larry
On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 09:06:02 -0400, Sandy Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Maybe I'll wait to buy my plane tickets til next week.
>
> Sandy Clark
> http://www.shayna.com <http://www.shayna.com/>
> CF Pretty Accessible at http://www.shayna.com/blog
> Now offering 4 days Hands on CSS training October 11-14th. Rockville, MD.
> For more information go to:
> http://www.teratech.com/training/oc_classes.cfm#css
>
> _____
>
> From: Larry C. Lyons [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2004 8:25 AM
> To: CF-Community
> Subject: Re: Ivan Speaking at MAX?
>
>
> From this morning's Washington Post about the dangers to New Orleans:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20277-2004Sep14.html
>
> Awaiting Ivan in the Big Uneasy
> New Orleans Girds For Major Damage
>
> By Michael Grunwald and Manuel Roig-Franzia
> Washington Post Staff Writers
> Wednesday, September 15, 2004; Page A01
>
> NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 14 -- Walter Maestri, an emergency manager here in
> America's most vulnerable metropolitan area, has 10,000 body bags
> ready in case a major hurricane ever hits New Orleans. As Hurricane
> Ivan's expected path shifted uncomfortably close to this low-lying
> urban soup bowl Tuesday, Maestri said he might need a lot more.
>
> If a strong Category 4 storm such as Ivan made a direct hit, he
> warned, 50,000 people could drown, and this city of Mardi Gras and
> jazz could cease to exist.
>
> "This could be The One," Maestri said in an interview in his
> underground bunker. "You're talking about the potential loss of a
> major metropolitan area."
>
> Forecasters said Tuesday night that they expected Ivan to veer at
> least 70 miles east of New Orleans before making landfall early
> Thursday, somewhere along the Gulf Coast extremities of Louisiana,
> Alabama or Mississippi. But Ivan has consistently drifted farther west
> than their predictions. This port city's levees are designed to
> withstand only a Category 3 storm, and officials begged residents to
> evacuate the area "if you have the means."
>
> By evening, the city's few escape routes were spectacularly clogged,
> and authorities acknowledged that hundreds of thousands of residents
> would not get out in time. The stranded will not be able to turn to
> the Red Cross, because New Orleans is the only city in which the
> relief agency refuses to set up emergency storm shelters, to ensure
> the safety of its own staff. Even if a 30-foot-high wall of water
> crashes through the French Quarter -- Maestri's worst-case scenario --
> stranded residents will be on their own.
>
> New Orleans is often described as a disaster waiting to happen -- it
> is mostly below sea level, practically surrounded by water,
> artificially kept dry by pumps and levees, rapidly losing its natural
> storm protection. But rarely have its leaders sounded so afraid that
> the wait could be over soon.
>
> "I'm terrified," said Windell Curole, director of the South Lafourche
> Levee District in the swampy bayous south of the city. "I'm telling
> you, we've got no elevation. This isn't hyperbole. The only place I
> can compare us to is Bangladesh."
>
> More than 100,000 Bangladeshis died in a 1991 storm, and Curole is
> genuinely afraid that a similar tragedy could strike New Orleans, most
> of which sits six to eight feet lower than the surrounding waters of
> the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico. Ivan
> is the strongest storm to threaten the region since Hurricane Betsy
> nailed New Orleans in 1965. It brought more than $7 billion of havoc
> at a time when southern Louisiana was less populated and less exposed.
>
> The doomsayers are quick to add a caveat: Ivan might not turn out to
> be The One. The National Hurricane Center expects the storm to swerve
> toward the area between Gulfport, Miss., and Mobile, Ala. Officials in
> Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and the Florida Panhandle were urging
> residents Tuesday to leave coastal areas. "I beg people on the coast:
> Do not ride this storm out," Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) said.
>
> A dozen coastal casinos were shuttered in Mississippi, and Barbour's
> evacuation order for coastal areas was mandatory. In Alabama, Gov. Bob
> Riley (R) ordered evacuations from Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and Fort
> Morgan, and some towns postponed runoff elections scheduled for
> Tuesday. Evacuation was mandatory in parts of Escambia, Bay and Walton
> counties in Florida, and most schools in the Panhandle were closed.
>
> Most scientists, engineers and emergency managers agree that if Ivan
> does spare southern Louisiana this time, The One is destined to arrive
> someday. The director of the U.S. Geological Survey has warned that
> New Orleans is on a path to extinction. Gregory W. Stone, director of
> the Coastal Studies Institute at Louisiana State University, frets
> that near misses such as Hurricane Georges -- a Category 2 storm that
> swerved away from New Orleans a day before landfall in 1998 -- only
> give residents a false sense of security. The Red Cross has rated a
> hurricane inundating New Orleans as America's deadliest potential
> natural disaster -- worse than a California earthquake.
>
> "I don't mean to be an alarmist, but the doomsday scenario is going to
> happen eventually," Stone said. "I'll stake my professional reputation
> on it."
>
> The main problem with southern Louisiana is that it is dangerously
> low, and getting lower. The levees that imprisoned the Mississippi
> River into its shipping channel and helped make New Orleans one of the
> world's busiest ports have also prevented the muddy river from
> spreading sediment around its delta.
>
> As a result, southern Louisiana is sinking into the Gulf, losing about
> 24 square miles of coastal marshes and barrier islands every year.
> Those marshes and islands used to help slow storms as they approached
> New Orleans; computer simulations now predict that the loss of these
> natural storm barriers will increase storm surges and waves by several
> feet.
>
> On a seaplane tour of the region Tuesday, Gerald M. Duszynski,
> assistant secretary of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources,
> pointed out an area near the tiny bayou town of Leesville, where he
> fished for redfish and flounder 25 years ago. Once a solid patch of
> green tidal marsh, it is now mostly open water, with a few strips and
> splotches of green.
>
> "This used to be perfect, and now look at it," Duszynski said. "The
> buffer is gone. Now even the little storms give a big influx."
>
> Louisiana's politicians, environmentalists and business leaders have
> been pushing for a $14 billion coastal restoration project to try to
> bring back those lost marshes and islands -- in order to help protect
> New Orleans as well as an oil and gas industry that handles nearly a
> third of the nation's supply.
>
> The Bush administration forced the state to scale down its request to
> $1.2 billion last year, and a Senate committee authorized $375
> million. But Mark Davis, executive director of the Coalition to
> Restore Coastal Louisiana, believes that even if Ivan bypasses the
> region, its scary approach could help galvanize support for a more
> comprehensive fix.
>
> "We're running out of tomorrows," Davis said. "God willing, if there's
> still a southern Louisiana next week, I'm not talking about the
> politics of the possible anymore. It's now a question of which side
> are you on: Do you support the obliteration of a region, or do you
> want to try to save it?"
>
> On Tuesday, though, most local officials were thinking more about the
> potential danger than the potential opportunity. If Ivan does pound
> New Orleans, tidal surges could leave the city underwater for months,
> since its pumps can remove only about an inch every hour, creating a
> "toxic soup" of chemicals, rodents, poisons and snakes.
>
> The local officials said they could not order a mandatory evacuation
> in a city as poor as New Orleans, in which more than 100,000 residents
> have no cars, but they urged people to find some way to escape. "If
> you want to take a chance, buy a lottery ticket," said Jefferson
> Parish President Aaron Broussard. "Don't take a chance on this
> hurricane."
>
> New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin seemed flustered as he pleaded with his
> constituents to flee, at one point suggesting that they take shelter
> in area hospitals. Visitors were also urged to find somewhere else to
> go -- including 10,000 conventioneers in town for the annual meeting
> of the National Safety Council.
>
> "This is not a drill," Nagin said. "This is the real deal."
>
> But the logistics of exit are quite formidable in the Big Easy. In
> 1998, as more than 300,000 people fled Hurricane Georges, Interstate
> 10 turned into a parking lot. Similar miles-long snarls unfolded
> Tuesday. Flights were cancelled and the airport prepared to close. The
> town that gave the world "A Streetcar Named Desire" idled its
> streetcars.
>
> The underlying problem, Maestri said, is that the city never should
> have been built in the first place. It is a terrific location for
> business but a lousy location for safety.
>
> "The Chamber of Commerce gets really mad at me when I say this, but
> does New Orleans get rebuilt?" Maestri asked. The answer, he said,
> could very well be no.
>
> Staff writer Manny Fernandez in Apalachicola, Fla., contributed to this
> report.
>
> C 2004 The Washington Post Company
>
> On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 17:06:43 -0700, Cameron Childress
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I wonder what happens to MAX is New Orleans Floods this week? I
> > wonder how long it takes to clean up after a really angry hurricane in
> > New Orleans?
> >
> > From:
> > http://www.cnn.com/2004/WEATHER/09/14/hurricane.ivan/index.html
> > "The city basically sits like a bowl and most of the city is under sea
> > level ... so if we get a storm like Ivan to hit us directly" there
> > could be 12 to 18 feet of water in the city, Nagin said.
> >
> > -Cameron
> >
> >
> _____
>
>
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