Please refrain from petty arguments, juvenile jokes, and off-topic discussions on this thread. The subject matter is too important.
One thing that has been repeatedly asked on these threads that I think is on-topic; "Why did 'they' build a city in a spot 8 feet below sea level?"
The answer is that 'they' didn't. When New Orleans was founded, it was above sea level. The problem is that the land has subsided. New Orleans is on a silt bed built up over 10,000s of years and more of annual Mississippi river floods. When the river was channelized and the levees were built, the floods could no longer deposit their silt in the city site and it all blew out to sea instead. This is also why New Orleans is so far inland now, when it was much closer to the ocean when it was founded. The other major reason for subsidence is that people needed potable water, so they drilled wells and started pumping out water. This caused the land to subside as well.
This morning the radio announcer in Phoenix pointed out that the real problems have just started:
(1) New Orleans is already lower than the surrounding waterways. So, there is no place for the water to drain away. It has to be pumped out.
(2) Standing water in areas like this are breeding grounds for all types of pestilence that we have not seen in our generation; e.g. typhoid.
The I-10 causeway is severely damaged.
ping
I stopped thinking about it. I suppose, even if we have no relatives or close friends living in the area, it is a normal part of human nature, our common kinship, to want to see...
Thank you for the images.
What a disaster. It's going to take months to get rid of all the flood water. This is one of the worst floods in US history in terms of the number of people affected.
ping
I was on the phone to a friend of mine night before it hit.
She chose to stay in New Orleans, she said, because "somebody has to work the hospital" (she's a local senior nurse). The first thing that came to my mind was an cholera and dysentary epidemic from all that standing water. I said if you have to stay then at least send your kids and husband out of the city, but she didn't. Now I can't reach her and she would have called if she could.
It's incredible that this was not the worst-case scenario.
I posted this on the Hurricane thread.....
Here's where it needs to be posted.
My post for the day is the revelation that dawned after looking at the map.
The hurricane narrowly missed NO. The miss is judged a miss only by defining a hit as being passed over by the eye structure. Katrina traveled north dumping rain as it went.
The rain fell, ran off to streams, to rivers, to the Mississippi river that runs right through the middle of NOLA.
Most the water that fell ended up in the Mississippi River basin and is destined for NOLA. It passed by as clouds but will return as runoff.
It's going to be a long time before it is dry enough down in that city for anything near normal life.
Maybe it was a bad idea to build an orgiastic party city below sea level, eh?
Who ya gonna call?
Thank you so much for this thread- we all need to see these photos.
I wonder how the cemeteries in New Orleans are faring. I know that a good deal of the dead are buried in crypts above ground since the ground is normally too saturated with water to permit a standard burial.
SHE WAS ON THE PHONE WITH HER BROTHER IN LAW WHEN SHE SCREAMED THE ROOF WAS LIFTING OFF AND THERE WERE MORE SCREAMS IN THE BACKGROUND AND THEN THE PHONE WENT DEAD.
We are her cousins in MIAMI FL and we just got our power back a few hours ago! (Freeper, ExSoldier) and family just returned home from a short stay on the West coast of Florida (the heat was killing pups and wife)
Her mother is out of her mind with worry. But she is pretty isolated in Lake City, Florida.
Husband Dave is a sheriff's reserve officer with the St TAMMANY Parish dept. We need a disposition on him and of course on the kids, son (9) and daughter (15) and the Dog, if possible.
Anybody who can help, PLEASE send me freep mail. So many others have helped with links to news stories from Slidell, but we need a look (or a report) at DONYA STREET specifically. EYES ON THE GROUND, so to speak.