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

[atawa]

Yes, lets build large dikes right through the city center so next time only half the city becomes submerged...

[Edan]

HELPPP from writes:

5851. BAPTIST HOSIPTAL EMERGENCY
by Jillybean82, 8/31/05 16:52 ET
Baptist hospital has been taken over with guns. it is horrible. I talked to my friend who is a nurse. she was screaming that is terrible. there are bodies just everywhere. people are stealing all there supplies.

i don't know how to get this information to the news station. This is first hand information.

there is 25ft of water in the hospital. Please please help.

http://www.nola.com/weblogs/nola/

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
And another thing...

Wouldn't it have been a good idea to section the levees so if one part failed only a limited sector would be flooded instead of this all or nothing situation you now have?

It works for large ships...

Like the Titanic?

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by MOBIUS


Because your govt is run by a bunch of retards...?

Because your govt refuses to make the correlation between burning hydrocarbons and global warming...?

Guess I've just been 100-0ed...

No, you have just for yet another time displayed that you don't know what you are talking about.

You can't in any way make any connection between burning hydrocarbons, global warming and what has happend in NO - any given hurricane of the size of the current that went the path of it would have made exactly the same damage.

There have been lots of similiar hurricanes historically, but they just have avoided to hit NO.

[Timexwatch]

Originally posted by MOBIUS


I'm sure you do very well out of it...

Actually I was pretty shocked getting out at Chinatown - you sort of knew that there was almost 100% certainty something bad would happen to you if you took the wrong turn...

Looking the one way kinda reminded me of the way the road the Hobbits were on in Fellowship of the Ring suddenly turns really sinister the first time they meet the Nazgul...

But NO made DC feel like the Garden of Eden by comparison...

If you want something to cry about, get off at the Anacostia, North Capitol Street or Congress Heights and then you'll see a scary neighborhood.

And DC doesn't do as well as you think. Large chunks of the wealth generated here gets shipped to Maryland and Virginia. It is, for the most part, still the "Chocolate City" with all the demographic and economic baggage that comes with that. I live in a neighborhood inhabited by Salvadorean immigrants living in packed apartment buildings and townhouses. Even with a University degree and decent jobs, many young people are barely treading water here (including me). Once again you're ill-informed about what you're talking about.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by techumseh
I have to say that the lack of planning for this hurricane is absolutely tragic. This was an event that was so predictable and so predicted, that the lack of real preparations are criminal. CNN keeps saying that the authorities are "overwhelmed", as if that is an excuse for the lack of an effective disaster plan. The confusion and lack of coordination of the relief agencies is obvious from watching the news coverage.

A day before the hurricane hit , the mayor of New Orleans said "everyone out", but forgot that 1/3 of the population has no car! There is no plan for those folks at all! The rich and middle income people got out, and the poor were left to drown. So they went to the Superdome, which has since become almost uninhabitable and the authorities have no plan to evacuate the people in it.

I watched the Governor of Mississippi lament the failure of many of his citizens to obey the evacuation order. He seems to have no idea that hundreds of thousands of poor people have no vehicle at all! Why was there not a real mobilization of transportation resources of the several states in time to get these people out? And there is no housing plan for the nearly 1 million people that are now homeless.

If this were not so tragic, it would be laughable. What a farce!

Wait for it. Our turn is coming. When the 'big one' hits, it could possibly wipe out Vancouver Island and major chunks of the lower mainland rather than, or in addition to LA and SF.

What sort of shape do you think the event will find our preparations in? Worse, how much outside help are we likely to be able to expect?

Fact is people don't really prepare for these sorts of things. If they did, half of North America would be living on the Canadian Shield and the great plains, not on the hurricane coasts and major fault lines.

[Kuciwalker]

Is this going to continue past 500 like the London thread?

[mrmitchell]

Originally posted by Edan

http://www.nola.com/weblogs/nola/

****.

[Lefty Scaevola]

Could have been ten times worse on a human scale. Without the unexpected burst of high pressure and dry air out of the midwest that weakened the sotrm, slowed it down, amd moved it eastwards, if would have hit early in th wee hours of monday morning, on the Mississippi mouth, with a 28 foot storm surge instead of a 15 foot one over east of lake mouths. You would have twice the wind damage in NO. Instead of a a few hundred feet of busted levee and water flowing up from the lake side, you would have thousand of feet of levees broken on the mississippi side, torrents gushing down onto and through the high side of NO from a level 8 to 15 feet higher than it came from the lake, Crashing down through downtown like a phalanx of bulldozers against the ground floors of the towers and the superdome. It would just undercut and peel up the rest of the river levees from behind all the way from the sea to miles above NO. Instead of flooding to a around sea level in 24 hours, it would be 5 to 10 feet higher, before dawn on monday. Killed would be in the thousands in few hours. Including most of the emegency pesronnel depolyed in the city. You might have the superdome collapsing in the dark on 20,000 people. Police and most other comunication would go out before dawn and the authritees outside lighky not even know what happend until midmorning on monday.

[mrmitchell]

Guys, what happens to skyscrapers after three weeks of being in water up to their third floor? There has to be some structural weakening?

[DanS]

Not in the slightest. They're rooted rather firmly in the ground. Even mid-rises are rooted very, very firmly.

[Tingkai]

Just read that death toll could exceed 1,000. My condolances to the people of New Orleans.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
Wouldn't it have been a good idea to section the levees so if one part failed only a limited sector would be flooded instead of this all or nothing situation you now have?

It is. Mulitple sections have failed. There are plent of pictures with flooding on one side of a canal and the other side is perfectly dry, even today.

[DanS]

CNN showed the first bus of Superdome evacuees has already arrived at the Astrodome. Much earlier than expected. 3 hour drive out of New Orleans and then fairly smooth driving the rest of the way.

Apparently, they are allowing people who were stranded on the interstate in New Orleans onto the busses (for Imran).

Extremely lucky to have a structurally sound freeway still standing into the heart of New Orleans.

[SlowwHand]

Thousands Feared Drowned in New Orleans

By ADAM NOSSITER, Associated Press Writer
13 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS - With thousands feared drowned in what could be America's deadliest natural disaster in a century, New Orleans' leaders all but surrendered the streets to floodwaters Wednesday and began turning out the lights on the ruined city — perhaps for months.

Looting spiraled so out of control that Mayor Ray Nagin ordered virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts and focus on the brazen packs of thieves who have turned increasingly hostile.

Nagin called for an all-out evacuation of the city's remaining residents. Asked how many people died, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."

**********************

Health Threats Grow in New Orleans

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer
1 hour, 16 minutes ago

As a public health catastrophe unfolded Wednesday in New Orleans, hospitals in the Crescent City sank further into disaster, airlifting babies without their parents to other states and struggling with more sick people appearing at their doors.
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Dangerous, unsanitary conditions spread across the city, much of which now sits in a murky stew of germs.

The federal government declared a public health emergency for the Gulf Coast region, promising 40 medical centers with up to 10,000 beds and thousands of doctors and nurses for the hurricane-ravaged area.