Posted on 11/03/2012 4:26:34 AM PDT by Bulwinkle
I've seen an estimate that there is/was up to 300 million gallons of water in NY subway system.
Katrina? "The unwatering team successfully removed 250 billion gallons of water from Orleans, St. Bernard and Jefferson parishes after Katrina " http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf/2012/10/new_orleans_corps_employees_jo.html
Sandy, though wide, was not Katrina... FEMA ain't close to handling a large storm.
I think that’s misleading, because the surge far exceeded what would be expected from a typical category 1 hurricane/storm. That’s what all the hype was about.
They told Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends they couldn’t come out his way because they didn’t have gas for their trucks.
Actually, Katrina was a Cat 3 storm when it came on shore in MS. LA would not have sustained such horrific damage had the levees been in good repair. The government had given billions to do just that, however the money was used for things such as building highways to the new casinos on the shore. No one ever checked to see what the money was being spent on. THat is government in a nut shell.
And no, FEMA cannot handle a big disaster, period. Take care of yourself and your family, and join a church with caring people. NEVER depend on government.
It will be after the elections before we see the real extent of the damage and the lack of FEMA response to the disaster.
The MSM has a bit of a dilemma - they love the Sandy stories because it helps give them enough cover to keep Benghazi off the front page, but they don't like reporting on another replacement story that makes Obama look like a fool.
FEMA is a joke and massive waste of money.
Time for people to get to know their neighbors and draw up some plans on how to take care of each other like Americans used to do.
Really, there’s absolutely no excuse for people to be digging through dumpsters and begging for water four and five days after what happened in the northeast. Emergency vehicles from the National Guard should be able to make it to virutally any neighborhood. If FEMA had been doing its job those people should have had water and military meals (MREs) in their hands the day after the storm hit.
Government run anything is a problem. Affirmative action appointments as well as diversity is more important than getting the most qualified in positions to adequately run anything. The system is so big the paperwork and red tape and knuckledragging and waste is enormous and notorious. How hard is it for the president to order c30 transports, fill them up, tell the governor in the state to have trailer trucks at the ready at the airport for load up and delivery while the red cross and others set up relief stations throughout the state.
...”LA would not have sustained such horrific damage had the levees been in good repair”....
The levees didn’t fail. Concrete floodwalls in two canals, one from the Mississippi River, the other from Lake Ponchartrain, were overtopped by storm surge and broke. There is a vast misconception that the levees failed.
I love it, The Katrina Beer Guy.......LOL.
Lets not forget that FEMA is now under the umbrella of Homeland Security which twists the mission of FEMA anyway.
I suspect most rural people feel the same way I do about natural disasters. Get the roads clear and get the power on, we’ll take care of the rest.
FEMA is for planing government response and the comptroller for federal assistance during a disaster. FEMA is not a first response organization and does not have equipment (they rent equipment or use the military) or manpower (less than 3000 personnel across the nation)to conduct operations. They rely on a tier system for response starting at with local level then state and then federal help in a disaster. they can help pay and order items but it the infrastructure must be built to provide needs to the people. I think that the the upper Atlantic and New England coastal states did not plan or did plan but did not have the money to afford to mitigate the affects of a storm like this. Lack if imagination on leadership. As usual it takes a disaster you live through to prepare for future ones.
However: NYC has always worried about flooding of the tunnels but why is there not infrastructure to pump the underground out?
FYI: I do not work for FEMA.
Katrina = FEMA failures = Bush’s fault
Sandy = FEMA failures = global warming
but at least obama looks “presidential”
* And in the surrounding areas of southern Mississippi and Alabama, the roads that ran through the country side were largely dirt roads.*
No they weren’t. It’s that Katrina washed the roads and bridges away. Paved roads and bridges.
“Actually, Katrina was a Cat 3 storm when it came on shore in MS. “
__________________________________
I agree. Katrina was a “disaster” primarily because of the
the total incompetence of the mayor and his local government.
IIRC, the French Quarter stayed in business.
No disrespect to any FReepers that lost property there.
The Gulf Coast has had many hurricanes in my lifetime that
caused enormous damage.
How many crybabies are still living in Katrina FEMA trailers?
Katrina's most devastating impact -- at least in New Orleans -- had nothing to do with wind or a storm surge. It was rainfall that inundated New Orleans, which explains why the city became a disaster zone long after the storm had passed. New Orleans was flooded by rain that fell far to the north in places like nothern Lousiana and Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, etc. -- and then drained down the Mississippi River over the course of several days.
Sandy’s lesson is right before your eyes just as it was with Katrina; You either prepare and stand on your own or you can depend or a bunch of self-serving politicos, third class bureaucratic and chance to provide your basic needs.
Me I don’t want to be beholden to anyone for providing what is needed for me and mine. I certainly don’t want to have to kiss some ‘gubberment’ third class bureaucratic to try and coax some help from them, I don’t want some ‘jack booted’ thug herding me in line and telling me where to stand, sit, eat or sleep. And last but not least I don’t want to be shut up in with a bunch of ‘zombies’ and have to worry about not only trying to get basic necessities but having to fight to keep what I manage to get.
Its your choice you can prep or you can stand around on a bridge waiting for FEMA to bring you a bottle of water, a MRE, a warm blanket and a kiss for your boo-boo. Maybe while you stand there you will get a chance to a prop in some politico’s photo op and even get your picture on the national news.
For those who are just starting or are old hands at prepping you may find my Preparedness Manual helpfull. You can download it at:
http://tomeaker.com/kart/Preparedness1j.pdf
NOTE! THIS IS A FREE DOWNLOAD. I DO NOT MAKE ONE CENT OFF MY PREPAREDNESS MANUAL!
For those of you who haven’t started already it’s time to prepare almost past time maybe. You needed to be stocking up on food guns, ammo, basic household supplies like soap, papergoods, cleaning supplies, good sturdy clothes including extra socks, underwear and extra shoes and boots, gas cans, cooking stove/fuel, tools, things you buy everyday start buying two and put one up.
As the LDS say “When the emergency is upon us the time for preparedness has past.”
Or as the bible says: A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.
NIV Proverbs 22:3
I also like to recomend FReeper’s ChocoChipCookie Blog The Survival Mom (Please Blog Police let this one slide!) Where you can get lots of useful information like:
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2011/11/20/8-morale-boosters-for-any-worst-case-scenario/
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2010/02/02/survival-priorities-the-rule-of-three/
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2010/12/29/normalcy-bias/
And More
“There is no greater disaster than to underestimate danger.
Underestimation can be fatal.”
Preppers’ PING!!
NO SMSA 1,235,650 people
NY SMSA 22,085,649 people
NO SMSA 3,755.2 sq. mi.
NY SMSA 11,842 sq mi
Just Manhattan by itself has 1,601,948 population.
You could send the Louisiana National Guard to The City and they could stand on corners all day long and do what?
Alas, levees, once there’s water behind them, work just fine ~ and become part of the problem. I think they’ve improved the AFTER THE STORM drainage capability there.
I’m sure most people don’t understand that New Orleans was extremely lucky with Katrina. By turning to the east before it came ashore the main damage from storm surges was to the Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Biloxi area. Not to diminish the damage in NO but had the storm been 50 miles to the west, there would be no NO today. Waveland was basically wiped of the map near the water as was much of Bay St. Louis. But the residents put their heads down and went to work re-building for the next one to tear it up again. The devistation in NJ and NY will be a VERY long time getting fixed and we pray for those folks with colder weather on the approach. But, the race must go on right Bloomy? Idiot!
Helping keep mankind warm for 65 years.
HY - huge numbers of high rise buildings
NO - not so much
In the high rises without power, the elevators don’t work. All food, water, and other emergency supplies have to be carried up dozens of flights of stairs. Each gallon of water weighs 8 lbs. I saw a report with 60 and 70 year old people carrying water and food up dozens of flights of stairs. They should have drafted some of the marathon runners to help with this.
Maybe by now they’ve rigged up some pulleys to raise the supplies from the exterior.
I would suggest that you seriously need to go and read in detail the reports by the American Society of Civil Engineers, Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force (IPET) which was headed by the Army Corp of Engineers (who were obviously accused of lacking credibility), University of California at Berkeley, Louisiana Department of Transportation and others.
There was a total of 50 locations along the levees were problems occurred and of the just under 300 miles of levees, approximately 60% of it ended up being damaged. There was some overtopping but even in those cases, some levees continued to perform except where they were built on dirt or peat that was quick to erode. Like all major disasters, there wasn’t just ‘one thing’ that could be pointed to after the fact… there was a huge number of design flaws with respect to the poor reinforcement of the levees, the fact that much of it was built on substrata of incredibly low and unacceptable shear strength that had been grossly overestimated with regards to its strength, pilings that were not deep enough, levee sections that were not interlocked, lack of maintenance, a fundamental problem with the design of the I-walls (that had been clearly identified in 1984 as being a disaster waiting to happen) and on and on… The real problem was that there were four major levee breaks which occurred where the water level was still below its design elevation i.e. no overtopping required for failure. Some of those were located in neighbourhoods where the residents had been reporting the growing ‘marshes’ in their backyards for several years. It is not possible to summarize fat reports into a couple of concise conclusions but suffice it to say that when the Army Corp of Engineers accepts the responsibility for the mess, what you are obviously dealing with is a massive engineering failure.
I have seen the report. I also toured the catastrophe zones in March 2006. My understanding from the tour and presentation is that the Lower 9th Ward and Lakeview were inundated because the canal floodwalls failed. While there indeed were some levee failures in the network, the catastrophic flooding was due to floodwalls breaking.
I agree with you but for a different reason. In my post up above, I mentioned the levee failures that occurred which were not related to any ‘overtopping mechanism’ but had more to do with poor design and inadequate soil strength. The higher water levels accompanying the storm surge made it more likely the failure would occur during a hurricane but theoretically, it could have happened anytime since the margin of safety in the levee design was so low (essentially one). What Katrina did was put everyone on high alert so folks had already taken shelter, moved out, higher ground etc. If that failure had of occurred in the middle of the night when nobody was on high alert, chances are that from a human life perspective, the disaster could have been much worse. Katrina might have saved more lives than it cost.
***There is a vast misconception that the levees failed.***
I have read that the levee failed because a barge broke loose and drifted into it.
“And in the surrounding areas of southern Mississippi and Alabama, the roads that ran through the country side were largely dirt roads”
Uh... I-10 was open right after the storm. I know because I drove from Gulfport,Ms to Mobile,Al that day. Paved the whole way.
There were so many problems occurring simultaneously that it’s virtually impossible to sort out what by your definition might be classified as ‘catastrophic flooding’ as opposed to some local ‘garden variety flooding’. The levee along the Mississippi River – Gulf Outlet was completely wiped out. The I-wall along the Industrial Canal, the South Breach and the East Bank were overtopped and obliterated… did that occur strictly due to the ‘overtopping’ per se? Or did it happen because of the poor design of the I-wall which even if overtopped didn’t necessarily have to collapse i.e. if you’ve read the reports you know that the water gap caused by the poor design of I-wall quickly caused a sliding soil condition and entire sections were simply shifted along to the point of destruction. And then as I mentioned earlier, there were walls that went down which were not overtopped at all. None of this really matters of course….it all comes down to proper engineering design, selecting the right materials, making sure that everything was constructed properly and then inspected/maintained properly afterwards. Overall, it was an engineering failure pure and simple… many will blame corrupt politicians and deals that allowed substandard materials and methods to be used. None of this exonerates the engineers who put their licenses on the line and can always withdraw their services if asked to do something that compromises proper design.
What? I live in South Mississippi, and I was here when Katrina hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Despite stereotypes of the South, our roads are indeed paved.
Although Katrina did damage all through the state, the heaviest destruction was not in the "country side," but in South Mississippi near the beach, where the storm surge did a number on many of those paved roads, not to mention the homes and businesses that used to exist.
HUH? I didn't realize that they still don't have paved roads south of the Mason Dixon line.
If FEMA had been doing its job those people should have had water and military meals (MREs) in their hands the day after the storm hit.
Really? Does it take one of us dumb rednecks down here driving around on dirt roads to have the brains to get a few things in the house to survive? I've been through quite a few hurricanes here on the gulf coast, it really is simple, even for a hillbilly redneck. Is it that hard to at least get a few loaves of bread, some lunch meat or whatever you fancy. You might consider some bottled water, we bubbas ALWAYS make sure and have plenty of beer too. I can't imagine not having at least a weeks worth of food in the house anyway.
Bottom line, it is best to have your own plan in the event of an emergency. We deal with hurricanes down here on the gulf coast, if I lived in the northeast I would be prepared for a blizzard more than a tropical storm. A massive power outage in the northeast could be hell too, given the population density.
If New Jersey had a black population (13+%) as New Orleans (67+%), they would have been in there BEFORE the storm hit.
I have a friend in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, that was able to call me and tell me what he needed after Katrina hit. We loaded a truck full of supplies (water, fuel, food, chainsaw equipment) with enough gas to get us down there and back (600 miles round trip) and took it to him. Many of my neighbors did the same thing. My bets those in NYC haven’t got friends with the ability to do what we were able to accomplish. We “Bubbas” can take care of ourselves, no matter where we live.
We knew this storm would hit for at least 5 days. Why weren’t these supplies...food, gas, water, blankets moved into place IN ADVANCE?
Why didn't the residences gather their own supplies? FEMA, Red Cross, utility workers, and various other blanket carriers can't possibly be at everyone's front door the second the storm passed.
Sorry AC, your impression that the flooding in NOLA was due to rain is incorrect. There was indeed a storm surge that accompanied Katrina’s landfall. As someone earlier noted, the flooding in the city was due to over topped, then failed levees.
The catastrophic damage in the outlying parishes and across Mississippi and Alabama had nothing to do with rain. It was all wind and storm surge. 300 foot long casinos were lifted across Hwy. 90. Sections of bridges on I-10 across the Lake and at Pascagoula were washed out as were the Hwy. 90 bridges at Pass Christian and at Biloxi. All of these bridges were 14 to 16 feet above sea level. Rain did not cause that.
My parents live approximately six miles north of the Gulf and over two miles east of Lake Ponchartrain at an eight foot elevation and over thirty miles from the Mississippi River. They had four and a half feet of water in their house. Rain did not cause that.
The government spends so much money on climate alarmism that it doesn’t have the resources to deal with real weather events.
According to sworn testimony of the Army Corps before Congress, the failure of levees and other structures that led to the flooding of New Orleans was the result of design and construction flaws. Nothing whatever to do with maintenance. It was a federal flood, period.
Didn’t you have to detour at Pascagoula? IIRC, the east-bound bridge lost a section or two, or at least was damaged by floating barges.
My family from Slidell was staying with me north of Mobile and we made the trip back to the damage as soon as they let people back into Slidell three or four days later. The west-bound bridge was still converted to two-way traffic.
living in a high rise with the power out is a mess. that was one of the problems in the place I lived back during Agnes ~ no power no elevator but we had water so we had flushing toilets. friends from work who lived out in Fairfax County stopped by for showers after work ~ they had no water no power.
The crybabies are all in NY / NJ now. Most took no precautions because they assumed living in the shadow of the Greatest City In The World meant nothing really bad could ever befall them.
Btw, the French Quarter lost power too. I cannot think of a single place in Nola that didn’t. It wasn’t like sandy, where you could scoot a couple of miles upriver and find everything up and running. 80% of nyc never lost power in sandy. The homes flooded in Ny /Nj are a fraction of the thousands inundated by Katrina. Close to 20 times more people died.
My power was out for 88 hours just this year after Isaac. You probably never even heard about Isaac. Let me assure you that being out of electricity in 95f weather is far worse than 55f. Of course after Katrina I was out of power for a month.
It is not easy to feel sympathy for people whose hardship is not so severe and could have been mitigated even more if they had had the responsibility to keep a week’s worth of food on hand, fill their gas tank, and buy some propane and charcoal and batteries. What the hell were they doing with the week’s warning they received, besides wring their hands or watch tv?
You have no clue what you’re talking about. That is some pretty extreme myth making. Makes you look silly, I have to say.
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/world/cia-tried-to-save-envoys-in-libya-660276/
Here is a great picture of a chinook dropping sandbags into the levee breach of the Industrial Canal.
Basically correct. The i10 twin span in lake pontchartrain lost one span to storm surge. The causeway was closed to all but emergency vehicles. Returning on Laborious day I took the inland route from Florida, where trees were mowed down in ranks and power was out in Laurel, 200 miles from the coast.
I returned to my home via i55 to airline hwy, then to causeway which I took to river road, which took me to st Charles ave.
I would trade Katrina for sandy any day. Shoot, Isaac just this year hit me way harder than sandy hit most folks this week. Irresponsible,spoiled crybabies.
I’ll gladly stand corrected, if I’m wrong. I thought that was why New Orleans began flooding long after most media reports indicated that it had “dodged a bullet” when Katrina made landfall to the east in Mississippi.
Add to that the surrounding metropolitan area that includes northern New Jersey, the lower Hudson River valley, Long Island, and southwester Connecticut ... and you've got another 10-15 million people and a disaster in the making. There simply isn't any effective way to do disaster preparation for that many people in an urban area, especially when you consider that the single most popular disaster preparation measure most people in this region took -- namely, the purchase of portable generators in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene last year -- is losing its effectiveness as fuel becomes scarce.
Personally, I think this is the flaw in any urban environment where constraints on space and the tendency to take things for granted really erode a lot of the survival instincts that humans should have.
We were without power in our home in LA (Lower Alabama) for about a week and a half but managed to make do with ice chests, and by periodically running the generator. We had twelve adults, two toddlers, six dogs, two cockatiels and too many cats to count. We spent a lot of time outdoors listening to radios trying to catch news on WWL. It wasn’t easy, but I was just thankful they heeded my urging to get out of Slidell before the storm.
My parents ended up staying with us for six months ‘til they got a FEMA trailer in their front yard.
Yes, sandy affected a much bigger population area. For 90% of them sandy was a stormy night. For 9.9% it was a Multi day inconvenience. For only about 0.1% was it traumatic and life changing.
A year after Katrina I saw a black woman in the grocery store. The front of her t shirt said “where’d you go? “ The back side said “how’d you make out? “ Everyone within a hundred miles would have understood.
If you’re saying that many of the preps taken for sandy were ill considered or hopelessly inadequate, I agree. Urban life does seem to attenuate survival skills.
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