I feared but totally expected this. The death toll will reach many thousands, maybe tens of thousands. I feared this, when it was announced that 30 died in one building on the Mississippi coast. One would have to be detached from reality not to extrapolate. If the gulf coast is ever rebuilt, there will need to be a more effective evacuation plan, with free public transportation, that is mandatory. Those that were not destroyed, need to do it too. Otherwise, it needs to become just a tourist resort, with few permanent residents. The Atlantic is so hot now, that for the next many years, until the climatic cycle abates, this will happen, again, and again, and again.
On FoxNews this evening, they were showing communities that had been leveled to the cement foundations. All the pads were clean. If there were any people in those homes, they'd have to be dead. I can understand the drive to stay near your home, but when it comes to hurricanes, I'd leave the area.
One thing is for certain, this will probably alter how future hurricanes are handled, with evacuations not being up to the individual.
For safety and looting reasons, landfall areas should be evacuated completely IMO.
I feared but totally expected this. The death toll will reach many thousands, maybe tens of thousands. I feared this,
Remember when the tsunami hit a while back ... it was days before the numbers really started adding up ... I'm afraid the worst may not be over
The 30 dead in one apartment building was striking to me as well. I immediately thought to myself that the death toll must be well up in the hundreds. That being said, I will be quite shocked if there are indeed "thousands" dead in Mississippi. In fact, I'll be surprised if there are over 1000 dead in MS. Hurricane Camille killed some 21 people in just one building (the Richelieu Apts), but there were still 'merely' 143 deaths on the Gulf Coast. Granted, the region is much more densely populated these days and Katrina tore a wider swath of destruction, but still..
It's not at all unusual in a hurricane for one neighborhood to be totally devastated by surge or wind and the next one over to be more or less fine. A lot of this has to do with all the tornados that touch down. So, for what it's worth, my guess is that the person reporting these figures is in a particularly hard-struck area and is incorrectly extrapolating his experience to the region as a whole. Maybe I'm in denial, but that's just my hunch!
I do expect over 1000 dead in New Orleans.
As did I. I was part of the clean up process following Hurricane Camille. The level of devastation after that storm defied description. Then and now. Everything from Gulfport to Pass Christian. If it was near the coast, it was totally destroyed.
Katrina rivaled Camille in so many ways. I was afraid of this. Even when preliminary reports indicated the area might have dodged a bullet.
God have mercy on the survivors.
There is already an effective evacuation plan. It's called 'advanced warning'. No one was caught off guard. Everyone knew it was coming and many made the wrong choice of not evacuating. The old 'it won't happen to me' syndrome.
Watch the evacuation with the next hurricane...