Mayor Ray Nagin ordered an immediate evacuation Sunday for all of New Orleans

[Edan]

Originally posted by DanS
I agree, although I don't know where the 80% figure comes from in actual fact. Seems low.

If there were only 10,000 people who went to the superdome, then it seems likely to me that the city was pretty much empty.

I'm actually hearing that there are 20,000+ in the superdome, including people who were rescued or entered after the huricane when the water started rising.

[Colonâ„¢]

Originally posted by Edan


I think thats the rough percentage of people with vehicles.

Hmm, I've seen pictures of people moving on the roof of their house, while their car stood on the driveway, and lots of other pictures with cars in it. So not all car-owners left either.

Heck, the blogger mentioned before doesn't appear to be in a rush to leave either.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Edan


They need to improve the quality of television so people watch TV more...

Or else eliminate the entertainment in the French Quarter.

[DanS]

Hmm, I've seen pictures of people moving on the roof of their house, while their car stood on the driveway, and lots of other pictures with cars in it. So not all car-owners left either.

And not all people without cars didn't leave, either. Point being that the 80% is nothing more, nothing less than a WAG.

The only problem that I heard with the evacuation was that flights out were canceled from Saturday. The rationale was that you didn't want to bring even more people into New Orleans for the weekend. But they could have landed empty and left full.

[DanS]

News from sis about her husband's cousin (he has a rather large extended family)...

[t]hey have a cousin who decided to weather the storm in Kenner (suburb to west of metairie). When the flooding started, it was up to the 1st floor of his hotel. He had no water/electricity for a few days. He thought he would be fine there, but the flooding proved too much for him. He kept calling for someone to come rescue him [DanS note: I assume that she means he kept calling on his cell phone or whatever], but noone can get in except emergency personnel. He decided to walk through neck high water for a few miles until he found someone to take him out of this. As of last night, he was in Baton Rouge at a triage center. Family was going to get him there. He said that he stinks like crap, literally. The water was littered with sewer water, dead bodies and body parts...yuck!!

FYI: Kenner is the last western urban area near New Orleans proper. Going from east to west, it's New Orleans, Metairie, and then Kenner.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=kenner,+la&spn=0.214118,0.324200&t=h&hl=en

[Chemical Ollie]

This looks almost as bad as the initial doomsday forecasts that said New Orleans would be more or less wiped out. In property loss, it might be true, but death toll is probably lower than the initial forecasts. Still, it might exceed 9/11 if you include secondary effects.

One thing to be happy about though, is that the peak winds and peak flooding did not co-incide (in New Orleans, at least). Just imagine sitting on a rooftop of a flooded house in a roaring hurricane.

[ajbera]

Answers from Army Corps of Engineers on unwatering New Orleans

Q.2. Why did the levees fail?

A.2. What failed were actually floodwalls, not levees. This was caused by overtopping which caused scouring, or an eating away of the earthen support, which then basically undermined the wall.

These walls and levees were designed to withstand a fast moving category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a strong 4 at landfall, and conditions exceeded the design.


Q.3. Why only Category 3 protection?

A.3. That is what we were authorized to do.

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/083005cccawwlunwatering.45718845.html

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Dis
Another plus. Greta Van Sustrin has stopped covering the annoying Natalie Hollaway missing girl case in Aruba.

Finally some good news.

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by ajbera
Answers from Army Corps of Engineers on unwatering New Orleans

Q.2. Why did the levees fail?

A.2. What failed were actually floodwalls, not levees. This was caused by overtopping which caused scouring, or an eating away of the earthen support, which then basically undermined the wall.

These walls and levees were designed to withstand a fast moving category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a strong 4 at landfall, and conditions exceeded the design.


Q.3. Why only Category 3 protection?

A.3. That is what we were authorized to do.

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/0....45718845.html

Well I for one call that extreme negligence in the face of the close call New Orleans had with the category 4 Hurricane Ivan last year...

They had a whole year to upgrade and they had the precedent to do it because Ivan itself was already too strong for NO's defences.

Someone mentioned somewhere that the federal govt has actually been cutting funding - could it be that the US govt itself is responsible for the aftermath of NO in a major way...?

[techumseh]

Originally posted by DanS


1. It's not hundreds of thousands of people who don't have a car. Don't exaggerate. The vast majority of people have a car.

Well, a little research clearly shows how wrong you are. The affected gulf coast region has a population of 10 million. In the US 10% of all families and 25% of families earning $25 thousand or less have no car. If we assume (generously) that there are 4 people per family, that's 2.5 million families times 10% equals 250,000 people without a car.

Except that New Orleans is one of the poorest US cities. Louisiana has 181,000 families living in poverty, with a poverty rate of 19.1% (US census). In New Orleans itself, the poverty rate is 28%. So the percent of people without cars is going to be much higher in the city itself.

2. They had a 72-hour evacuation plan and this hurricane did unexpected things that shortened the available time.

Why did they assume that nature would give them three days warning?

3. This is a natural disaster of rather immense proportions. It is natural that it will take a couple of days to get a handle on things. Even in the US, where everything normally works.

That's true, but the lack of preparation in anticipation of this type of predictable event is obvious. There was NO evacuation plan that took the large numbers of poor in to account, NO housing plan for the large numbers of refugees, and the lack of coordination of the emergency relief agencies is pretty obvious as well.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DanS
1. It's not hundreds of thousands of people who don't have a car. Don't exaggerate. The vast majority of people have a car.

You car owners just assume everyone has a car. If that were true, no one would use public transit. Trust me, hundreds of thousands of people do not have cars. Cars are generally a pain in the ass to own in the city.

[DanS]

You car owners just assume everyone has a car.

Who said I have a car?

[DanS]

The affected gulf coast region has a population of 10 million.

We're talking about New Orleans and surrounding areas behind the levees. I guess there's about a million people who lived behind the levees. Perhaps substantially fewer (I haven't done all of the math).

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by techumseh
Except that New Orleans is one of the poorest US cities. Louisiana has 181,000 families living in poverty, with a poverty rate of 19.1% (US census). In New Orleans itself, the poverty rate is 28%. So the percent of people without cars is going to be much higher in the city itself.

But you're forgetting that DanS doesn't know poverty, living in D.C. he gets everything paid for him by the rest of the country...

I can personally testify that NO is poor as hell - it was easily the poorest city I have visited in the US, with vast swathes classed as 'no go areas' for the average citizen for fear of violent crime.

That's true, but the lack of preparation in anticipation of this type of predictable event is obvious. There was NO evacuation plan that took the large numbers of poor in to account, NO housing plan for the large numbers of refugees, and the lack of coordination of the emergency relief agencies is pretty obvious as well.

The only preparation I can tell was a vast amount of finger crossing on the part of the authorities - heads should definitely roll on this, right up to the people that allegedly cut the hurricane defence funding...

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
But you're forgetting that DanS doesn't know poverty, living in D.C. he gets everything paid for him by the rest of the country...

You really have no idea how bad DC is, do you?