Katrina

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by Nixxxed

Yup - they just showed video of NO, and you could see the swirls of gasoline floating on the water, probably leaking from flooded cars. People could also smell it.

I haven't heard about the people in the Superdome tho - are they still in there, or did they move them elsewhere? They're saying there's now 3 feet of water surrounding the stadium.

They are still there and the situation is deteriorating. The toilets don't flush, the garbage is piling up, etc.

[Nixxxed]

Originally Posted by estranged4life

30 people were killed in one apartment complex alone in Biloxi when 32 foot storm surge slammed into their apartments...The officials are saying it will take at least 1 month to have electric back on in N'Orleans and that the damage was more "exponentially worse than they expected".

The water is still rising in N'Orleans and they expect it to get even worse before it gets better.

MSNBC has been showing video of all the floating casinos in Biloxi. They're huge buildings built on barges that of course broke free when the storm surge came and floated inland. They showed one casino-barge that came to rest on top of a several-story Holiday Inn and crushed it to the ground.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by Janet

My God, I read everything that has happened with this hurricane and I can't believe it. They say 80 people may have died. Really scary stuff.

Today it's already up here in NJ area.

You should read my weather report. We could get up to 4 inches of rain. The way the wind is positioned, we could get tornados. Then tomorrow if it gets hot, the storms could get even worse because Katrina will clash with a cold front...

VERY dramatic. We don't get 4 inches or rain or tornados around here but this weather report was like 6 paragraphs of how we could have really dangerous weather. Kinda scary.....

My prediction is the count will reach 500 or more. I base that on the unconfirmed reports of bodies seen floating in the water and the horrific mistake of Mississippi for not making the residents of their Gulf Coast evacuate - entire small towns are said to be just gone and something like 40% of the residents of that area in general were said to have remained there to ride it out.

Here is one account from CNN:

One man in Biloxi told CNN affiliate WKRG-TV he believed his wife was killed after she was ripped from his grasp when their home split in half.

"I held her hand as tight as I could," the unidentified man said. "She told me, 'You can't hold me.' She told me to take care of the kids and the grandkids ... we ain't got nowhere to go. I'm lost. That's all I had."

[Mad4stevie]

They have just reported that there may be an inmate uprising at the Orleans Parrish prison. Unconfirmed accounts state that the inmates have taken a deputy and his family hostage.

God, this just keeps getting worse and worse.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by Mad4stevie

They have just reported that there may be an inmate uprising at the Orleans Parrish prison. Unconfirmed accounts state that the inmates have taken a deputy and his family hostage.

God, this just keeps getting worse and worse.

Not only that, but the looters are shooting at the police, cars are being cae jacked, and so on and so one

[Mad4stevie]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Not only that, but the looters are shooting at the police, cars are being cae jacked, and so on and so one

WTF is wrong with these people???

Tragedy either brings out the best, or the worst, in people it seems.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by Mad4stevie

WTF is wrong with these people???

Tragedy either brings out the best, or the worst, in people it seems.

Having lived through many of these - I can tell you people deliberatly do not evcuate with the thought of looting in their heads the whole time. They are looting the mansions on St. Charles and someone, perhaps the police or the owners, are shooting them. Also, if you do not protect your home, they will kill you and/or rape you and not just women. I know that sounds harsh, but I have seen it. Scary stuff.

[Mad4stevie]

Also, alot of hospitals have lost the ability to have life support units, even with the generators. They are manually ventilating their patients

[Mad4stevie]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Having lived through many of these - I can tell you people deliberatly do not evcuate with the thought of looting in their heads the whole time. They are looting the mansions on St. Charles and someone, perhaps the police or the owners, are shooting them. Also, if you do not protect your home, they will kill you and/or rape you and not just women. I know that sounds harsh, but I have seen it. Scary stuff.

I will never understand why people disregard the force of mother nature. I mean, you are completely at her mercy. Why do people risk such things when their very lives are at stake if they are wrong??

If I was there, I would have left at first inclination that anything could happen. I get super panicky at those kinds of things.

If people are looting things that are vital, like water, I can understand moreso. But these people are stealing electronics, clothing, etc. Did you see that video of the female police officer trying to subdue the young guy who was looting? It would not surprise me if this a**hole tries to turn around and sue the police department!

[eclipse]

Hillary....
I am so glad you are OK -you have been on my mind for three days ( and you know how I am about crystal visions...)
So , so glad all is well. water is water,
but loved ones are "life"

I am so happy you guys came though OK-
With my sincre -erst (sp) wishes for sweet and peaceful dreams tonight-at least..
Thank God everyone really made it through this "test " of mother Nature...
She is so awesome and repectable---huh??
Stay in touch-ok...?
~~eclipse~~

[GateandGarden]

Originally Posted by eclipse

Hillary....
I am so glad you are OK -you have been on my mind for three days ( and you know how I am about crystal visions...)
So , so glad all is well. water is water,
but loved ones are "life"

I am so happy you guys came though OK-
With my sincre -erst (sp) wishes for sweet and peaceful dreams tonight-at least..
Thank God everyone really made it through this "test " of mother Nature...
She is so awesome and repectable---huh??
Stay in touch-ok...?
~~eclipse~~

Thank you so much.

[strandinthewind]

from cnn.com

Nine stockpiles of fire-and-rescue equipment strategically placed around the country to be used in the event of a catastrophe still have not been pressed into service in New Orleans, five days after Hurricane Katrina, CNN has learned.

WTF

Mercifully, there are only about 2,000 left in the dome - CNN also reported there were miscarriages in the dome in the last few days. I hope those in charge realize that innocent blood is on their hands

[strandinthewind]

Saturday, September 03, 2005

Geologist: Katrina ripped up La. coastline
Talks surface on how to protect La., coast

By Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer

Louisiana coastal restoration officials began brainstorming with officials from the Army Corps of Engineers on Friday about how to protect the New Orleans area and other communities in southeastern Louisiana from another catastrophic hurricane and restore its coastal wetlands at the same time.

They're trying to quickly hammer together a plan that could be thrown into an expected supplemental congressional appropriation that's needed to pay the cost of Katrina rescue and recovery efforts, said Randy Hanchey, deputy secretary of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.

Sidney Coffee, coastal adviser to Gov. Kathleen Blanco, confirmed that the talks began Friday.

Late Friday, corps officials announced they are beginning to breach levees to drain water from Chalmette, flooded because of failures of levees along the Industrial Canal.

Backhoes mounted on marsh buggies and draglines mounted on barges will cut breaches in the levees, including one along the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet between the Bayou Bienville and Bayou Dupree floodgates and another near the Caernarvon Freshwater Diversion Canal.

Breaches of two ring levees in Plaquemines Parish, one on each bank of the river, will soon follow, the corps announcement said.

Corps officials already have said that protecting New Orleans from a Category 5 storm would cost at least $2.5 billion.

The proposed Morganza-to-Gulf hurricane protection levee being considered for authorization during this term of Congress, is estimated to cost $670 million, but would only protect parts of Terrebonne, Lafourche and Jefferson parishes from a Category 3 storm, just like the existing levees around the New Orleans area.

Congress also is considering a $1.2 billion proposal to begin restoring the coastline, a process estimated to eventually cost $15 billion.

"We're trying to put together a package recommending a comprehensive hurricane protection and costal restoration program that will provide a much higher level of protection, with the restoration of critical land features in the coastal zone that provide surge protection," Hanchey said.

"How this will be received, we just don't know," he said. "But you can't look at hurricane protection any more from the microeconomic, one-city point of view any more. If one is concerned about economic justification about a project like this, that question has been answered."

Hanchey said the preliminary plan is to ask Congress to allow the corps to skip the preliminary cost-justification steps of these projects that often take as long as five to 10 years.

"We need to accelerate the way the funds are provided and move directly to design and construction," he said. "We need to be starting today."

State and federal officials have been delayed in determining how much damage the Category 4 Katrina has done to coastal areas because manpower, boats, planes and helicopters all have been pressed into service to rescue people in New Orleans.

A flight by Coffee and other coastal officials at dusk Thursday, however, indicated that as much as half of Plaquemines Parish was still underwater.

While it's still unclear whether the wetlands there have been destroyed, Coffee said the view was similar to maps drawn by the state to show what the coastline would look like in 2050 without a restoration program.

Asbury Sallenger, a coastal geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's St. Petersburg, Fla., laboratory, has been able to fly photographic missions over the eastern Louisiana coastline and the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama during the past few days to measure Katrina's damage.

He said the Chandeleur Islands have been ripped asunder, and look worse than they did after Hurricane Georges in 1998 and Tropical Storm Isidore and Hurricane Ivan in 2002.

Meanwhile, state Department of Environmental Quality and the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator's Office are trying to determine the extent of a major oil spill at mile marker 22 on the Mississippi River near Venice.

DEQ spokesman Darren Mann said it's still unclear whether the oil is leaking from a pair of holding tanks that have been described as holding either 800,000 barrels of oil each or 2 million barrels of oil each, he said.

Coffee said there were a number of smaller oil spills near platforms all along southern Plaquemines Parish.
How much oil is in the water, and exactly where it comes from will have to wait until officials can get to the area by boat, he said.

Meanwhile, Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals officials say floodwaters inside levees in St. Bernard and Jefferson parishes and New Orleans are a toxic mix of bacteria contamination and hazardous chemicals.

Exactly what chemicals might be in the water is not yet known, said Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson in a phone interview from Washington.

"It's too early to speculate," Johnson said. "We haven't even gotten to the point where we're able to assess what's there or not there."

Emergency preparedness experts have long warned that floodwaters in New Orleans could be contaminated with everything from the household chemicals beneath kitchen and bathroom sinks to hazardous chemicals in businesses and factories to gasoline and diesel fuel leaking from underground storage tanks. Above-ground tanks also were expected to add
to the mix as they floated free from their supports, breaking piping as floodwaters rose.

Contaminated water already is being pumped into Lake Pontchartrain, where it will make its way along the south shore, out the Chef Menteur and Rigolets passes and into the Gulf of Mexico. Equally contaminated floodwaters from St. Bernard Parish also will end up in coastal wetlands, all of which are home to the state's lucrative oyster industry and other fisheries.

Johnson said the Federal Drug Administration and Department of Health and Human Services will assist in making sure no contaminated seafood reaches the public in the months to come. The state Health Department also will assist in that effort.
Health Department spokesman Bob Johannessen said triage units treating evacuees haven't seen tell-tale rashes on legs or other bare skin that would result from exposure to toxic chemicals. He said bacteria in the water could have gotten into wounds, and the problems that might cause could take some time to show up.

Federal and state officials continue to search from the air for chemical and oil leaks, but a detailed inspection also has been delayed by the diversion of personnel to rescue efforts.

"Our first priority is to assist and make sure people are safe and we are actually saving lives," Johnson said.

"We have 69 watercraft on the scene and thus far, emergency response personnel have rescued 500 people," he said.

The EPA also is providing 50 workers to conduct environmental assessments of construction sites for temporary housing that will be built during the next few weeks for displaced residents, he said.

An EPA plane equipped with sensing instruments flew over a warehouse fire on a Mississippi River wharf in New Orleans Friday and found no evidence of toxic materials, Mann said.

The agency also is working with the corps in preparing a plan to deal with the vast quantity of storm debris left in Katrina's wake.

"We will be assessing the debris material to see if it is indeed hazardous," Johnson said.

Johnson said he was unaware of the unique problems that debris would present if it is infested with Formosan termites, but said that would be added to the list.

When South Carolina officials stored debris from Charleston's older neighborhoods in empty lots on the outskirt of town after Hurricane Hugo hit the Formosan termite-infested area, the termites were spread to new areas, officials there said.

Entomologist Kenneth Grace of the University of Hawaii said it's likely that floodwater may result in a reduction of termite nests in the New Orleans area, but that even long-standing stormwater won't kill all of the damaging insects. That's because their underground nests are likely to contain pockets of air, and they also have nests in the upper trunks of trees above the floodwaters.

And he warned that moving building debris around was likely to spread the insects to areas not yet infested, just like in Charleston.

Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mersmia@cox.net

www.nola.com

[strandinthewind]

I do not think this was posted earlier - if so

In any event - this demonstrates the finger pointing at Gov. Blanco was inappropriate and the fault is solely FEMA's

Political storm brewing over Katrina disaster

By JOHN McQUAID
Staff writer

WASHINGTON - A semblance of post-storm order returned to a ravaged New Orleans Friday. But the political storm over the disaster was just beginning.

Political leaders, Republican and Democrat alike, blasted the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security for allowing New Orleans to descend into a cauldron of suffering and anarchy for three days and nights after the storm passed.

President Bush, himself the target of criticism for the sluggish response, pronounced the results "unacceptable."

Dozens of others chimed in with criticisms and proposals. "If we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?" asked former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican.

The Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee announced they would launch an investigation into the post-disaster response. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., called on Bush to go over the heads of those directing the emergency response and appoint a cabinet-level official to take over. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., called for splitting FEMA out of Homeland Security.

FEMA officials pleaded "no contest.".

Bill Lokey, chief coordinator for FEMA, said agencies were simply overwhelmed by the scale of the challenge. "It's the nature of the disaster," he said. "This is far beyond anything we've ever done in this country. It's beyond our immediate capabilities for sure."

Lokey said rescue workers have been hampered by floodwaters, and by the fact that many of the resources they needed were not available nearby and had to be brough in. And because the storm damage was spread across three states, FEMA's resources have also been spread out, he said.

What went wrong? Solid answers to that question may take years of study by blue-ribbon commissions and Congress to sort out. Emergency managers will be studying what happened for decades to come. But emergency managers and people who study disasters said several key problems allowed the situation to slip out of officials' hands and deteriorate.

Part of the problem is that the quick mobilization of massive human and material resources takes expert management from the top, and the coordination of dozens of different federal agencies. That would have enabled a quicker entry into the city of National Guardsmen to establish order, distribute food, and get people out.

Emergency management plans are for the most part based on the assumption that the people involved will be a relatively cooperative. "In most cases they are very prompt about having police or national guardsmen deployed in force," said Jay Baker. "So it doesn't become an issue."

The eruption of violence, disorder and confusion caught many by surprise. A simulation that emergency management officials ran last year of a catastrophic flood and hurricane hitting New Orleans did not address the possibility of widespread violence and disorder, said Madhu Beriwal, the president of IEM Inc., the Baton Rouge-based company that ran the exercise. Beriwal said that the violence issue was to be addressed at a later meeting.

"There is a truism among sociologists who study disasters that panic is not a problem," said Rutherford Platt, a disaster expert at the University of Massachusetts. "People are too well informed about what to do and expect - even low income people get a lot of information. There are Red Cross shelters, all these things we expect to take up the slack."

DHS had no master plan on aimed specifically at addressing the New Orleans catastrophe. Officials attending last year's simulation - which included tabletop exercises on the response to a fictional Hurricane Pam that flooded the city - produced a document with many contingency plans, Beriwal said. For example, officials agreed that Fish and Wildlife service personnel would rescue people and ferry them to city access points for transport out.

But the simulation was just an early stage of a multi-year effort to develop a comprehensive plan - one that had been delayed by 9/11 and competing priorities.

Homeland Security Secretary Donald Chertoff for the first time activated a more generic National Response Plan developed in the wake of 9/11 that gives him authority over all agencies involved. But it clearly didn't work as it was supposed to.

"Certainly what happened was some degree of a lack of coordination between federal, state and local folks prior to the arrival of the hurricane and immediately afterward," said Suzanne Mencer, a former Department of Homeland Security official who worked with state and local agencies. "It's that coordination piece that is always the most difficult."

Jan Moller and the Associated Press contributed to this story

[strandinthewind]

Editorial: Not Acceptable

The Times-Picayune Editorial Board

A day after a normally easy-going Mayor Ray Nagin blasted federal officials' seeming indifference to the plight of New Orleanians who are stranded and dying, President Bush stood on the lawn of the White House and conceded the point: The federal government did not move quickly enough or forcefully enough to help those people hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina. "The results are not acceptable," the president said before boarding a helicopter to go survey the storm's damage. [Yet, Fox News spins it anohter way and away from the Fed. Govt. - typical Rove here in the the PRes. says one thing and the pawns spin it to the D's ]

It's good to hear the president admit his administration's shortcomings, and it's even better to hear his promise to help all of us who are in need. But the sad truth remains that the federal government's slow start has already proved fatal to some of the most vulnerable people in the New Orleans area. Water has killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people. A lack of water to drink is exacting its toll on others.

"I don't want to see anybody do anymore goddamn press conferences," the mayor said during a WWL radio interview Thursday. "Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city."

The mayor had obviously become fed up with federal bureaucrats' use of future tense verbs. "Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here," he said. "They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country."

We applaud the mayor for giving voice to an entire city's frustration. How could the most powerful and technologically advanced nation in the history of the world have responded so feebly to this crisis?

The president's admission of his administration's mistakes will mean nothing unless the promised help is deployed immediately. Each life is precious, and there isn't a second chance to save a single one of them. No more talk of what's going to happen. We only want to hear what is being done. The lives of our people depend on it.