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[AriesQtPie]

[Edit by Joe] I have combined two threads that were on hurricanes Katrina and Rita. While the first six pages are mostly about the events and aftermaths, there is some discussion on government response mixed in. As the second thread evolves, there is more discussion on government activities and problems. I have marked the post where the two threads were linked together.

I combined the threads in order to create a live backdrop for the discussion of disaster relief efforts by the government and where responsibilities lie.


The following is the title post for hurricane Katrina discussion:



Hey Joe, is your family safely out of the way of Katrina? I know N'orleans is below sea level, and Katrina is currently a Cat. 5 hurricane. There is going to be some serious damage. I'm pretty sure I remember you said your Parents are in New Orleans?

[JuntaJoe]

In Lafayette, Louisiana actually. The "capital" of Cajun country.

It's good 5 hours west from New Orleans.

I expect no more than high winds and some rain, but you never can tell where the tornadoes will drop.

I'm presently getting my vehicle ready in case I need to go there and help clean up the aftermath if something unexpected happens.


But I'm reasonably comfortable that my family will be ok given the storm's projected path.

[AriesQtPie]

I'm so glad to hear that! I can't imagine what it is going to be like after she hits. Having lived through 4 major hurricanes last season, I know it can be pure hell.

We have been so lucky this year, nothing yet has aimed straight for us. Charley hit us hard on Friday, Aug. 13, 2004 - note that they were only on C's this time last year, and here we are just a few weeks after the 1 yr. anniversary and we are on K's!

[JuntaJoe]

Yes, you went through a mess last year, but this hurricane is different.

It's a monster class 5. Think Andrew a decade ago. Or Camile of my youth.

The latter has a special significance to me. It was back when I was a kid. This was also before fancy forecasting. There was usually a single day's warning back then. Most people simply worked on fortifying their homes to shelter-in-place. Evacuations were for the sick or elderly who needed constant electrical power for medical machines. There were no jammed highways back then.

Little did my family know that on a trip along Hwy 90 from Houston to Atlanta that we would pass through Camile's projected landfall only 2 days before it hit the Mississippi coast.

We drove through several sleepy inland coast towns on the way there. Life was serene and relaxed there. Looked rather peaceful in a lazy rural way.

One week later we were driving back to Texas and drove through the same towns again after Camile hit. Our parents had heard about the hurricaine, but we kids were not that interested in world events yet to know.

But those towns were simply GONE!

A few old trucks and sheet metal siding wrapped around trees along with what looked like an orderly row of concrete front steps lining the road every 100 feet. The homes were obliterated. It wasn't even a dirty pile of debris. All the wood structures were washed by the surge some 15 miles further north. It was like God's broom had been used to sweep the place.

There was simply nothing left to come back to and pick over. The towns could have been rebuilt anywhere for all the leftovers were useful for. All that was left was the cleared land, roads, and concrete home front steps. Even the modest brick buildings in the town centers were gone. The surge washed those bricks away too. Just slabs and those sheet metal barn sides wrapped around trees some 30 feet in the air.

It was like visiting a nuclear blast zone.

I never forgot it. It's one of the few memories of my early youth that still sticks in my mind.


If Katrina hits a bit west of New Orleans and throws the dirty side at the city then the only thing that might be left will be the Superdome.

This could be really ugly. I hope it decides to go east of New Orleans up the river basin.

[bannie]

I was watching the weather channel today and they showed a comparison between Katrina and Charlie

The size differance alone was mind boggling

The barometric pressure is really low too. 29 inches is considered 'stormy' weather

I think Katrina is sitting at around 26 and some change



And the Superdome is now I guess a makeshift hurricane center for those who cant leave/stranded tourists


This really isnt going to end well :?

[s_stabeler]

let's jst say that joe is probably going to be right about the only building left standig being the superdome, but there might be a couple others, as hurricane force winds don't affect concrete. any building made of concrete would survive a hurricane. brick would be completely smashed, ditto for breeze-block, but concrete can withstand hurricane force winds. that is why it is often used to protect the core in skyscraspers. i thinbk the only thin that can touch concrete is high explosives. i'd say that likely, the superdome and a couple of other buildings will be standing afterward, and maybe any buildings that are not passed ove by katrina, but i doubt there will be any.

[s_stabeler]

UPDATE

it looks like the weastern eyewall, the weaker of the two sides, will pass over new orleans, but not the eastern side. this is good news for those in new orleans, as it will reduce the effect of the hurricane.

[JuntaJoe]

It isn't the winds that do the real damage. Katrina could push a 20 foot wall of water inland for miles. Just like the tsunami did in the Indian Ocean last year. Concrete buildings will survive only as shells at the contents and sheathing get ripped off. Brick buildings will collapse.

That it moves barely east is real good for the city.


But I just heard the power just went out in the Superdome. Emergency lighting and zero climate control in there with 100,000 people. And the roof is beginning to leak. :(

[s_stabeler]

i understand that that is bad, but if it is going east, there is an off-chance that the storm surge will als move east, avoiding new orleans.

[JuntaJoe]

The levee broke. New Orleans flooded.

Biloxi was massacred. Baton Rouge was hammered.

Katrina was very very bad. :(

[JuntaJoe]

Fifty plus dead in Gulfport, Mississippi and that was just a fast check by helicopter seeing the floating bodies (That's film footage the press will never release). It was hit with a 30 foot wall of water. Biloxi was leveled as well. To Mississippi, this was just like Camile in 1969. Expect the numbers of dead to sail past 100 within a day and keep rising for a week.

New Orleans flooded under hundreds of millions of gallons of water with nowhere for the water to go until the pumps kick on. New Orleans may stay flooded for weeks. The glass debris alone will fill a thousand dump trucks. The outer portions of town has standing water to the roofs of homes and the water will not recede naturally. The Ponchatrain levee fractured. Any new rainfall will simply keep filling the bowl. The police and National Guard are arresting and shooting looters under martial law orders.

Small towns around New Orleans in the wetlands are simply gone.

Some 60 miles north of New Orleans on the "clean" side, Baton Rouge saw brick government buildings collapse. Ever heard of a government building that was built weak?

Damage estimates are still fuzzy, but FEMA figures it will cost more to repair than all four of Florida's hurricaines last year combined.



And they figure it could have been worse............

[bannie]

A distubing fact was brought to my attention

considering that New Orleans is below sea level, you dont have to dig too far to hit water so when they have to bury people, they usually do so with crypts

Can you imagine the disease that could spread if/when any of the tombs are damaged?


not to mention the plain creepy fact of it


it just keeps going from bad to worse, doesnt it? :x

[JuntaJoe]

The number of "new" dead in the New Orleans cemetaries are few.

Most cemetaries were filled scores of years ago.

Only famous celebrities, big politicos, and the ultra rich can get a permanent plot these days. Old poor families can actually strike it rich selling their great grampa's crypt to a millionaire and moving their ancestor out of town.



What happens mostly is grave rental. There is a small percentage of crypts that are leased for a few years. Then the bodies will be pulled and cremated after that lease is over. Finally the ashes are sent to big mausoleums with high density storage. In 3 years, most of the dead reside in urn sized sealed cubicles stacked 10 high in row after row like a library.

Disease will come from a more immediate threat. The standing water has nowhere to go. Storm and waste sewers are full. The city is surrounded by a mosquito filled swamp in the middle of summer.

[JuntaJoe]

It got worse today. More levees broke in the rising water. The bridges to New Orleans are shattered. The water is up to 20 feet in the city and there is no way in or out in a land vehicle.

And as I said, it was Mississippi that got it worse. The one hundred dead I predicted was pased today and keeps rising. Actually, the dead are being ignored right now.......


Crews Pass Dead to Reach Storm Survivors

August 30, 2005 10:42 PM EDT

NEW ORLEANS - Rescuers along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast pushed aside the dead to reach the living Tuesday in a race against time and rising waters, while New Orleans sank deeper into crisis and Louisiana's governor ordered storm refugees out of this drowning city.

Two levees broke and sent water coursing into the streets of the Big Easy a full day after New Orleans appeared to have escaped widespread destruction from Hurricane Katrina. An estimated 80 percent of the below-sea-level city was under water, up to 20 feet deep in places, with miles and miles of homes swamped.

"The situation is untenable," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said. "It's just heartbreaking."

One Mississippi county alone said its death toll was at least 100, and officials are "very, very worried that this is going to go a lot higher," said Joe Spraggins, civil defense director for Harrison County, home to Biloxi and Gulfport. In neighboring Jackson County, officials said at least 10 deaths were blamed on the storm.

Several victims in the county were from a beachfront apartment building that collapsed under a 25-foot wall of water as Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds. And Louisiana officials said many were feared dead there, too, making Katrina one of the most punishing storms to hit the United States in decades.

After touring the destruction by air, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said it is not of case of homes being severely damaged, "they're simply not there. ... I can only imagine that this is what Hiroshima looked like 60 years ago."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said hundreds, if not thousands, of people may still be stuck on roofs and in attics, and so rescue boats were bypassing the dead.

"We're not even dealing with dead bodies," Nagin said. "They're just pushing them on the side."

The flooding in New Orleans grew worse by the minute, prompting the evacuation of hotels and hospitals and an audacious plan to drop huge sandbags from helicopters to close up one of the breached levees. At the same time, looting broke out in some neighborhoods, the sweltering city of 480,000 had no drinkable water, and the electricity could be out for weeks.

With water rising perilously inside the Superdome, Blanco said the tens of thousands of refugees now huddled there and other shelters in New Orleans would have to be evacuated.

She asked residents to spend Wednesday in prayer.

"That would be the best thing to calm our spirits and thank our Lord that we are survivors," she said. "Slowly, gradually, we will recover; we will survive; we will rebuild."

A helicopter view of the devastation over the New Orleans area revealed people standing on black rooftops baking in the sunshine while waiting for rescue boats. A row of desperately needed ambulances were lined up on the interstate, water blocking their path. Roller coasters jutted out from the water at a Six Flags amusement park. Hundreds of inmates were seen standing on a highway because the prison had been flooded.

Sen. Mary Landrieu quietly traced the sign of the cross across her head and chest as she looked out at St. Bernard Parish, where only roofs peaked out from the water.

"The whole parish is gone," Landrieu said.

All day long, rescuers in boats and helicopters pulled out shellshocked and bedraggled flood refugees from rooftops and attics. Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said that 3,000 people have been rescued by boat and air, some placed shivering and wet into helicopter baskets. They were brought by the truckload into shelters, some in wheelchairs and some carrying babies, with stories of survival and of those who didn't make it.

"Oh my God, it was hell," said Kioka Williams, who had to hack through the ceiling of the beauty shop where she worked as floodwaters rose in New Orleans' low-lying Ninth Ward. "We were screaming, hollering, flashing lights. It was complete chaos."

Frank Mills was in a boarding house in the same neighborhood when water started swirling up toward the ceiling and he fled to the roof. Two elderly residents never made it out, and a third was washed away trying to climb onto the roof.

"He was kind of on the edge of the roof, catching his breath," Mills said. "Next thing I knew, he came floating past me."

Across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, more than 1 million residents remained without electricity, some without clean drinking water. An untold number who heeded evacuation orders were displaced and 40,000 were in Red Cross shelters, with officials saying it could be weeks, if not months, before most will be able to return.

Emergency medical teams from across the country were sent into the region and President Bush cut short his Texas vacation Tuesday to return to Washington to focus on the storm damage.

Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown warned that structural damage to homes, diseases from animal carcasses and chemicals in floodwaters made it unsafe for residents to come home anytime soon. And a mass return also was discouraged to keep from interfering with rescue and recovery efforts.

That was made tough enough by the vast expanse of floodwaters in coastal areas that took an eight-hour pounding from Katrina's howling winds and up to 15 inches of rainfall. From the air, neighborhood after neighborhood looked like nothing but islands of rooftops surrounded by swirling, tea-colored water.

In New Orleans, the flooding actually got worse Tuesday. Failed pumps and levees apparently spilled water from Lake Pontchartrain into streets. The rising water forced hotels to evacuate, led a hospital to boatlift patients to emergency shelters, and drove the staff of New Orleans' Times-Picayune newspaper out of its offices.

Officials late Tuesday began the process of using helicopters to drop 3,000-pound sandbags and dozens of giant concrete barriers into the breach, and expressed confidence the problem could be solved. But if the water rose a couple feet higher, it could wipe out water system for whole city, said New Orleans' homeland security chief Terry Ebbert.

A clearer picture of the destruction in Alabama became to emerge Tuesday: cement slabs where homes once stood, a 100-foot shrimp boat smoldering on its side, people searching for swept-away keepsakes. The damage in some areas appears to be worse than last year's Hurricane Ivan.

In devastated Biloxi, Miss., areas that were not underwater were littered with tree trunks, downed power lines and chunks of broken concrete. Some buildings were flattened.

The string of floating barge casinos crucial to the coastal economy were a shambles. At least three of them were picked up by the storm surge and carried inland, their barnacle-covered hulls sitting up to 200 yards inland.

One of the deadliest spots appeared to be Biloxi's Quiet Water Beach apartments, where authorities estimated 30 people were washed away, although the exact toll was unknown. All that was left of the red-brick building was a concrete slab.

"We grabbed a lady and pulled her out the window and then we swam with the current," 55-year-old Joy Schovest said through tears. "It was terrifying. You should have seen the cars floating around us. We had to push them away when we were trying to swim."

Said Biloxi Mayor A. J. Holloway: "This is our tsunami."

Looting became a problem in both Biloxi and in New Orleans, in some cases in full view of police and National Guardsmen. One police officer was shot in the head by a looter in New Orleans, but was expected to recover, Sgt. Paul Accardo, a police spokesman.

On New Orleans' Canal Street, which actually resembled a canal, dozens of looters ripped open the steel gates on clothing and jewelry stores, some packing plastic garbage cans with loot to float down the street. One man, who had about 10 pairs of jeans draped over his left arm, was asked if he was salvaging things from his store.

"No," the man shouted, "that's EVERYBODY'S store!"

Looters at a Wal-Mart brazenly loaded up shopping carts with items including micorwaves, coolers and knife sets. Others walked out of a sporting goods store on Canal Street with armfuls of shoes and football jerseys.

Outside the broken shells of Biloxi's casinos, people picked through slot machines to see if they still contained coins and ransacked other businesses.

"People are just casually walking in and filling up garbage bags and walking off like they're Santa Claus," said Marty Desei, owner of a Super 8 motel.

Insurance experts estimated the storm will result in up to $25 billion in insured losses. That means Katrina could prove more costly than record-setting Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which caused an inflation-adjusted $21 billion in losses.

Oil prices jumped by more than $3 a barrel on Tuesday, climbing above $70 a barrel, amid uncertainty about the extent of the damage to the Gulf region's refineries and drilling platforms.

By midday Tuesday, Katrina was downgraded to a tropical depression, with winds around 35 mph. It was moving northeast through Tennessee at around 21 mph, with the potential to dump 8 inches of rain and spin off deadly tornadoes.

Katrina left 11 people dead in its soggy jog across South Florida last week, as a much weaker storm.

---

Associated Press reporters Holbrook Mohr, Mary Foster, Allen G. Breed, Brett Martel, Adam Nossiter and Jay Reeves contributed to this report.

---

On the Net:

National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov
Copyright 2005 Associated Press.

[DarkShinji250]

Not to go off topic here, but the remains of Katrina just passed over the Greater Cleveland Area last evening and dumped a good amount of rain that this area badly needed. The Cleveland area goes through a drought every summer, or at least it seems that way. It seems that we only get rain when the remains of a hurricane passes over us. :oops:

More is on the way and I don't know if the rain to the southwest of Cleveland is a part of Katrina that broke off.

[NibbyCat]

We're on our fifth day of rain, it's too late for many things, though. The hurricane didn't make much difference.

[JuntaJoe]

It gets even worse.


Mayor: Katrina May Have Killed Thousands

August 31, 2005 4:20 PM EDT

NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Katrina probably killed thousands of people in New Orleans, the mayor said Wednesday - an estimate that, if accurate, would make the storm the nation's deadliest natural disaster since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

"We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and other people dead in attics, Mayor Ray Nagin said. Asked how many, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."

The frightening estimate came as Army engineers struggled to plug New Orleans' breached levees with giant sandbags and concrete barriers, and authorities drew up plans to clear out the tens of thousands of people left in the Big Easy and practically abandon the flooded-out city. Many of the evacuees - including thousands now staying in the Superdome - will be moved to the Astrodome in Houston, 350 miles away.

There will be a "total evacuation of the city. We have to. The city will not be functional for two or three months," Nagin said. And he said people will not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two.

Nagin estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people remained in New Orleans, a city of nearly half a million. He said 14,000 to 15,000 a day could be evacuated.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, began mounting one of the largest search-and-rescue operations in U.S. history, sending four Navy ships with drinking water and other emergency supplies, along with the hospital ship USNS Comfort, search helicopters and elite SEAL water-rescue teams. American Red Cross workers from across the country converged on the devastated region in the agency's biggest-ever relief operation.

Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast on Monday just east of New Orleans with howling, 145-mile wind. The death toll has reached at least 110 in Mississippi alone. But the full magnitude of the disaster had been unclear for days; Louisiana has been putting aside the counting of the dead to concentrate on rescuing the living, many of whom were trapped on rooftops and in attics.

If the mayor's estimate holds true, it would make Katrina the nation's deadliest hurricane since 1900, when a storm in Galveston, Texas, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people. The death toll in the San Francisco earthquake and the resulting fire has been put at anywhere from about 500 to 6,000.

State officials said the mayor's figure seemed plausible.

Lt. Kevin Cowan of the state Office of Emergency Preparedness said there is no way to determine with any accuracy how many died. But he noted that since thousands of people had been rescued from roofs and attics, it could be assumed that there were lots of others who were not saved.

"You have a limited number of resources, for an unknown number of evacuees. It's already been several days. You've had reports there are casualties. You all can do the math," he said.

A full day after the Big Easy thought it had escaped Katrina's full fury, two levees broke and spilled water into the streets Tuesday, swamping an estimated 80 percent of the bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city and inundating miles and miles of homes.

Around midday, officials with the state and the Army Corps of Engineers said the water levels between the city and Lake Pontchartrain had equalized, and the water had stopped pouring into New Orleans, and even appeared to be falling, at least in some places. But the danger was far from over.

The Army Corps of Engineers said it planned to use heavy-duty Chinook helicopters to drop 15,000-pound bags of sand and stone as early as Wednesday night into the 500-foot gap in the failed floodwall.

But the agency said it was having trouble getting the sandbags and dozens of 15-foot highway barriers to the site because the city's waterways were blocked by loose barges, boats and large debris.

Officials said they were also looking at a more audacious plan: finding a barge to plug the 500-foot hole.

"The challenge is an engineering nightmare," the governor said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

With the streets awash and looters brazenly cleaning out stores with law enforcement officers too busy to do anything about it, authorities planned to move at least 25,000 of New Orleans' storm refugees to the Astrodome in a vast, two-day caravan of some 475 buses.

Many of the city's refugees - 15,000 to 20,000 people - were in the Superdome, which had become hot and stuffy, with broken toilets and nowhere for anyone to bathe. "It can no longer operate as a shelter of last resort," the mayor said.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco said the situation was desperate and there was no choice but to clear out.

"The logistical problems are impossible and we have to evacuate people in shelters," the governor said. "It's becoming untenable. There's no power. It's getting more difficult to get food and water supplies in, just basic essentials."

Walter Baumy of the Army Corps of Engineers said that it could be weeks before the water is removed from the city, but that he is confident New Orleans' pumps, once they are back in service, can handle the load.

As the sense of desperation deepened in New Orleans, hundreds of people wandered up and down Interstate 10, pushing shopping carts, laundry racks, anything they could find to carry their belongings. Dozens of fishermen from up to 200 miles away floated in on caravans of boats to pull residents out of flooded neighborhoods.

On some of the few roads that were still passable, people waved at passing cars with empty water jugs, begging for relief. Hundreds of people appeared to have spent the night on a crippled highway.

In one east New Orleans neighborhood, refugees were loaded onto the backs of moving vans like cattle, and in one case emergency workers with a sledgehammer and an ax broke open the back of a mail truck and used it to ferry sick and elderly residents.

Police officers were asking residents to give up any guns they had before they boarded buses and trucks because police desperately needed the firepower: Some officers who had been stranded on the roof of a motel said they were being shot at overnight.

The sweltering city of 480,000 people - an estimated 80 percent of whom obeyed orders to evacuate as Katrina closed in over the weekend - had no drinkable water, the electricity could be out for weeks, and looters were ransacking stores around town.

Sections of Interstate 10, the only major freeway leading into New Orleans from the east, lay shattered, dozens of huge slabs of concrete floating in the floodwaters. I-10 is the only route for commercial trucking across southern Louisiana.

In addition to the Houston Astrodome solution, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was considering putting people on cruise ships, in tent cities, mobile home parks, and so-called floating dormitories - boats the agency uses to house its own employees.

A helicopter view of the devastation over Louisiana and Mississippi revealed people standing on black rooftops, baking in the sunshine while waiting for rescue boats.

Looting broke out in some New Orleans neighborhoods, prompting authorities to send more than 70 additional officers and an armed personnel carrier into the city. One police officer was shot in the head by a looter but was expected to recover, authorities said.

A giant new Wal-Mart in New Orleans was looted, and the entire gun collection was taken, The Times-Picayune newspaper reported. "There are gangs of armed men in the city moving around the city," said Terry Ebbert, the city's homeland security chief.

The governor acknowledged that looting was a severe problem but said that officials had to focus on survivors. "We don't like looters one bit, but first and foremost is search and rescue," she said.

In Washington, the Bush administration decided to release crude oil from federal petroleum reserves to help refiners whose supply was disrupted by Katrina. The announcement helped push oil prices lower.

---

Associated Press reporters Holbrook Mohr, Mary Foster, Allen G. Breed, Adam Nossiter and Jay Reeves contributed to this report.

---

On the Net:

National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov
Copyright 2005 Associated Press.

[DarkShinji250]

This all makes you wonder if some higher being above us is trying to send the world (or at least the US) a message to shape up and fly right. I'm being totally serious here. I know that God said that the world wouldn't be destroyed by water again but these super storms that are happening could be signs of something far worse coming soon.

I'm not one for shouting, "Repent! The end is near!" but this does make you wonder.

[Brf]

Naw.... I dont think there are more things happening now, than have ever been... It is just communicated a lot faster and wder.

[JuntaJoe]

I saw what Camile did with my own eyes back in 1969.

But eleven years later I was adult enough to go into the service and have a small hurricaine hit North Carolina while I was there. During our hunkering down, I related the tale of Camile to my same age peers. They didn't know that Camile had happened at all.

Newspaper headlines and a fast story on the evening news was all they might have seen, but they hadn't.

A tsunami in the Indian Ocean might not have even been reported more than a small story on the last page of the afternoon paper.

News was thin on the ground back then. These days, a minor camel riot in Morroco will feature in the news if nothing else is hot that day.