Hurricane Katrina
 

Today the gods have decided to crush New Orleans in biblical proportions.

Or something. I don't know what to say, I'm supposed to be on the road to New Orleans from Houston right now, for my final year at Tulane, but instead I have to wait for who knows how long. It's a blessing for me in a way, because I wasn't ready to go at all, but I fear for the city. I'm truly scared of what will happen.

The city was built 9 feet below sea level, and the only thing protecting it day in and day out from destructive flooding is the system of levies they have and the massive water pumps that pump out flood water. But those levies against the will of a storm surge from a direct hit of a category 5 hurricane? Gone. The city could be under 15 feet of water before it's over. And pumps underwater, which they would be, apparently don't work.

I'm fortunate that I wasn't on the road or, worse, all moved in. My thoughts go to all the people in New Orleans and others in the wake of the storm.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Maybe its just me but I want to see pictures of New Orleans and downtown area under 15+ feet of water just to see how bad it can get for once since New Orleans has been saying for a looong time if they ever got hit with a massive hurricane, it would be absolutely devastating as the pumps can't keep up or if they go underwater are screwed anyways.

But thoughts are out to the people of the city. It's gonna turn into hell but it will only be for a "short" time

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Riding on the City of New Orleans,
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.
All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields.
Passin' trains that have no names,
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.

Good morning America how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Hurricane Katrina is a persitent asshole. :]

She rammed right through my area on Thursday, and did decent damage for a category 1 storm. Everyone underestimated the storm. Hell, I did too. There are still thousands without electricity down here and won't get electricity until Friday. If a category 1 caused some havoc here, I can only picture what this cat. 5 monster will do. I still remember when Andrew came here in 92.

My thoughts are with the people of New Orleans. I hope most of them escaped this thing's wrath.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

This sounds horrible for the people of NO, but like Jonbo, I also want to see how it all pans out and what the underwater city would look like.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

"New Orleans Is Sinking"

Bourbon blues on the street loose and complete
Under skies all smoky blue-green
I can Forksake the dixie dead shake
So we dance the sidewalk clean
My memory is muddy what's this river I'm in
New Orleans is sinking and I don't want to swim

Colonel Tom What's wrong? What's Going On
You can't tie yourself up for a deal
He said" Hey North you're south shut you big mouth
You gotta do what you feel is real."
Ain't got no picture postcards ain't go no souvenirs
My baby she don't know me when I'm thinking about thoes years

Pale as a light bulb hanging on a wire
Sucking up to someone just stoke the fire
Picking out the highlights of the scenery
Saw a little cloud looked a little like me

I had My hand in the river
My feet back up on the banks
Looked up to the lord above and said hey man thanks
Some time I fell so good I gotta scream
She says Gordie baby I know exactly what you mean
She said, she said I swear to god she said

My memory is muddy what's this river I'm in
New Orleans is sinking and I don't want to swim

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

The levees I think they said were somewhere along the lines of 15-20 feet tall, but the storm surges are expected to easily surpass that (could be around 35 feet)...

The city could be flooded for as long as 90 days...

Estimated that at least 80% of wooden structures in the area will be destroyed...

The tall office buildings and such could sway to the point of collapse...

Anybody crazy (or drunk) enough to have not evacuated or found a decent place to take shelter face certain death...

And now for some cheesey song lyrics: ..... Nah I got nothing.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Yikes! Everyone please remain in safety during this dangerous time. :bab:

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Wow. I can't imagine my area being flooded. Just insurmountable damage. A lot of buildings made with wood could be rotting after something like that.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

This is what you get when you build a city below sea level not 100 miles from a very large body of water.

And man there's gonna be some good darwinism coming to the people that stick it out.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Wow...This hits a bit close to home as the Spinto Band played in New Orleans exactly a week ago. I guess we are very lucky and I feel bad for anyone in that town, they have some good jambayala there.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

The governor of Biloxi is comparing the hurricane to the tsunami even though 54 people died in MS and 220,000 died in the tsunami.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

54 people have been confirmed dead in MS (and I think a majority of those were from a single county)...

While that's still a silly comparison, once all is said and done, the death toll will be much higher than that...

And when it comes to damage to structures and such, this probably could be considered 'our tsunami'...

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

I apologize for the 'double post', but incase anybody hasn't (for some reason) heard the news:

Hours after the storm had passed (and seemingly spared) New Orleans, the levees gave way, and a short while later the pumps failed... The city is now filling up like a bowl, and it's not expected to stop until it reaches the level of Lake Pontchartrain (some 4 feet above sea level)...

The bodies of the dead are being ignored so emergency workers can focus on rescuing survivors, all of whom will eventually have to be shipped out of the city...

In the meanwhile, there has been widespread looting, and I believe I heard that martial law was declared...

Flood Slideshow

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Everyone told New Orleans to expect the worst if ever hit directly by a hurricane and well, this is about as close as they will probably get to a direct hit by a Cat 4/5 storm

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Hmm

I like the post, I think it's awful, but it's also time to derape the H scroll, sorry


Resize it and repost it


- SC

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Of course, I thought that was common knowledge... :confused:

:sneaky:

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

My little story.

Tulane University won't open until I've heard 9/27, but that sounds optimistic. So instead Tulane students are scrambling to register for any university in their area where they can at least take some classes. Rice University is just one of many universities helping Tulane students out, and since I'm in Houston that helps me. They're taking applications until 9/8 and they'll let us know that very Monday 9/12 if we're accepted.

I think it's super generous of them, and I'm applying. I'm guessing humanities are the classes that most people will take, because they would be easy to transfer. Unfortunately for me I'm in my fourth year of engineering, which includes the final project, and I need only one more non-engineering class. So this won't help me get closer to graduating. But at least I can keep my mind sharp. I'm sitting here at home doing nothing. You know that useless feeling you get when you're not doing anything at all? What do you do when you feel selfish doing anything besides help, but there's so little you can do to help?

However, I am in a good position to help here in Houston. Since practically all of the Superdome evacuees are coming to the Astrodome, they're asking for volunteers (my brother-in-law is already helping).

It's just that I'm not worried about the ones already in Houston, they have food and water and air conditioning and everything they need. The ones dying are still stuck in Nola. Babies and old folks are dying in that New Orleans heat, and they have very little potable water and any food. And those are the ones that we can do nothing to help. We can only hope that the military and government agencies can get them out as quick as possible.

I know I have the least of the problems. I was only renting in Nola, and I hadn't even moved in yet. Plus I'm safe. But university students like me are still a small part of the story that I thought you'd like to hear about.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

I'm sorry, but the Presient should have stepped in days ago and federalized the relief efforts. I understand that running the nation means you need to let local governments such as mayors and governors take the first crack, but when their "first crack" ends with rapes, murders, mass hysteria and people starving to death on the streets, IT'S TIME TO REPLACE THOSE WHO SCREWED IT UP. It's like Somalia down there with gangs and "warlords" running the show.

Where are our nations resources? Where are the M.A.S.H. units to treat injury and disease? Where are the trucks, busses and supplies that we have stockpiled ( and yes they are still here and not in Iraq)?

What the Hell is going on?

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

I was gonna crack a "joke" and say They are all in iraq but you kinda did it already :p

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Maybe our government would rather let us or our fellow Americans weed themselves out of existence rather than having to do it using fedeal forces a few years from now. I'm not paranoid, nope.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Mayor Ray Nagin is pissed. He feels the same way as you Strangler, here's what he said:

The rest of the interview is here.

He's angry, and I think he has every right to be. I can understand the frustation, and can only guess how horribly dire it must be to be waiting in the bleeding heat waiting for rescue.

But I think it's the hurricane's fault, and we need to remember that. Things could certainly have been done better, but it's a disaster situation that people didn't know how to deal with. The hurricane is what killed and is killing people, not people who made mistakes.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

It's Nagin's problem too.

I don't think Nagin has any leg to stand on when it comes to criticizing others. He has been a complete failure as a leader to his constituency, and in fact he's one of the reasons why I think that Bush should have responded sooner. The only right thing he did was to order the evacuation. As for leadership ability, he is a complete idiot and has more in common with Chicken Little than Mayor Rudy Guliani.

Was there much he could have done in the grand scheme of things to fix the problems? No, but he could have attempted to maintain the civility and sense of community in his city instead of basically proclaiming the hurricaine `the end of days'. If he had chosen to lead, I don't believe the rioting and social de-evolution would have been as bad.

Watching the news today, it looks like Bush is finally going to but more federal resources behind the rescue and survival efforts, but unfortunately he is several days and probably a few thousand lives too late.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

I think you're right about Nagin, too. This was all terribly handled, and everyone in the government I think will have to answer for it at the least when their reelection comes up. People dying in the streets is unacceptable, considering the resources this great country has.

At the same time, good things are happening. The people are getting moved out, whether late or not. And once they're out, I can tell you since most are in Houston they're getting all the basic resources they need. But I think we need to look at what's next now.

These people are poor and most likely have no insurance. No insurance means these people can't afford to rebuild. So what do they do? Where do they go when New Orleans is drained but they have no money to get back to New Orleans, let alone rebuild their homes? Sounds like the poor just getting poorer.

So what's the solution: build them new homes in the city that will be likely flooded again when the next hurricane hits? Pay off their debts so they can afford to go back into debt to rebuild? Will the $10.5 billion that congress passed go into helping these poor people, or will it go to help the people who have insurance and therefore don't need it nearly as much?

I think the evacuated New Orleanians will end up staying in Houston or in other cities in Texas, and I think they should. New Orleans is a forsaken city for the poor, and while no city is perfect I think they have a far better chance at good jobs outside of New Orleans. Now I have no statistics on that, that's just my opinion after seeing life in Houston compared to life in New Orleans firsthand. Either way, no matter where they end up, I hope that the federal aide goes largely to these people.

This all just opinion and I'm just trying to offer solutions. Any thoughts for solutions? My other solution is to bring them hundreds of Shipley donuts in the morning. :) I think a bit of normal life would help, but I heard on the news that a group of people who brought a large batch of cooked hotdogs to give out were turned away because they weren't approved by the gov't health organizations. Flippin' ridiculous...

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Yeah, there has been a lot of talk that New Orleans isn't even worth rebuilding. They are half right.

I mean, they were stupid to build a city in a mud hole anyway, and any attempt to keep a city in a mud hole is like trying to hold water in your hands.

Then again, it has one of the most vibrant and interesting cultures in the USA.+

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

I think Bush and others should have seen and known ahead of time that when the talk is of "utter destruction" or "Pumps are very likely to fail and New Orleans will go underwater very easily" that you prepare troops and tell everyone the US Gov't is here and ready to help once the worst has passed.

Instead, it seems like "hmm, a hurricane...ok" *1 day after it hits* hmm, there seems to be alot of damage and flooding. Well...lets wait until the media points the finger at us to do anything.

I seriously predict that once the media lessens the coverage of the desturction/people looting, they will find out why New Orleans became a hell hole of water. The blame will be placed on the government and other people for not suppying enough funding to ensure pumps won't fail as badly as they did. Granted, Katrina is "almost one of a kind" so it was had to prepare for something you don't know if it will occur but expect alot of finger pointing for the failure of levee's and pumps with funding to improve them

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

I don't think the pumps or the levee's are an issue. The pumps were only intended to handle flood waters from rain runnoff or a minor levee break. The pumps were never inetended to handle three enormous breaks. As for the levee's themselves, well, I don't think the walls of Troy could have kept Katrina at bay. We're talking nearly 200 mph winds, a 30 foot storm swell topped with 25 to 30 foot waves. Goodnight nurse.

Katrina was just another reminder from Mother Nature that we are forever at her mercy. The main issue is why more wasn't done sooner, and it's a question that we need to have asked by a congressional hearing. When the head of Homeland Security is trying to get information to the suffering people in a destroyed city through a friggin' website that no one can access... heads need to roll and FEMA needs to be reorganized.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

I know that all blame can't be placed on the pumps, I was just referring to the fact that years before they had predictions for if "the big one" hit and it didnt even really get much attention. Granted, pumps may have had a harder time but I'd imagine if the pumps were upgraded, the water wouldn't be still as high in New Orleans. There may still be water but it still won't be as high as rooftops still by today ;)

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

My dad works at the National Archives, and I went on a tour of the place some four or five years ago. One of the things they showed me was a sort of disaster map of New Orleans. It had plans for what to do in case of a gas attack, where to place the police when a riot erupts for some reason, how to deal with an earthquake etc. The person who showed me the map pointed out that the city is in a basin without all that much protection from the ocean. His words were something like, "The government's worst nightmare is that a hurricane hits New Orleans. The engineers have worked out that in that case, the city would literally disappear."

You would think that when Katrina was identified and marked two days before it hit the coast, the government would have woken up and thought, "Oh no! This is the big one! It's unacceptable to have any human beings in the city when it arrives."

I prefer not to cast blame because there will be plenty of time for that later. But I also wanted to alert you all to something:

If you receive an e-mail urgently asking for money to be sent to a relief fund for Katrina, DO NOT REPLY. Do not click any of their links or send any money to any addresses they give you. Those e-mails are spammers trying to cash in on the disaster and steal your money or credit card number. Real charities do not spam your inbox. Ever.

You know, as much as I hate murder and terrorism, there are times when I really think somebody should blow up a spam king's house...

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

I feel depressed when I see this stuff on the news, seeing what all those people had to go through, I especially feel bad for the elderly and the ill ones, being there is no power, and its hard to get supplies. I would like to see what New Orleans looks like after this is all over.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Yeah, I wanna see the images of N O after the water is finally drained just to see how bad the devastation truly is. Right now its mostly covered by water (obviously :p )

But another thing that concerns me is that it seems like they ordered the mandatory evacuations too late and people probably underestimated how devastating it could be.

If it was made widely public that this hurricane will put New Orleans underwater and was shouted throughout city to everyone, I suspect more would have left

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Here are Kanye West's thoughts on the whole matter, highlighted by the quote "George Bush doesn't care about Black people."

http://media.putfile.com/Kanye79

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

+ Rep to Kanye

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

- rep to Kanye in my book...

Seems like anytime black people are involved in any sort of negative situation, the subject of race always pops up... Which really I find more disturbing and (dare I say) racist than any possible (yet very unlikely) racial motivation that was supposidly there to begin with...

"George Bush doesn't care about black people"... I guess he doesn't care about the white, latino, or asian people down there either then...

Fun Fact: As of the 2000 census, African Americans accounted for 67.25% of the population of New Orleans... This would explain why a majority of the people shown on the news are black...

So did help arrive later than it should have? Probably... But I'd like for someone to try and show us one single drop of hard evidence that this lack of initial effort was due to a majority of the population being black... Or that Bush 'Doesn't care about black people'...

I don't even really like Bush, but I'm sorry, the whole race issue is just silly...

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Exactly what I'm thinking DH. Kanye is good to speak out but the choice of words could have been better

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

Kanye West is such a Golddigger...

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

In poor taste?

You decide.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

I like this video.

My props go to Kanye because he actually said something which he felt was right. His dad was a Black Panther, so I can see where his opinion could stem from, along with the lack of federal response to this event.

And here's the story that puts me on his side. This basically goes to say that a staged relief station was set up for a photo op and then torn down within 24 hours. So a more accurate thing for Kanye to say would have been "The government does not care about poor people."

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

It was made widely public that this hurricane would destroy New Orleans. I knew it from here in Houston, and they definitely knew it there in Nola. The governer or mayor of some town in Mississippi said he was "scared to death" by Katrina a day or two before the storm. If that isn't enough to get someone out, there's not much else to do.

I think they did everything they could to tell people to leave Nola, barring going from street to street and house to house forcing people to leave which is a logistical impossibility with the day and a half they had. And it sounds good to say that they should have ordered the mandatory evacuation earlier, but it wasn't certain that it would hit Nola EVEN at the time of when they ordered the evacuation.

I've only lived in New Orleans about three years now, but I've already been through four or five hurricane scares. Every year I've been there New Orleans has ordered an evacuation (sometimes two evacuations), and it always turned out to be nothing. It becomes a joke, a fun time and a holiday. Now imagine living there thirty years and going through that every year--you stop caring. Obviously many people weren't so ignorant, but there are always gonna be some who ride it out.

About the race issue, I think it's not a race issue. I agree with DeathsHand. I however DO think it's a valid TOPIC to bring up, I mean you'd have to put your blinders on to not notice that the evacuees that were stuck were mostly black and mostly poor. But I completely disagree that it's a race issue. The mayor of New Orleans is black--what about him? Isn't he largely responsible for New Orleans? Or is he racist, too? And remember, this is one of THE worst disasters EVER to occur in the U.S. This was no one's fault but Katrina herself.

Re: Hurricane Katrina
 

That's all very well and nice except for a minor little detail: nobody is blaming anybody for Hurricane Katrina. Not even the angry black people crying racism in New Orleans are blaming Bush for the hurricane. They blame him for the response.

People already knew that the estimated death toll if the levees failed would have eclipsed 9/11. So why did Bush wait an extra few days before getting back to D.C.? Why was Condoleeza Rice shopping on her New York vacation until somebody literally screamed "What the hell are you doing?" How did the head of FEMA somehow manage to tell reporters that he wasn't aware of refugees in the Superdome even though footage of people dying in there had been playing on TV the entire day? Why were reporters with TV cameras able to drive right into the disaster area days before any National Guard showed up?

I'm not saying that I necessarily blame anybody, but these are valid questions that will need to be answered when the disaster is over.

As for the racism issue, I don't know how much of a leg they have to stand on. However, it is valid to question whether the response would have been much faster if 90% of the people stuck behind had been white instead of black. You can't honestly tell me that your reaction to news footage would have been exactly the same if every miserable face you had seen had been white.