in the strongest houses they could find. There was no way to up and leave and check into the nearest Ramada Inn.

What's more, thousands more who could have left stayed behind to help others. They went out in the helicopters and pulled the survivors off rooftops; they went through the flooded streets in their boats trying to gather those they could find. Meanwhile, city officials tried desperately to alleviate the worsening conditions in the Superdome, while makeshift shelters and hotels and hospitals struggled.

And where was everyone else during all this? Oh, help is coming, New Orleans was told. We are a rich country. Congress is acting. Someone will come to stop the looting and care for the refugees.

And it's true: eventually, help did come. But how many times did Gov. Kathleen Blanco have to say that the situation was desperate? How many times did Mayor Ray Nagin have to call for aid? Why did America ask a city cherished by millions and excoriated by some, but ignored by no one, to fight for its own life for so long? That's my question.

I know that New Orleans will win its fight in the end. I was born in the city and lived there for many years. It shaped who and what I am. Never have I experienced a place where people knew more about love, about family, about loyalty and about getting along than the people of New Orleans. It is perhaps their very gentleness that gives them their endurance.

They will rebuild as they have after storms of the past; and they will stay in New Orleans because it is where they have always lived, where their mothers and their fathers lived, where their churches were built by their ancestors, where their family graves carry names that go back 200 years. They will stay in New Orleans where they can enjoy a sweetness of family life that other communities lost long ago.

But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs.

Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you.

Is this really as silly as it sounds? (http://katrinablog.msnbc.com/2005/09/what_is_fema_th.html#below-fold)

This article at Nature makes me a little angry. (http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050905/full/437174a.html)

Others say scientists should take part of the responsibility. "Folks have talked about this scenario for decades, yet I've watched George Bush senior and Bill Clinton both comment that no one could have anticipated this sort of event," says Roger Pielke, director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "That raises some real questions for the academic and scholarly community. What does it mean if scholars are aware of something with practical importance, but it doesn't get to the people who can take action?"

That's a load of crap. If you want to place some responsibility on the shoulders of scientists, then give them some power to force people to listen. Give them the power to allocate funds and appoint officials, for instance. Also, common sense alone should have been sufficient to appreciate the potential for disaster in this case. Sorry, but politicians and the public deserve all the blame.

The public, because we are not, in general, an informed electorate. When we are informed we frequently find it much easier to gripe about things to friends and families, or on blogs, but we don't confront our elected representatives with our views. They are courted and massaged constantly by lobbyists, and rarely hear from their constituents, except when they get mass mailings over some issue, and those usually just get dumped...they usually don't even bother to count them. We can't promise them tons of money for reelection campaigns, or take them on golfing trips to Scotland, or wine and dine them, but we can and should let them know our thoughts about issues, that we can and will campaign for candidates, incumbants or otherwise who are willing to work for the good of their constituents instead of for the good of a few corporate interests, They work for us. The President works for us. We have the power to fire them. We are not helpless. But we have to get up off our butts and do it. It isn't anyone else's job, it's ours.

One of the newspapers in New Orleans did a week-long spread with big full page infographics, maps and diagrams all explaining exactly how this could happen. This was a few years ago. I've never even been to New Orleans, but I came across it last year posted in .pdfs on their website. Saying the public didn't know is BS.

My own mother, who I don't think took a science course in the year of college she had, knew that this could happen. Why? Because she knows that New Orleans is below sea level and she knows from watching the Weather Channel that there's a storm surge. She's never read the SciAm article about it or The Control of Nature, but she still has common sense.

Bush and Clinton say "there's no way anyone could have forseen these events" precisely because the opposite is true. They can't really address thousands of refugees and say, "Well, they told ya this would happen!"

Dan

I just reread my post from above, and it kind of looks like I'm exonerating politicians. Nothing could be farther from the truth, but if we let those *%^%^#& stay in office, when they prove over and over again that they are more interested in what they can do for themselves and their cronies, instead of the people they were elected to serve,,,,and remember the word is SERVE, and we let them get away with it, then we must shoulder our share of the blame too.

Were we talking about people who needed to be put down?

Barbara Bush: It's Good Enough for the Poor (http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20050906/cm_thenation/120080)

:mad:

Tell me about it!

Woah.

P.S. um... not to be annoying, but could you quote that article? I can't read it.

Barbara Bush: It's Good Enough for the Poor

John Nichols
Tue Sep 6, 1:08 PM ET

The Nation -- Finally, we have discovered the roots of George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism."

On the heels of the president's "What, me worry?" response to the death, destruction and dislocation that followed upon Hurricane Katrina comes the news of his mother's Labor Day visit with hurricane evacuees at the Astrodome in Houston.

Commenting on the facilities that have been set up for the evacuees -- cots crammed side-by-side in a huge stadium where the lights never go out and the sound of sobbing children never completely ceases -- former First Lady Barbara Bush concluded that the poor people of New Orleans had lucked out.

"Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them," Mrs. Bush told American Public Media's "Marketplace" program, before returning to her multi-million dollar Houston home.

On the tape of the interview, Mrs. Bush chuckles audibly as she observes just how great things are going for families that are separated from loved ones, people who have been forced to abandon their homes and the only community where they have ever lived, and parents who are explaining to children that their pets, their toys and in some cases their friends may be lost forever. Perhaps the former first lady was amusing herself with the notion that evacuees without bread could eat cake.

At the very least, she was expressing a measure of empathy commensurate with that evidenced by her son during his fly-ins for disaster-zone photo opportunities.

On Friday, when even Republican lawmakers were giving the federal government an "F" for its response to the crisis, President Bush heaped praise on embattled Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown. As thousands of victims of the hurricane continued to plead for food, water, shelter, medical care and a way out of the nightmare to which federal neglect had consigned them, Brown cheerily announced that "people are getting the help they need."

Barbara Bush's son put his arm around the addled FEMA functionary and declared, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

Like mother, like son.

Even when a hurricane hits, the apple does not fall far from the tree.

Not that one Tintenfish, (Thank you though. :wink: ) "news @ nature".

Hm. Nature must be getting stingy. Here's the article in way-too-annoying-100%-Cephkid-readable-guaranteed (:wink:) format:


After the flood

Academic experts say they were all too aware of the devastation that would claim New Orleans and its surroundings in the wake of a fierce hurricane. Could they have done any more to convince politicians of the need to protect the city?

Tony Reichhardt, Erika Check & Emma Marris


Nothing about last week's hurricane and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans should have come as a surprise. Experts knew such a storm would come at some point. They knew the coast's natural defences were degraded; they knew the levees were not designed for anything stronger than a category-3 storm; and they knew that a significant proportion of the population - the poorest and weakest - would not evacuate.

The science was all there, but apparently the planning was not. As the United States reels from one of the worst disasters in its history, scientists are trying to work out why policy-makers were unable to cope when experts knew so much about what was bound to happen.

Public officials criticized for mishandling the emergency have claimed that Katrina was simply too powerful a force to resist. New Orleans hadn't been hit by such a large storm since Hurricane Betsy in 1965 - at category 5, Katrina was still on the highest possible level of the Saffir-Simpson scale mere hours before landfall on the morning of 29 August. Breaches in the city's levee system then turned a bad situation into a catastrophe, flooding an area of more than 400 square kilometres with water from Lake Pontchartrain and trapping tens of thousands of people in a swiftly escalating crisis.

But the dire consequences of a large hurricane striking New Orleans have been predicted for years, precisely because of the risk of flooding (see Nature431, 388; 2004).

It is public knowledge that the sandy barrier islands and marshy bayous that used to protect the Louisiana coast from storms and hurricanes are eroding as dams and levees hold on to the silt that usually rebuilds them. The marshes are disappearing at a rate of more than 60 square kilometres a year. In 1998, a document called Coast 2050 was drawn up by state officials calling for restoration of the wetlands. However, the full cost of the project is estimated as $14 billion, and the state has made little progress in persuading federal government to give it more than a tiny fraction of the request.

It has also long been known that the system of raised levees and floodwalls that keep New Orleans dry are only designed to withstand hurricanes up to category 3. A project looking at upgrading the system is in the works, but after five years it is still in the pre-study phase. To be ready for Katrina, "we would have had to start working on category-5 twenty years ago", says Alfred Naomi, a senior project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, which maintains the levee system.

A hurricane strike at some point was inevitable, say researchers. And they argue that there was also no excuse for not realizing the potential scale of the disaster.

Rick Luettich of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill helped to develop the Advanced Circulation Model that is used by Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge and the Army Corps of Engineers. The model has become increasingly accurate at predicting storm surge - a wind-driven rise in sea level - even at small scales. Luettich says it got the effects of Katrina "about right". Days ahead of the storm's arrival, computer simulations of the expected surge showed that water would probably overflow levees, flooding the city, which lies below sea level.

"It's a valuable tool," Luettich says. "Where we've had less success is in getting people to take it seriously and modify their behaviour based on it."

"Academia tends to be discounted," agrees Ivor van Heerden, director of LSU's Center for the Study of the Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes. "But we called this 100% right."

Politicians were slow to act on warnings from the models and related casualty simulations. New Orleans' mayor, Ray Nagin, did not issue a mandatory evacuation order until the day before the hurricane hit - too late for many. An estimated 80% of the city's 470,000 residents evacuated using extra highway lanes that had been opened for the emergency - one of the few parts of the disaster plan that worked well. But that still left roughly 100,000 people in the city.

This came as no surprise to LSU sociologists Jeanne Hurlbert and John Beggs. In 2004, their analysis of survey data suggested that 21% of the population would stay in their homes during a hurricane, and that 32% would remain in the area. People in poor health were especially likely to stay, as were those suffering from depression, disabilities and other life stresses - Hurlbert characterizes them as "people who are already not coping".

Based on these data, Devyani Kar of LSU's Coastal Studies Institute was in the process of mapping New Orleans with a Geographic Information System database that includes variables such as income level and access to transportation, to determine which neighbourhoods were likely to have the most flood victims. Her study was not yet finished by the time Katrina struck.

Even so, there should have been strategies in place to ensure that the most vulnerable populations were evacuated, says Ilan Kelman, an expert on disasters at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Public officials should be "entirely proactive" he says, and not rely on news reports to convey information. Warnings should be tailored to people of diverse backgrounds. "It means setting up a website, and it means talking one-on-one with a homeless person on the street," he says. And for those who remain to ride out a hurricane, emergency supplies should be pre-positioned, to speed up rescue operations after the storm passes.

David Ozonoff, an environmental epidemiologist at Boston University in Massachusetts, agrees that there is no excuse for New Orleans' refuges being so poorly set up for survivors. "This should have been anticipated," he says. "People moving is not an unknown and unsolved problem. It can be very difficult, but if you've thought it out ahead of time you should be prepared."

Ozonoff believes part of the problem is that after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 a shift in federal priorities crippled the US public-health and disaster-response agencies. The US Federal Emergency Management Agency was taken under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, which is supposed to coordinate local and national responses to all kinds of disasters. The hope was that efforts to prepare for terrorist attacks would improve preparations for natural disasters; Ozonoff argues that the response to Katrina proves the approach wrong. "If there was ever an episode - other than a bioterrorist attack - that should have demonstrated that money put into public-health preparedness is effective, then this was it," he says.

He criticizes the Department of Homeland Security for focusing on expensive gear to deal with unlikely bioterrorist attacks instead of on the less dramatic but crucial task of coordinating responses to more realistic scenarios. "The whole bioterrorism prevention effort has brought nothing in the way of preparation, and has left public-health departments in much worse shape than before they got the money," he asserts.

Others say scientists should take part of the responsibility. "Folks have talked about this scenario for decades, yet I've watched George Bush senior and Bill Clinton both comment that no one could have anticipated this sort of event," says Roger Pielke, director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "That raises some real questions for the academic and scholarly community. What does it mean if scholars are aware of something with practical importance, but it doesn't get to the people who can take action?"

Pielke argues that scientists need to move away from a 'loading dock' approach where they simply put out raw information for anyone who wants to use it. Instead they should tailor their research to practical needs, he says. "There's a real challenge of making knowledge useful. It is not something that the academic community is engaged in as a matter of policy."

His plea is echoed by van Heerden: "Academia gives more credit for journal publications than for helping a hospital prepare for a crisis."

"Universities aren't particularly well organized to support applied research," adds Pielke, "but events like Katrina and research that languishes in journals should motivate policy-makers to demand more from the scientific community." Pielke concedes that attitudes within the scientific community are beginning to change, with agencies such as the National Science Foundation supporting some practical work: "There's a trend in the right direction."

But for researchers already carrying out such applied projects, the mood is one of frustration. LSU's Nedra Korevec, for example, has studied the scenario of a category-4 storm striking New Orleans. She managed to convince many of her family and friends to move in with her in Baton Rouge before the hurricane hit, and is now housing ten people. "I knew from the models we ran and the work I'd done how bad it was going to be," she says. "We do the research and we try to make things happen, but then we have to hand the ball to delegations and lobbyists."

Thanks. (I'm not a subscriber to "news@nature" and I'm a little pinched for cash.)

I did not notice that this article was 'premium content'. :oops:

That other article about Barbara Bush may be a little misleading. Apparently, she also said something to the effect that she was dismayed that some evacuees could claim to be so comfortable. That makes a lot of difference, and it's unfair to elide it.

Considering what their circumstances were before they were evacuated, they probably ARE relatively comfortable. After all they do have water, food, and they aren't standing in fiilth water up to their armpits, but it's all relative. Maybe it like the difference in having someone hold both feet to the fire, or only one. It doesn't hurt quite so much. They've lost everything they had, and no matter how little that may have been, it was theirs.

It was an unbelievably insensitive remark.

The NRCC is well-built, right? :sad:

One can but hope. Parts, if not all of Galveston are below sea level, or so I've been led to believe. It has a subsidance (sp?) problem, primarily from all the oil drilling, but apparently also from water wells. I remember seeing berms to elevate some of the yards above see level years ago when I was there, and it's bound to be a lot worse now.

Galveston has a 17 foot seawall and the land is raised beyond that, then sloped to drain quickly. Galveston did some major rebuilding and raised the entire city after the hurricane at the turn of the century. In 1915 another Category 5 hurricane hit the city, but that time they weathered it with little damage.

There are people who have built further west on the island, beyond the seawall and the city, and that's a different matter. Current building code requires homes on stilts and everyone is aware that a storm surge and flooding are possibilities.

The NRCC is on the bay side, not the ocean side, of the island, within the city of Galveston.

Nancy

Well, I haven't been there since 1972.....memory fails upon occasion.

Wooo classes at A&M Galveston cancelled for the rest of the week! I'm rather afraid for my apartment though... it's right next to the Seawall. Best I can do is take my cat and everything i love with me.

Well, we'll just see where this hurricane goes and how strong it gets.

Fluffysquid,

Wishing you safety and security in the face of Rita!

That goes for everybody in Rita's path.

Best of luck, Fluffy. But if you have to evac, please do, okay?

Yes, please evacuate. We'll be thinking about you and hoping that the sea wall holds and all your stuff ( and everybody else's ) is safe and dry. Of course, we know you'll be safe and dry because you won't be there, right?

Thank you everyone. Having no intention of weathering a hurricane of any strength, I packed up cat, clothes and computer and got the heck outta there late last night. The school is shut down and evacuated, mandatory evac of the island begins today. I hope there's a school for me to return to after this is all over... and I must say, it's a bummer for the transfer students we took in from Tulane and UNO!

Best wishes. :grin: