Posted on 08/28/2005 5:00:35 PM PDT by gitmo
THE BOXES are stacked eight feet high and line the walls of the large, windowless room. Inside them are new body bags, 10,000 in all. If a big, slow-moving hurricane crossed the Gulf of Mexico on the right track, it would drive a sea surge that would drown New Orleans under 20 feet of water. "As the water recedes," says Walter Maestri, a local emergency management director, "we expect to find a lot of dead bodies."
New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms. The low-lying Mississippi Delta, which buffers the city from the gulf, is also rapidly disappearing. A year from now another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh-an area the size of Manhattan-will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes. Each loss gives a storm surge a clearer path to wash over the delta and pour into the bowl, trapping one million people inside and another million in surrounding communities. Extensive evacuation would be impossible because the surging water would cut off the few escape routes. Scientists at Louisiana State University (L.S.U.), who have modeled hundreds of possible storm tracks on advanced computers, predict that more than 100,000 people could die. The body bags wouldnÆt go very far.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciamdigital.com ...
I can't believe all the people lined up to get into the SuperDome. This could be devasting folks.
This is a 1998 modelling a CAT 4 or CAT 5 moving through New Orleans in a very similar path.
Great find.
Yes indeed. It's like people never think about survival. As this article indicates, this has been anticipated for decades.
So God essentially just runs For/Against polls? "Cap'n, I canna give ye any more prayer! She's gonna blow!" - Scotty
I've had the same thought.
I was living in one of the areas hit by the hurricanes in FL last year, and can say for a fact it is a very scary situation. I did not want to leave my home, or my cats, so I stayed put. When you know for a fact that no 911 service rescue is available, and you are there for the duration, good or bad, it is enough to make long lasting memories.
Great post
I had the exact same thought listening to the mayor's speech earlier today.
The tankers pull up, dump the MidEast oil andWhere does the Venezuelan oil dump?
The Dutch deal with it.
Closer to Texas? Bite your tongue!
The impact on the economy will be huge. The Mississippi could be blocked, so barge traffic will be affected. Expect the increased demand on rail freight to affect rates there. Then there is the oil impact. This could be a tremendous shock to the economy. Get ready for long lines at the gas pump, and higher prices for goods.
Actually the worst part wouldn't be a surge in oil prices, it would be the human tragedy of dead residents, guardsmen and so forth.
Oil scarcity and prices are an inconvenience not a tragedy.
They get a lot of cat-5 hurricanes there?
Let's see:
Massive disaster pending? check
Politicians delay evacuations until it's too late ? check
Desperate survivors huddled in famous landmark? check
Haven't we seen this movie before?
Can cockroaches swim?
No, but they reclaim land from the ocean. What's NO done lately?
...as well as MANY refineries in the NO area. Gas prices could quickly be much higher if the worst happens...
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