Posted on 09/01/2005 4:30:06 PM PDT by FormerACLUmember
It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.
But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.
The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.
Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.
"The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours—coming from the worst direction," says Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast. Suhayda is sitting in a lakefront restaurant on an actual August afternoon sipping lemonade and talking about the chinks in the city's hurricane armor. "I don't think people realize how precarious we are," Suhayda says, watching sailboats glide by. "Our technology is great when it works. But when it fails, it's going to make things much worse."
The chances of such a storm hitting New Orleans in any given year are slight, but the danger is growing. Climatologists predict that powerful storms may occur more frequently this century, while rising sea level from global warming is putting low-lying coasts at greater risk. "It's not if it will happen," says University of New Orleans geologist Shea Penland. "It's when."
Wow. They nailed this one.
Yep. I was going to say that it wasn't really a hard prediction to make. It's a little like predicting the seasons.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/1282151.html
Interesting! I wonder if they will have the sense to not rebuild New Orleans as it was. If they do, it will happen again.
Is this real or a hoax?
This guy NAILED it. I hope he's wrong on the 50,000 dead though...
Amazing.
2004! Bah. I lived on the West Bank in 1980 and it was common knowledge that it was just a matter of time.
One day I watched as the rain quit and the waters kept coming to inches of my house until they finally got the failed pumps working again. The pumps pumping water into our area were working fine, the ones pumping out failed.
And this was just a regular ol' rainstorm.
Almost like saying It'll snow in Michigan this winter.
It is legitimate.. click on the National Geographic link. 50,000 dead was his figure for a Category 5 hurricane. This was a Category 3 and it made landfall to the east of the doomed city.
I don't know why anyone would call it "amazing." It's just common sense.
I think that being UNDER sea level is about as obvious as it can get.
Is there a story about the founders of NO being warned by indians not to build there?
Living in NOLA is like taking a nap in your vehicle on a railroad tracks every day. You know only one train a day uses that track.
While you are sleeping, bell start sounding, the crossing gates come down and the police wake you up and tell you to move.
You decide to stay and get killed by the train. That is what happened in NOLA. There was an evacuation order well in advance for almost everyone, not thousands of people, to get the out in time.
I read the article...it's even eerier than that...
It says:
BY JIM WILSON
Published on: September 11, 2001
ping
He does seem to have been pretty accurate with regard to the other stats. I'm with you. I sure hope he's wrong when it comes to the final death toll.
see post 10
This will go down as the most predicted disaster in history.
With the exception of a few Cassandras among us, we have no-one but ourselves to blame.
It was only a matter of when.
The scenario we're watching now has been predicted by many.
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