Hurricane Katrina Live Thread, Part VIII

Category	Wind Speed	Barometric Pressure	Storm Surge	Damage Potential
Tropical Depression	< 39 mph < 34 kts			Minimal
Tropical Storm	39 - 73 mph 34 - 63 kts			Minimal
Hurricane 1 (Weak)	74 - 95 mph 64 - 82 kts	28.94" or more 980.02 mb or more	4.0' - 5.0' 1.2 m - 1.5 m	Minimal damage to vegetation
Hurricane 2 (Moderate)	96 - 110 mph 83 - 95 kts	28.50" - 28.93" 965.12 mb - 979.68 mb	6.0' - 8.0' 1.8 m - 2.4 m	Moderate damage to houses
Hurricane 3 (Strong)	111 - 130 mph 96 - 112 kts	27.91" - 28.49" 945.14 mb - 964.78 mb	9.0' - 12.0' 2.7 m - 3.7 m	Extensive damage to small buildings
Hurricane 4 (Very strong)	131 - 155 mph 113 - 135 kts	27.17" - 27.90" 920.08 mb - 944.80 mb	13.0' - 18.0' 3.9 m - 5.5 m	Extreme structural damage
Hurricane 5 (Devastating)	Greater than 155 mph Greater than 135 kts	Less than 27.17" Less than 920.08 mb	Greater than 18.0' Greater than 5.5m	Catastrophic building failures possible

To: NotJustAnotherPrettyFace

ALL LOOK AT THIS!!!!
..5 feet of water at "B" thats the building where JC is
CLICK

3,021 posted on 08/29/2005 10:07:58 AM PDT by janetjanet998

THOSE GOING INTO ATTICS SHOULD TRY TO TAKE AN AXE OR HATCHET WITH THEM SO THEY CAN CUT THEIR WAY ONTO THE ROOF TO AVOID DROWNING SHOULD RISING FLOOD WATERS CONTINUE TO RISE INTO THE ATTIC.

This made the hair on the back of my neck stand up!

3,022 posted on 08/29/2005 10:08:15 AM PDT by pgkdan

Katrina Floods New Orleans, Gulf Coast

Excerpt: Katrina Floods New Orleans, Gulf Coast - Yahoo! News
Posted: Monday August 29,2005 - 09:51:58 am

By ADAM NOSSITER, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Katrina plowed into this below-sea-level city Monday with shrieking, 145-mph winds and blinding rain that flooded homes to the rooflines and peeled away part of the Superdome, where thousands of people had taken shelter.

Katrina weakened overnight to a Category 4 storm and made a slight turn to the right before hitting land at 6:10 a.m. CDT near the bayou town of Buras. It passed just to the east of New Orleans as it moved inland, sparing this vulnerable city its full fury.

But National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield warned that New Orleans would be pounded throughout the day and that Katrina's potential 15-foot storm surge, down from a feared 28 feet, was still enough to cause extensive flooding.

"I'm not doing too good right now," Chris Robinson said via cellphone from his home east of the city's downtown. "The water's rising pretty fast. I got a hammer and an ax and a crowbar, but I'm holding off on breaking through the roof until the last minute. Tell someone to come get me please. I want to live."

On the south shore of Lake Ponchartrain, entire neighborhoods of one-story, shotgun-style homes were flooded up to the rooflines. The Interstate 10 off-ramps nearby looked like boat ramps amid the whitecapped waves. Garbage cans and tires bobbed in the water.

Two people were stranded on the roof as murky water lapped at the gutters.

"Get us a boat!" a man in a black slicker shouted over the howling winds.

Across the street, a woman leaned from the second-story window of a brick home and shouted for assistance.

"There are three kids in here," the woman said. "Can you help us?"

Elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, the storm flung boats onto land in Mississippi, lashed street lamps and flooded roads in Alabama, and swamped highway bridges in the Florida Panhandle. At least a half-million people were without power from Louisiana to Florida's Panhandle, including 370,000 in southeastern Louisiana and 116,400 in Alabama, mostly in the Mobile area.

At New Orleans' Superdome, home to 9,000 storm refugees, the wind peeled pieces of metal from the golden roof, leaving two holes that let water drip in. People inside were moved out of the way. Others stayed and watched as sheets of metal flapped and rumbled loudly 19 stories above the floor.

Building manager Doug Thornton said the larger hole was 15 to 20 feet long and four to five feet wide. Outside, one of the 10-foot, concrete clock pylons set up around the Superdome blew over.

Elsewhere in the city, the storm shattered scores of windows in high-rise office buildings and on five floors of the Charity Hospital, forcing patients to be moved to lower levels. At the Windsor Court Hotel, guests were told to go into the interior hallways with blankets and pillows and to keep the doors to the rooms closed to avoid flying glass.

In suburban Jefferson Parish, Sheriff Harry Lee said residents of a building on the west bank of the Mississippi River called 911 to say the building had collapsed and people might be trapped. He said deputies were not immediately able to check out the building because their vehicles were unable to reach the scene.

At 11 a.m. EDT, Katrina was centered 35 miles northeast of New Orleans, moving to the north at 16 mph. The storm's winds dropped to 125 mph — a Category 3 storm — as it pushed inland, threatening the Gulf Coast and the Tennessee Valley with as much as 15 inches of rain over the next couple of days and up to 8 inches in the drought-stricken Ohio Valley and eastern Great Lakes.

Katrina was a terrifying, 175-mph Category 5 behemoth — the most powerful category on the scale — before weakening.

By midday, the brunt of the storm had moved beyond New Orleans to Mississippi's coast, home to the state's floating casinos, where Katrina recorded a 22-foot storm surge and washed sailboats onto a coastal four-lane highway.

Trees were blown across streets and onto houses, utility poles dangled in the wind and billboards were shredded. Windows of a major hospital were blown and the Beau Rivage Hotel and Casino, one of the premier gambling spots in Biloxi, had water on the first floor.

Katrina was the most powerful storm to affect Mississippi since Hurricane Camille came in as a Category 5 in 1969, killing 143 people along the Gulf Coast.

"This is a devastating hit — we've got boats that have gone into buildings," Gulfport, Miss., Fire Chief Pat Sullivan said as he maneuvered around downed trees in the city. "What you're looking at is Camille II."

In New Orleans' historic French Quarter of Napoleonic-era buildings with wrought-iron balconies, water pooled in the streets from the driving rain, but the area appeared to have escaped the catastrophic flooding that forecasters had predicted.

On Jackson Square, two massive oak trees outside the 278-year-old St. Louis Cathedral came out by the roots, ripping out a 30-foot section of ornamental iron fence and straddling a marble statue of Jesus Christ, snapping off only the thumb and forefinger of his outstretched hand.

At the hotel Le Richelieu, the winds blew open sets of balcony French doors shortly after dawn. Seventy-three-year-old Josephine Elow of New Orleans pressed her weight against the broken doors as a hotel employee tried to secure them.

"It's not life-threatening," Mrs. Elow said as rain water dripped from her face. "God's got our back."

Elow's daughter, Darcel Elow, was awakened before dawn by a high-pitched howling that sounded like a trumpeting elephant. "I thought it was the horn to tell everybody to leave out the hotel," she said as she walked the hall in her nightgown.

For years, forecasters have warned of the nightmare scenario a big storm could bring to New Orleans, a bowl of a city that is up to 10 feet below sea level in spots and relies on a network of levees, canals and pumps to keep dry from the Mississippi River on one side, Lake Pontchartrain on the other.

The fear was that flooding could overrun the levees and turn New Orleans into a toxic lake filled with chemicals and petroleum from refineries, as well as waste from ruined septic systems.

The National Weather Service reported that a levee broke on the Industrial Canal near the St. Bernard-Orleans parish line, and 3 to 8 feet of flooding was possible. The Industrial Canal is a 5.5-mile waterway that connects the Mississippi River to the Intracoastal Waterway.

3,023 posted on 08/29/2005 10:08:37 AM PDT by cgk (We'll have to deal w/ the networks. One way to do that is to drain the swamp they live in - Rumsfeld)

3,024 posted on 08/29/2005 10:08:40 AM PDT by snowsislander

I just heard about the report from Jim Cantore's producer...it seems that those saying NO dodged a bullet and that the storm was over hyped may have spoken too soon. I'm praying for everyone in this storm's path. I think we're going to see some real ugly pictures tomorrow. I think people are going to be stunned.

I mean every meteorologist I heard yesterday said that the storm surge would come after the Katrina had past over New Orleans, and that would be when the heavy flooding would occur. Don't these reporters even listen to their own experts?

3,025 posted on 08/29/2005 10:08:41 AM PDT by Smogger

To: Diddle E. Squat

Shep reporting on Fox. ... worst of the storm is over. Severe flooding on the Eastern side of the city.

3,026 posted on 08/29/2005 10:08:43 AM PDT by Michael Goldsberry (Galveston)

"MSM doesn't mention the snake & gator dangers enough to residents. People go back to their homes [in disarray] and many get bitten by a snake hiding under a sofa, in a cabinet, etc. [MSM never mentions this.]"

There was a man on TV yesterday that said in a large hurricane many years ago the deaths were not from wind or flooding but from snake bites. Ick.

3,027 posted on 08/29/2005 10:08:48 AM PDT by WestCoastGal (Thank you JR for pulling this limping team across the finish in 9th place)

To: Hillarys Gate Cult

Haley Barbour saying MEMA knows a lot of people are trapped, but cannot get to them until winds die down...says some towns along coast are under water.

3,028 posted on 08/29/2005 10:08:53 AM PDT by BurbankKarl

Someone tell Shep to shut up ...I want to hear what the President has to say.

3,029 posted on 08/29/2005 10:09:03 AM PDT by Dog ( "Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.")

To: Hillarys Gate Cult

During hurricane Hugo, Charleston Police Chief Greenberg said he wouldn't arrest the looters as he couldn't spare the people to guard them, but to beat and release them.

I believe the quote was: "I'm not going to have my jail filled up with looters. if you catch somebody looting, beat their a$$ and send them on their way."

3,030 posted on 08/29/2005 10:09:35 AM PDT by uglybiker (Did ya hear the one about the cannibal who passed his best friend in the forest?)

Does anyone live in or near (or know anyone) Hattiesburg, MS, and could tell me how it is there? My Dad's aging sisters live there, and I'm concerned about them. He did say they have some friends with a sturdier house they might be able to stay with.

It's around 111 miles NNE of NOLA

3,031 posted on 08/29/2005 10:09:44 AM PDT by easonc52

Fox reporting it is crossing the wires that Biloxi and Mobile have been hit very hard.....very hard.

Apparently some morons around here think that since NO didn't get the worst of the storm, it didn't happen.

I was reading a lot of posts around 6 to 7 AM (EST) and there were already idiots complaining about "over hyping", and how things weren't as bad as predicted. And that was before landfall! As God is my witness, I can't figure out what the problem is with these people. I guess they just have to have something to complain about.

3,032 posted on 08/29/2005 10:09:48 AM PDT by TomB ("The terrorist wraps himself in the world's grievances to cloak his true motives." - S. Rushdie)

He is giving amnesty to anyone who suck in before 2005.

3,033 posted on 08/29/2005 10:10:18 AM PDT by BurbankKarl

To: Marysecretary

"So, ships are made for this kind of thing."

If they are very large and not close to land. Small ships don't always do so well and all ships have a hard time if they are repeatedly bashed into the shore.

3,034 posted on 08/29/2005 10:10:35 AM PDT by monday

Finally Fox breaks away from the idiot Shep...

3,035 posted on 08/29/2005 10:10:39 AM PDT by Dog ( "Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.")

"Shep reporting on Fox. ... worst of the storm is over."

Shep has a tendency to want to be first with the news, like when he announced the pope's death a day ahead of time, so I wouldn't take his word for it.

3,036 posted on 08/29/2005 10:10:53 AM PDT by Steve_Seattle

Thanks for that Natchez update!

3,037 posted on 08/29/2005 10:10:58 AM PDT by Cedar

The good Lord provided plenty of information and plenty of help.

Hope you never find yourself in trouble because of bad choices

3,038 posted on 08/29/2005 10:10:59 AM PDT by don-o (Don't be a Freeploader. Do the right thing and become a Monthly Donor!)

3,039 posted on 08/29/2005 10:11:33 AM PDT by 4everontheRight (Born/raised on MS beaches (SC now)...Criminals feed on the indulgence of society's understanding)

I thought they deliberately dynamited the levee south of New Orleans during Betsy to save Uptown. That's what I heard, at least. Was that just a rumor?

Yes, but like many falsehoods, loosely based on truth. In 1920 or thereabouts, when the Mississippi was at a seasonally VERY high level, they feared the levees would break and flood the city. The decision was made to dynamite the levee below New Orleans, thus flooding the area where St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes meet. This was done, and I believe it had the desired effect. Desired, at least, on the part of New Orleans residents, much less so to those living in the now-flooded area. I went to the St. Bernard Library years ago and looked up the actual microfilmed articles myself. Pretty interesting - they went way overboard, blowing up about 1/2 mile of levee and actually using up all available dynamite in the city!

To this day there is a long body of water known to locals as "the crevasse" which according to their stories is the spot where the first blast was made. The crevasse was supposedly carved out by those initial rushing waters, undermining a nearby railroad track and sending several boxcars to the bottom, where they still lie. (This could simply be local legend, but tracks indeed run right by the end of the water.)

See this map. "The crevasse" is the body of water just south of Saro Lane.

FYI, the Mississippi indeed gets seasonally very high at times. To alleviate stress off the levees when it does, the Army Corps of Engineers opens the Bonnet Carre Spillway, a long channel above New Orleans dammed by floodgates which diverts some of the flow directly into Lake pontchartrain.

3,040 posted on 08/29/2005 10:11:37 AM PDT by gbunch (Inventor of the P-Sight rear blade sight for Kel-Tec P-3AT/P-32 http://www.psenhancements.com)

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