God Spare New Orleans

[glatt]

Originally Posted by marichiko

Busterb lives in Bay Springs, just north of New Orleans. Haven't been able to find any info on the town, but many places in that region seem to be low on food or out and the same with drinking water, and electricity. Ice is being distributed. Hope Busterb is OK.

What Little I just found :

Jasper County Damage
Jasper County, Miss.
Andrea Williams

"It's major! There's no gas for vehicles! No water for people! It's MAJOR!"

Jasper County Civil Defense Director Joe Springer is describing the situation in and around the town of Bay Springs.

"We have major power outages. All of our water wells are down. The hospital is out of water," says Springer.

According to emergency responders, Jasper County was one of the hardest areas hit. In fact, the roof was taken off a mobile home during the storm. Not only that, but officials say it took them three hours to rescue a woman who had been hit by a tree. During that time they say they had to cut trees from Bay Springs all the way to Heidelberg and then into Jones County just to get her some help.

While most of the hardest hit areas in Jasper County are still covered with too much debris to reach, we did talk with two residents who are now dealing with damage.

"It took the whole roof off," says homeowner Barbara Tatum Turner. "It took the porch first and then it went taking the top off."

"It makes me very upset! I paid it off eight years ago," says homeowner Nancy Evans who lost everything in the storm.

While Stringer says it will likely take weeks to have power and phone service fully restored to the entire county, he says what makes it worse is that the county doesn't have ice or water to disperse to those in need. Despite this, residents we talked to say as with Hurricane Katrina, “This too shall pass!”

"It's gonna be alright! says Turner, "I'm going to make it, someway, somehow, we're going to make it!"

[wolf]

Originally Posted by marichiko

Busterb lives in Bay Springs, just north of New Orleans.

Well, we do know that he lives against the fence of the prison.

We know that he has been putting up vegetables all summer.

We know that he is a very resourceful gentleman.

We know that he has a lot of friends in his community.

I hope that at least some of this works in his favor.

Originally Posted by wolf

Well, we do know that he lives against the fence of the prison.

We know that he has been putting up vegetables all summer.

We know that he is a very resourceful gentleman.

We know that he has a lot of friends in his community.

I hope that at least some of this works in his favor.

Oh, Wolf, I hope so, too! Glatt's info is pretty worrisome. I know Busterb is a gentleman who was fascinated by my old "metal mule" picture. We had quite the discussion PM-ing back and forth about the amazing works of art welders can create from just some scraps of iron. Busterb is a good old guy, and I pray he made it through OK.

[Griff]

Ditto on that Mari.

[Kitsune]

Onyx, did he ever say what Mississippi city he lives in? I couldn't find any reference to it in his profile...

[Undertoad]

Engineering News-Record:

Leaders of the Army Corps of Engineers say the city's flood walls were in excellent shape before the storm but weren't designed to handle a hurricane of Katrina's magnitude.

In a phone briefing Sept. 1, the Army's Chief of Engineers, Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, addressed some of the issues that have surfaced about Corps-built structures around New Orleans. Strock said that the project that resulted in the levees along Lake Pontchartrain was designed to protect against a 200-to-300-year storm, which equates to about a Category 3 hurricane, but Katrina was more severe.

Al Naomi, senior project manager in the Corps' New Orleans District, says, "The [project's] design was not adequate for a storm of this nature." He adds that to cover a Category 5 storm, work on storm protection improvements would have had to start 20 or 25 years ago.

The levee breaches occurred in areas that were "in excellent condition" before the storm and were inspected, said Naomi. He said there was nothing the Corps could have done involving the completed floodwalls that could have prevented the breaches.

Another question concerned the allocation of national resources during a war. The war in Iraq has not had an impact on the Corps budget, said Strock. According to his analysis, Corps funding "has been fairly stable" since the early 1990s and the Corps has spent more than $300 million since 2002 on storm protection in the New Orleans area. "We were just caught by a storm of an intensity which exceeded the design of the [flood protection] project we have in place," he said.

Some Corps contracts in the area had been delayed, but Naomi says those contracts were not in the sections of the levees that failed.

[Kitsune]

According to his analysis, Corps funding "has been fairly stable" since the early 1990s and the Corps has spent more than $300 million since 2002 on storm protection in the New Orleans area.

Wow. Completely the opposite from what I heard on the news this morning. Their report said the Army Corps had been "pleading for money for decades" to do work on the levees and had seen nothing but massive budget cuts since the 1970s.

Let the spin begin!

[Undertoad]

Belmont Club points to this 2003 Civil Engineering Magazine article from 2003

Any concerted effort to protect the city from a storm of category 4 or 5 will probably take 30 years to complete. And the feasibility study alone for such an effort will cost as much as $8 million. Even though Congress has authorized the feasibility study, funding has not yet been appropriated. When funds are made available, the study will take about six years to complete. “That’s a lot of time to get the study before Congress,” Naomi admits. “Hopefully we won’t have a major storm before then."

Oops

For the most part, New Orleans does not have places for people to go. The American Red Cross no longer provides emergency shelters in the city because its officials cannot guarantee the structural integrity of the locations ... that could withstand the forces of a category 4 or 5 storm. ...

Most people would not wish to remain in the city if a category 4 or 5 storm were in prospect, but evacuating could be difficult. Experts say close to 400,000 people could be stranded in the city. There are an estimated 100,000 people without easy access to automobiles, and those who can drive may not be able to do so. ... Complicating the difficulty in New Orleans is the fact that each of the city’s three major evacuation routes is over or near water.

As Belmont Club says "they got that one right".

[bigw00dy]

Here is yet another slideshow of the devastation

[tw]

Originally Posted by bigw00dy

Here is yet another slideshow of the devastation

Most telling are the pictures that do not exist. Such as lines of C5A transport planes lined up in Louis Armstrong International discharging troops and supplies AND taking victims out of New Orleans. That picture assumes the disaster leadership and administration was not in denial for 5 days.

When Air Force 1 arrives in Louis Armstrong International, how much food and water will it bring for the people of New Orleans?

[BigV]

Having not spent the time in the way you've described, perhaps you have some insight to us ghetto-experience-poor dwellars. *Why* in the world is it a good idea to shoot at these people? I really can't imagine an answer to that question.

[shoot]

I wasnt trying to imply that it is a good idea to shoot at the rescue workers, but from experience I do know that very little these people do makes any sense to a logical mind, so I was not suprised at all to hear that sniper shots were being taken at a helicopter evacuating a hospital. It makes no sense at all therefore it makes perfect sense.

[BigV]

ahh. that explains it.



*wanders off....*

[Elspode]

Listen to the Mayor of New Orleans blast the relief efforts...

[Trilby]

That gave me goosebumps, Glatt. Oh, I so hope busterb is OK! My prayers to him and his family. Just damn.