Satellite Images Of New Orleans and Biloxi Before and After Katrina

8- 3 -05

The Times Picayune of New Orleans
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/metro/index.ssf?/base/news-10/112305323084850.xml

Earlier storm forecast blown away

As many as nine more hurricanes are expected
Wednesday, August 03, 2005 By Mark Schleifstein Staff writer

This year's unusually active hurricane season is about to get even busier, with an additional 11 to 13 named storms projected by Nov. 30, the end of the season, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Tuesday.

"Although we have already seen a record-setting seven tropical storms during June and July, much of the season's activity is still to come," said Gerry Bell, lead meteorologist on NOAA's "Atlantic Hurricane Seasonal Outlook," in a news release outlining the update.

The new prediction calls for seven to nine more hurricanes, including three to five hurricanes Category 3 or stronger.

That means the season could end up with 18 to 21 tropical storms, including nine to 11 hurricanes and five to seven major hurricanes.

Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the LSU Hurricane Center, said the new forecast "is one of the scariest things I've ever seen."

He said the new prediction places more pressure on the center to provide local, state and federal emergency officials with hurricane storm surge predictions quickly. The center's predictions have been used several times this year to assist planners in determining how high water will rise on the Gulf of Mexico coastline in advance of tropical storms.

Conditions are right

Forecasters blame the increased storm activity on a combination of warm temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico and a lessening of wind conditions that would chop the tops off of the clouds that form hurricanes.

And such busy seasons likely will repeat for at least another 10 years, as part of a cycle of increased hurricane activity in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico that began in 1995. Those conditions also produced a measurable decrease in hurricanes since 1995 in the eastern Pacific hurricane region.

NOAA forecasters said they still don't have enough understanding of hurricane processes to predict the intensity and landfall of storms this far in advance.

Colorado State University climatologist William Gray, who issues a similar forecast, estimates the statistical chances of storms making landfall by region along the Atlantic and Gulf. His August update is expected this week.

Officials urge preparations

New Orleans area emergency preparedness officials said Tuesday that they didn't need to read NOAA's warning in order to know that residents and communities should redouble their efforts to complete personal and business emergency plans, and to identify in advance where to go when an evacuation is recommended.

"This really gives us the opportunity to underscore the importance of having a plan right now, and not letting your guard down," said Kay Wilkins, director of the New Orleans regional office of the American Red Cross.

"People should look to what they need in their emergency supply kit and take time to buy what they need this weekend, and a little more next weekend," she said.

Jefferson Parish Emergency Management Director Walter Maestri said his staff is using the announcement as a tool in an intensified education program aimed at explaining the need to evacuate and the need to make an advance plan for that evacuation.

"We're emphasizing that because of our coast, because of subsidence, we're now looking at a Category 2 rather than a Category 3 hurricane as the prime trigger for an evacuation," he said.

"And because of the state evacuation plan and its evacuation routes, it is absolutely necessary for everybody to revisit their own plans," he said. "If contraflow is implemented, you're not going to be able to go willy-nilly where you wish to go."

Route planning

The state contraflow plan, implemented in phases 50 to 30 hours before a hurricane is projected to make landfall, uses all lanes of interstate highways to move traffic east and west away from New Orleans.

Maestri's staff is working on a more detailed plan to help residents identify the best routes to contraflow lanes if they are on the West Bank to the east and west of the Harvey Canal, and on the east bank to the east and west of Causeway Boulevard.

"There's only one route in the new plan that takes you to Baton Rouge, and that's the contraflow lanes on I-10," he said. "The rest of the lanes take you north on I-55 or I-59."

If many people make the wrong decision on entering the contraflow lanes, it could become a problem, he said, because a majority of Jefferson Parish residents indicated in a recent University of New Orleans poll that they plan on evacuating west to Baton Rouge, Houston or Lake Charles.

Double trouble

One of van Heerden's major worries is two storms hitting the Gulf at one time, complicating the state hurricane center's effort to complete the computations necessary for the surge models for both storms.

That potential double shot also should be planned for by evacuees, van Heerden said.

"There's a real need to get the public to understand that if we have two hurricanes just a week apart, especially if they're coming toward southeast Louisiana, people could be forced to evacuate the area and stay away for more than a week," he said.

"Start planning now, get your cars serviced, keep the gas tanks full, and when you leave, have an idea in advance of where you're going," he said.

Potential evacuees also should gather personal papers, including bank, mortgage and investment records, and put them in watertight plastic containers that can be quickly moved if an evacuation is necessary, he said.

"On the emotional side, it's very important for families to have all their family photograph albums packed in watertight containers, too," van Heerden said. "You can replace a home, but you can never replace a family photograph album."

Wilkins said the Red Cross just printed another 500,000 copies of a map of the state's emergency and contraflow plan, which also includes Red Cross tips on how to prepare family emergency plans and kits. The maps are available at local Lowe's, Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Red Cross offices.

Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3327.

Science Daily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20050722-18422300-bc-us-hurricanes.xml

"In 2002, an American Red Cross estimate found 25,000 to 100,000 people would be killed if a major hurricane hit the New Orleans area."

Many residents won't evacuate New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS, July 22 (UPI) -- A major hurricane, with 130 mph winds and an 18-foot-high storm surge, would not scare 60 percent of southeast Louisiana residents, a survey found.

That would be a dangerous decision, said Jesse St. Amant, emergency preparedness director for Plaquemines Parish, because Louisiana's sinking coastline and levees no longer protect residents from a Category 3 storm.

The University of New Orleans Survey Research Center and the Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Task Force survey, released Thursday, also found many who evacuated during Hurricanes Georges in 1998, Lili in 2002 or last year's Ivan might not have traveled far enough to escape danger, the New Orleans Times-Picayune said Friday.

In 2002, an American Red Cross estimate found 25,000 to 100,000 people would be killed if a major hurricane hit the New Orleans area.

If people don't evacuate when directed by officials the number of casualties would be "beyond comprehension," according to St. Amant.

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The American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/index.php

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4784

New Orleans, the tragedy - by Thomas Lifson

September 1st, 2005

As Hurricane Katrina headed toward New Orleans, sticklers for the actual meaning of words told us that it would be wrong to label the impending disaster a tragedy. That term, with its origins in drama, refers to horrible consequences produced out of the flaws in human nature. A hurricane is a force of nature, and cannot by definition be “tragic” no matter how horrible the outcome.

The drama unfolding in New Orleans, however, is now officially a tragedy. Katrina wrought destruction, but the consequences most horrifying us today are the result of human folly.

For at least a decade, critics have warned that the levee system protecting New Orleans needed serious upgrading. Dire predictions of the complete destruction of the city by either a hurricane or by a historic Mississippi River flood have circulated for many years, but were insufficient to move authorities to expensive action. Holland, after a tragedy killing thousands in the 1950s, reinforced its dykes with more than the thumbs of young boys. New Orleans ignored the lessons.

The looting and apparent near-anarchy in the flooded streets have nothing to do with Mother Nature, and everything to do with human nature, unconstrained by the thin veneer http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4781 of civilization.

The incomplete evacuation of citizens and warehousing in the Superdome struck me at the time as a poor choice. http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=2957

Why were there not sound trucks cruising the streets warning those detached from the media to run for their lives? Why weren’t there places designated where folks heading out of town could fill up their cars with refugees lacking transportation? Why wasn’t every bus, truck, and railroad freight car pressed into service to haul people away?

Blogger Ultima Thule captured my own impression of the political authorities in Louisiana when she wrote http://aussiethule.blogspot.com/2005/08/thoughts-on-katrina.html

"Louisiana Governor Blanco unfortunately resembles her name -- Blanco -- she looks like a deer caught in the headlines -- oops -- I was going to type headlights -- but that was an apt slip of the fingers."

Nobody wants to kick New Orleans and Louisiana when they are so devastated. But we will be deluding ourselves and laying the foundations for future suffering, if we don’t examine the human failures which have turned a natural disaster into a tragedy.

Few if any cities have contributed more to American culture than New Orleans. Jazz, our distinctive national contribution to music, has its origins in New Orleans. So too in the realm of cuisine, New Orleans is virtually without peer. Many years ago, a wealthy and cultivated Japanese entrepreneur observed to me that New Orleans was the only city in America he had found in which rich and poor people alike understood food. He mentioned Provence in France and Tuscany in Italy as comparisons. You could walk into unimpressive restaurants in less prosperous neighborhoods in New Orleans, patronized by ordinary citizens, not free-spending tourists, and expect a meal made from fresh ingredients, flavored with interesting herbs and spices, and served to patrons who would accept no less.

But the many virtues of New Orleans are offset in part by serious flaws. The flowering of the human spirit in the realm of cultural creativity is counterbalanced by a tradition of corruption, public incompetence, and moral decay. It is no secret that New Orleans and the Great State of Louisiana have a sorry track record when it comes to political corruption. And corruption tolerated in one sphere tends to metastasize and infect other aspects of life. They don’t call it “The Big Easy” because it is simple to start a business, and easy to run one there.

Many years ago, an oilman in Houston pointed out to me that there was no inherent reason Houston should have emerged as the world capital of the petroleum business. New Orleans was already a major city with centuries of history, proximity to oil deposits, and huge transportation advantages when the Houston Ship Channel http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/HH/rhh11.html was dredged, making the then-small city of Houston into a major port. The discovery of the Humble oil field certainly helped Houston rise as an oil center, but the industry could just as easily have centered itself in New Orleans.

When I pressed my oilman informant for the reason Houston prevailed, he gave me a look of pity for my naiveté, and said, “Corruption.” Anyone making a fortune in New Orleans based on access to any kind of public resources would find himself coping with all sorts of hands extended for palm-greasing. Permits, taxes, fees, and outright bribes would be a never-ending nightmare. Houston, in contrast, was interested in growth, jobs, prosperity, and extending a welcoming hand to newcomers. New Orleans might be a great place to spend a pleasant weekend, but Houston is the place to build a business.

Today, metropolitan Houston houses roughly 4 times the population of pre-Katrina metropolitan New Orleans, despite the considerable advantage New Orleans has of capturing the shipping traffic of the Mississippi basin.

It is far from a coincidence that Houston is now absorbing refugees from New Orleans, and preparing to enroll the children of New Orleans in its own school system. Houston is a city built on the can-do spirit (space exploration, oil, medicine are shining examples of the human will to knowledge and improvement, and all have been immeasurably advanced by Houstonians). Houston officials have capably planned for their own possible severe hurricanes, and that disaster planning is now selflessly put at the disposal of their neighbors to the east.

Let us all do everything we can to ameliorate the horrendous suffering of people all over the Gulf Coast, not just in New Orleans. But we must not fail to learn necessary lessons. Hurricanes are predictable and inevitable. Their consequences can be minimized by honest and capable political leadership. It appears that New Orleans could have done much better. We would honor the suffering and deaths by insisting that any rebuilding be premised on a solid moral and poltical foundation.

Thomas Lifson is the editor and publisher of The American Thinker

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