Ivan! Jeanne! & Karl & Dennis The Menace & Katrina

It all depends. There were seals that were thrown right into parking lots. There were domestic animals left trapped alone in homes while their owners evacuated, etc...

I was thinking about the animals, too when I saw the pic of the guy rescueing his dog that was in water up to his neck.

I think it was Floyd that wiped out thousands of farm animals here in NC several years back. (1999?) Thousands of pigs from the major pig farms we have here were just floating through streets.

Very sad.

I remember all too well the devestation of Fran here in Raleigh in '96. Up until a few hours before she hit us, we were being told she would only come within about 50 miles, no big deal, gonna miss the brunt, may have 35 MPH winds. Then WHAM! 12 hours of 75+.

I'll never ride out another one. I'd certainly never put my kids through it again.

The devastation is terrible and I feel so sorry for people whose lives have been utterly changed overnight.

I've experienced 100mile an hour gales as a child in Cornwall - it picked up a heavy aircraft on the airfield and totally wrecked it. I saw corrugated asbestos rootops on garages flying over a 3 story building and crashing just in front of our house.

How badly damaged is the old quarter or is it too early to tell?

We had a similar flood (but without the hurricane, just a gale and very high tides and onshore wind) on the east coast in 1953 with a big loss of life. The land is low lying but not actually below sea level like New Orleans.

Bad news, more bad news... yesterday they said the levees (New Orleans) would be fixed within hours... today they're talking about evacuating the remainder of the city including the Superdome.

Did you hear they're talking about jamming a barge into the 400-ft levy break? Desperate measures for desperate times.

At first it sounded like things were not nearly as bad as they could have been. Now things seem to be getting worse by the minute.

My heart goes out to all the people and critters suffering today.

Yeah, I heard about needing to evacuate the superdome and wondered how the heck they plan to move thousands of people by boat, and to where? They likely arrived by their own car, but they can't leave that way. Where on earth would you take that many people?

BBB


The Navy can get a ship into the area and take thousands of people aboard, feed them, provide water, etc. and get them to a safer location.

What really pisses me off is that the military that we need in this country to help out are off fighting that damn war in Iraq. The money we need to restore the areas are being spent on that damn war in Iraq.

Stupid fukking Bush and his fukking ideas have failed this country and its people.

Whew! I'm mad as hell.

BBB

Squinney
Squinney, has the storm passed through your area yet? Is everything OK?

BBB

Heartsick, that's the only word I can come up with to describe how I feel. I awoke before dawn this morning with a haunting feeling of sadness for well over 1 million people displaced from their homes, cities decimated, and it's only just beginning.

I'm simply heartsick

Same here JB. I think we all are. I was talking to a friend of mine last night who's whole family lived in New Orleans, Metairie, Gretna and Slidell. Everyone got out okay he said but they have nothing to come back to and for older people like his mother and aunts and uncles who have spent their entire lives there...

I had a sort of 'oh you fool for being so hysterical' reaction to myself when the eye of the storm had passed over without the devastation we had been contemplating on this thread.

Now I'm dumbfounded by sorrow.

Even the looting of clothing and jewelry stores - which I am no fan of, though I can understand - seems like an act of life, oddly optimistic, in the face of how the situation is developing..

Yeah, you guys live in a target area and it must get scary sometimes. I'm glad to hear that you guys head for the hills when those babies are brewing. Good girl ;-)

We had a few small timers blow through Massachusetts when I was a kid, but I've never been through a large storm anywhere even close to that, so I can only imagine what all those people and critters are going through. I cry in spirts all day long while I watch CNN.

These are the times when I feel so very helpless :-(

Re: BBB


Yeah, yeah, I'm hearin ya, girl!!! I had a huge bitching session at the tv yesterday about exactly this.

Here I am yelling at the tv saying "Where the hell are all the ships to take these people/critters the hell out of there?". It's not like they didn't have enough time to plan for this disaster. They knew this thing was coming for over a week!
They knew that New Orleans was just one giant bowl, so why didn't they prepare better than they did? Where is the army of help that they need? Oh, that's right, they're in Iraq fighting an unjustified fuking war!!!!

Obviously, I'm also mad as hell!!!!

Well to be fair, with a million Louisianans taking the road to Texas or whereever, and hundreds of thousands of people choosing to ride it out in the disaster area itself (or not having any choice), I'm not sure they could ever have "planned" it better. Theres only so much you can do with chaos on that scale.

I don't think the storm was even considered a threat to the Gulf area a week in advance--and the storm wasn't considered dangerous until the day before it hit.

Blaming any aspect of this on George Bush severely damages one's credibility, IMO.

More not-good news: The call has gone out for search-and-rescue dogs, and cadaver dogs as well.

The scope of this disaster is barely beginning to unfold. Biloxi-Gulfport-Pass Christian are essentially wiped out, in New Orleans the flooding is growing worse by the minute, with no effective remedy yet at hand, the city is to be totally evacuated,an endeavor itself fraught with peril and beset by unimagineable difficulties. Tornado damage has occurred hundreds of miles from the storm track, flooding is occurring throughout thje Ohio and Tennessee valley areas. The worst that had been imagined already has happened, but it will be days before we know just how bad it really is; things are all but certain to be very much worse than even now suspected. The death toll, already confirmed in the hundreds, inexorably will rise over the next days, as people succumb to injuries, illness, lack of care, and exposure, and even moreso as in the coming weeks the wreckage and debris are combed for trapped victims. Of course there will mounting lists of missing, and the fate of many never will be determined. The known devastation already is biblical in proportion, yet evidence of its severity continues to mount. The full resources of the Military have been directed to the relief effort, while civilian relief initiatives are mounting at a scale rivaled only by those devoted to last year's tsunami. There is no doubt The US has suffered the worst natural disaster in its history, and there is can be no doubt the nation will emerge from this stronger, more resiliant, and more prepared than ever - albeit the recovery - full recovery - will take years. In the meanwhile, along with the best America has to offer, we are sure to see plenty of the worst humankind has to offer - looting, violence, exploitation, profiteering, obstructionism, pettiness, and partisan posturing.

And the world will go on, as it always does. Some lessons will be learned, some lessons never are learned, no matter how often repeated.

Yes, timber, so it will, as will FEMA, but I think they are turning counter clockwise.

The Navy is sending four ships with medical supplies and food. But they are unlikely to enter the Mississippi until the channel has been cheeked and cleared. This storm has reconfigured to delta and New Orleans may not be a port at the moment.

Messing with Mother Nature
Messing with Mother Nature
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
08.30.2005

Like all Americans I have been horrified watching the destruction wrought on New Orleans by this natural disaster. And I suppose like others who share the name Katrina, it has been eerie hearing and reading my name all over the news. But when Fox News started calling the hurricane, Killer Katrina, I started praying some rightwing idiot wouldn't stoop so low as to personalize or politicize all of this human suffering.

But wouldn't you know, the biggest dittohead on the block, Rush Limbaugh, is calling the storm Hurricane Katrina vanden Heuvel and warning that the left is going to use this tragedy against the right. Jonah Goldberg, who has never seen a bad joke bandwagon he could resist jumping on with both feet, blogged, and I quote, "It would be pretty cool if Fox played to caricature and repeatedly referred to the hurricane as Katrina vanden Heuvel." Not satisfied, he went on to imagine the headlines, "The destruction from Katrina vanden Heuvel is expected to be massive..The poor and disabled are particularly likely to suffer from the effects of Katrina vanden Heuvel."

What can one say to such heartlessness? Americans are dying, and this is their idea of how to show respect for the dead. At least Limbaugh has the excuse that drug abuse tends to stunt emotional development. What Jonah's problem is nobody has yet discovered.

Natural disasters should be above politics. (President Bush's decision to send his father and President Clinton to organize aide for the Tsunami was one of his very few international P.R. successes since 9/11.)

It's so very easy and childish to personalize tragedy. (Did you hear the one about OxyContin's new tagline: 'What a Rush!'?) It is so cheap to politicize a natural disaster. (Did you see the headline about Louisiana's National Guard watching the destruction of their homeland from Iraq?) But let's try to empathize with those who are suffering through no fault of their own and think about how we can help them.

A friend sent me this link, which helps me to understand the city layout..
(you may have to register to see it, I don't know, as I'm registered with the NYT)


http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/2005_HURRICANEKATRINA_GRAPHIC/index.html