[Comstock1]

Even the governor of Louisiana is looking at Rita as a distraction from getting over Katrina. When all is said and done, it will be Rita that has left the biggest scar on Louisiana.

[Flavius]

Does anyone know how did Fort Polk LA area fare.

Thank you.

[backhoe]

Clickable:

http://forum.lakecharles.com/ultimatebb.php?/ubb/get_topic/f/14/t/000023

[Let's Roll]

When I read on FR last night that the CG was rescuing the stranded in SW LA yesterday my first thought was good grief - does no one learn - I mean how isolated are these people?

Rita basically "threaded" her way up the stateline and its relatively unpopulated area but of course there are going to be some communities and people living there - just not millions.

[dgallo51]

You wouldn't expect Jerry Rivers to venture away from his party at the Holiday Inn, would you? What a worthless correspondent! Thanks for the link…that's New Orleans w/o the chemical sewage.

[G.Mason]

" ... When all is said and done, it will be Rita that has left the biggest scar on Louisiana."

I doubt that.

It will be Nagin, Blanco, Landrieu, and the NO police, with a little gun grabbing and the incessant whining of Geraldo and Shepard Smith tossed in for flavor.

[GummyIII]

FYI....

[Smartaleck]

Not enough coverage? Perhaps there wasn't enough blacks involved in the devastation?

[tiki]

The MSM is in and around Houston and Port Arthur and NO so the focus will remain on those places. With Katrina you heard very little about Mississippi and if Barbour hadn't been on news programs you wouldn't have heard as much as you did.

[bert]

Fox has a reporter on the street presenting the damage in considerable detail.

OOOps you said MSM. Fox News reports truth and is not a part of the MSM.

[George from New England]

Well Rita affected mostly white people.

Move along now. Nothing is needed from the feds here.

Signed MSM.

[Jeff Head]

More devastation from Rita.

[OC_Steve]

Anyone know when the star studded telethon will be on for the victims on Rita? Kidding, but somewhat serious as there are people in SWLA and SE Texas that have lost their homes due to wind and flooding. Is Sean Penn bailing his boat in Port Arthur? Probably not.

[pollywog]

I am surprised to see all the photos of damage. Last night I was thinking Rita came in a lot less powerful than expected. What's the reasoning behind downplaying Rita???

[Candor7]

Lets put Rita into some historical perspective in relation to Cameron, La. You will see that Cameron has had much more serious damage done to it by direct hits of hurricanes
than Rita has done, notibly the hurricane of 1865. Somehow the people survived, and note that Cameron has a culture of rebuilding and dealing with hurricanes. This is likely why there is far less media coverage, because far fewer numbers of people are whining like they did in New Orleans. In Cameron they are likely rolling up their shirt sleeves and Moving Forward.

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http://www.hurricanecity.com/city/cameron.htm

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Cameron,Louisiana's history with tropical systems:

(br)=brush (ts)=Tropical Storm (bd)=Back Door,meaning coming from over land from opposite coast.Not all names are noted,also storms before 1950 were not named.Not every stat on every storm description is given.

Years within 60 miles
1879br,1882ts,1886,1886ts,1888br,1897,1898-2tsbr,1905-2tsbr,1918,1920br
1932-37tsbr,1938ts,1940,1940ts,1941br,1943ts,1946ts,1957,1957ts,1971
1974bdts,1978,1979ts,1982ts,1985-2br,1986-89-92br,2004tsbr,(2005 not in stats)
33 times in 134 yrs end of 2004


Names from list above
audrey,bertha,edith,carmen,debra,claudette,chris,danny,juan,bonnie,chantal,Andrew ,Rita,

How often this area gets affected?
brushed or hit every 4.06 years

Average years between direct hurricane hits.(usually within 40 miles to include small hurricanes)
(7h)once every 19.14 years

Statistically when this area should be affected next
hit by Rita in 2005 ( plus 19.14 years)

Last affected by
2005 Sept 24th Hurricane Rita hits with 120mph winds. High storm surge in many areas of Vermillion parish with very heavy damage.

This areas hurricane past
in 1837 8 ft rise in lake pochatrain
1865 several thousand killed by a hurricane
1879 aug 23rd a 12 ft storm surge & many buildings destroyed.
1886 oct 12th a 9 ft storm surge as winds blew for 36 hrs,most houses removed from foundations due to storm surge.196 killed & hundreds of cattle killed
1918 early august,100mph. It struck without warning.press 28.36 gusts to 125mph.Overall moderate damage 34 killed
1940 aug 7th,6 killed 5ft storm surge
aug 1940 a hurricane well to the south slow moving dumped 21 inches of rain
1957 hurricane Audrey Thousands of buildings destroyed june 27th. Between 90 and 95 percent of the buildings in Cameron and Lower Vermilion Parishes were damaged beyond repair. 13 ft s.s inland to abbeville 556 killed 144mph over 40,000 homless in Louisiana
1971 edith gusts to 95mph 6 ft s.s ,69mph in Cameron with gusts to 96mph passed approx 30 miles east of Cameron.Heavy damage to sugarcane crops.
2005 Sept 24th Hurricane Rita hits with 120mph winds. High storm surge in many areas of Vermillion parish with very heavy damage.Moves slowly to the NW as a large hurricane weakening while moving in.

[Shery]

Is there another source for the pictures? I don't understand what all they are asking for, so I cannot complete the registration.

[colonialhk]

That side of the state votes rightwing and works. No story there.

[topher]

There are curfews in place over Southern Louisiana -- it was hard to find gasoline in Lafayette, La, which mainly just had power outages.

There are reports in Vermillion parish yesterday of a blind man who did not evacuate was floating on a log somewhere near Vermillion Bay.

People who lived through Hurricane Audrey said this storm will take more lives than Audrey did.

There was a report of a sting ray (fish) trying to escape a crawfish pond. Some of the scenes of white cap waves in farm fields were in places like low lying crawfish ponds.

[CheezyChesster]

"The damage that has hit SW Louisiana and SE Texas is much worse than is being reported by the MSM"

---

Well of course the damage isn't being reported as worse than Katrina. The American stock market is in the midst of a large upswing in comming days and weeks. Why do you suppose that the prices for gasoline and oil are not sky rocketing yet and the storm is already past us. Supposedly this storm was to have caused more havoc on all offshore oil platforms that Katrina missed. Gasoline prices surged to $3.50 a gallon during Katrina yet they have remained around $2.60 per gallon with Rita, why ?. Now it wouldn't bode well with the markets, if all that doom and gloom would be properly reported now would it ?. How would the MSM be able to explain the inevitable drop in oil markets if they were too report the true devastation this storm has caused. It has been reported that Katrina has dislodged 40 or 50 oil platforms from there moorings and some haven't been located the first few days after the Katrina storm. But with the Rita storm being just as powerful if not more so than Katrina, there is hardly any mention of the oil platforms it has dislodged, why ?. Oh yeah, I'm supposed to believe that opening up the strategic oil supplies was to somehow control prices supposedly generated by the fact we don't enough refining capability. I'm also supposed to beleive that relieving gasoline restrictions untill Sept. 15th. is supposed to have an impact too. Well ?, it's September 25 now isn't it ?

[Mr. Jeeves]

You know, if the 17th Street Canal levee hadn't broken, I'm not sure they wouldn't have dropped the Katrina story almost immediately, too. It was only when New Orleans, an actual city that actual, real-life news anchors had actually set foot in started to suffer major flooding that Katrina became the Storm of the Century...otherwise they probably would have kept up the "dodged a bullet" angle.

[Candor7]

Hey Com,

Since you have a really great thread here, I am posting this link so we can get updated SAT photos later for before and after orbital shots of Cameron. I do believe that Rita did more sever hurricane damage than Katrina did to New Orleans. The damage to New Orleans was essentially flood damage, not wind shear damage that we see in Cameron.

This is how Cameron looked from space before Rita. It will be interesting to compare it with the After Rita shots when they come available. Sorry I do not have the HTML code skills to put the picture up here. Perhaps someone who has , can do that ( thanks!):

http://www.terraserver.com/imagery/image_gx.asp?cpx=-93.324996&cpy=29.7975&res=16&provider_id=360&t=pan

Pings on you Com!