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 ...
What's that Led Zepplin tune? "When the Levee Breaks"
Prayers going up for all of those in harms way. This is just terrible.
I was thinking more of The Tragically Hip's "New Orleans is Sinking(and I Don't Wanna Swim").
The LOOP can sustain 200 mph winds, so the engineers say.
We lose the LOOP, we will be looking back fondly at gas only being 3 bucks a gallon.
The offshore rigs are in danger as well.
On the Gulf Coast, I'd say about 80% of us do. More than that in Mississippi, Louisiana and SE Texas.
That's a good one. Also Randy Newman Louisiana 1927.
That's a good one. Also Randy Newman Louisiana 1927.
God Bless New Orleans..they are gonna need it..
Yes, they've known for a long time this could happen. Sad that the governor and mayor did so little to prepare.
This could be the worst US disaster ever.
Of course, I'm sure that it is, somehow, all George Bush's fault. (I'm just waiting for that explanation to be given...if it already hasn't)
Praying is very powerful. In 1980 when Hurricane Allen, with the lowest pressure ever recorded at 888mbs, was heading straight for Brownsville with approximately the same size and intensity of Katrina, the National Weather Service guy signed off with, "We are being evacuated now. May God have mercy on Brownsville." A miracle happened and the huge storm fell apart off the coast. Incidentally, this is the storm that Pat Robertson took credit for stopping, since he had asked all the audience of the PTL Club to pray and practically at that instant, the storm collapsed. Considering his bad publicity last week, I hope Pat is praying today to stop Katrina! (Personally, I think it will come in west of NO, closer to the Texas border, unless it abruptly turns north.)
IS what they are saying true? If so, New Orleans is gonna need all the help they can get.
Like what did you have in mind?
The rant of the left is that the LA National Guard is deployed to a unjustified war in Iraq and is unavailable to save the 'Narlins folk. Yep. Bush's fault.
Oh, I dunno.
Stuff happens.
Don't forget the Clinton administration.
Organizing public transportation to get the tourists out, for one thing. Some of the tourists interviewed didn't even know there was a hurricane coming: they were on vacation, and didn't watch the news. Someone should have told them. The President had to twist the mayor's arm to get them to call for an evacuation, fer cryin' out loud. Shame on them.
That's nonsense. The NG is there in New Orleans, which they'd know if they watched the news instead of flapping their useless jaws.
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