Can someone show how big an area that has been hit? Like link to a google map and explain how large an area of devastation we are talking about? I really don´t have any idea...
These pictures are from the Nasa Earth Observatory website:
If you live in a flood plain the insurance companies make you get flood insurance. Now the amount that you are covered for is dependant on how much extra you pay and how it is written in. Most do not cover replacement cost. Therefore many people will get some money but not near enough to rebuild or replace lost or destoyed property. Many will not have income or even be allowed to return to their residence for weeks or months and normal business will be out even longer ( if they don't relocate ). I foresee many people just leaving the area and the entire area starting from scratch. It is all very sad.
reg
hey folks, thanks for the well-wishes. sorry i couldn't reply last night, but we had to get some sleep.
re: insurance, many who buy houses are required to have some sort of insurance, but just like fly-by-night auto-insurers who prey on the poor who need to own a car, there are many equivalent housing insurers who do the same, which give the home owners some sort of paper to show proof of insurance to buy a house, but when the clims come, the coverage folks have gone bankrupt from payouts or have fled. and this doesn't even cover those people in new orleans public housing (though that housing was its own hell on earth for decades).
and many are under the misconception that insurance = instant check in pocket. people may be waiting months for money. that's months before you can attend to repairs/replacement. where do you live until then? how do you pull in a paycheck? especially when everyone there is to work has been closed due to the hurricane, and there's no way INTO the biggest population center in the area? i think mardi gras glossed over the incredible poverty problem and class-differential that has existed in new orleans for a long time. even fema et al. depend on local contractors to help with the cleanup. well, guess what. a HELL of a lot of them lived in slidell and commuted around the basin to do work. slidell is underwater, and those contractors have either feld and are being told to stay away, or they perished in the flood.
do you see the deadly domino effect here?
re: causes and blames, i just can't bring myself to do it much. i have to say, though, being in the middle of it, it pisses me off to hear paula zahn and anderson cooper try to force someone they are interviewing into a verbal corner and admit they don't know what to do. listen, folks, this is kinda unprecedented. even the army corps of engineers is silently saying "f*ck me" under their collective breaths. they had decades to create this system, and now they're being asked to resurrect it overnight with no help from local labor (see above). and anyone who reads these boards knows i am no w fan, but sh!t-damn, to have boh sept. 11th AND this happen under my watch? this certainly should affect every election for decades to come because it takes one hell of an individual to become the mouthpiece and scapegoat for all of this tragedy, while still trying to coordinate fixing the aftermaths. i do not envy the man and the task at hand, or anyone in elected positions in the region.
everyone here in louisiana, though, wishes there had still been some wetlands left. i believe we were losing them at the rate of 24 miles PER DAY before this happened. to the uninitiated, the wetlands would have acted as an enormous shock absorber to storm surge, and even winds. i remember growing up in florida, and they had this tank of water on our field trips to the science center to show why the everglades are important, and as a kid, i never understood, but now i do. they pushed this board in the water to simulate a storm surge in a bare tank, and, of course, the wave hits the opposite side of the tank at full force. fill that same tank with reeds, like bristles of a brush, and the collective force of those millions of tiny strands eats that surge for breakfast. and i have lived 20 of my 30 years on this palent on the gulf coast, and everyone agrees in casual conversation and on the radio that global warming has got to have something to do with this. the cat 5 hurricanes are coming annually now, when it would've take years in between for when i was growing up. katrina exploded when it hit the gulf and 85-90 degree waters and weak rain fronts and no wetlands that would otherwise shear it down to a cat 4 or 3. we have, over the past decades, maybe 100 years, slowly created the recipe for this disaster. and it has to be fixed soon. hell, we still have a months before THIS season is over. what if another 'cane hits the gulf coast??? i dunno, maybe you pay attention tot his stuff more when it keeps beating the crap out of you year after year.
simply put, the wetlands wouldn't have stopped katrina, but they sure as hell would've helped. now grand isle louisiana is likely gone -- like forever. the barrier island and claw you see coming off the end of the mississippi from satellite has, as some on local radio stations have said, been "reclaimed by the gulf". in other words, so much instant erosion AND 20-30 feet of water on top for the next few weeks, well, you'll probably never see those areas of louisiana from satellite again in your lifetime.
the mosquito problem is about to take on biblical plague proportions as well down there. we already have nasty mosquitoes anyway, but with that much standing water? you can't fumigate that much water for larvae without causing sickness from the fumigation. and i have no idea where to pump all of this water. if you pump it back into the lake or the river or gulf, you'll have the quivalent of an oil spill of enormous magnitude, coupled with a fantastic assortment of garbage and whatnot from the streets of new orleans, a city so dirty that the mayor started a campaign last year to get people to stop desecrating the city with a campaign "new orleans -- imagine it clean."
again, this disaster is beyond comprehension. and while we have to clean up and rebuild, we also have to take a look at the 7000 things that we did wrong that led to this moment and, given the opportunity to rebuild from scratch, make sure they don't happen again.
question: can anyone get through .mac mail right now?i keep trying to log onto .mac via apple's website, but i can't get through, and it's my only access to a colleague at this point. it would not surprise me that it's overloaded from communications right now, but i can't be certain.
leave politics out of this. even if that had been funded the city would have been fucked. it's below sea level surrounded by water and a category 4/5 hurricane hit it. you do the math.
seriously, you have to be really pathetic to immediately jump to politics when a disaster such as this strikes. rather than trying to blame someone for a natural disaster why dont you focus your efforts on something more productive for the situation
im not even.....
of course i damn well realize the city was hit by a category 4 hurricane and being that nawlins is below sea level it would get flooded. but you know what fam? the hurricane itself didnt destroy and kill these people. flood waters did. i posted that link because its fuckin disgusting that aid could be CUT to new orleans and spent on fighting wars overseas when weather people warned that an event like this could spell catastrophy. everyone knew that, but where were the improvements being made to see that a CATASTROPHY OF THE WHOLE CITY FLOODING was prevented? the whole city would have been fucked despite funding? to an extent. but where were the people on stand-by to start repairing breeched levees as soon as the storm passed over? where were the national guard on stand-by to go into NO? where has FEMA been? we wanna fix other countries and cant fix home yet? now they are enforcing martial law and more concerned about looters than actually helping people down there first. yea, lets shoot someone for stealin a piece of bread when they got absolutely nothing now instead of trying to save everyone still in that toxen infested lake (cant even call it a city nomore).
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9156612/ go watch the video and read the article then come back and tell me how "pathetic" i really am for "jumping to politics". im callin the shots how i see em.
another thing that pisses me off. was watchin one of the news stations last night and there was this little girl standin on top of a car in the flooded street with her dad while a news crew in a boat are filming shes sayin "help us. help please please help us". i mean....the news just sittin there exposing people's misfortunes and cant even throw them a rope or somethin to help them? same with filming people on roof tops.
nobody sayin that bush ordered a hurricane or somethin silly like that, we all know that global warming causes this. what i'm sayin is that bush doesnt give a fuck about poor people. no one really gives a fuck about poor people. when i read on the web, watch the news stations, etc.......it seriously brings me to tears this shit.
if you're mad i called your homeboy george w. out then too bad.
of course i damn well realize the city was hit by a category 4 hurricane and being that nawlins is below sea level it would get flooded. but you know what fam? the hurricane itself didnt destroy and kill these people. flood waters did. i posted that link because its fuckin disgusting that aid could be CUT to new orleans and spent on fighting wars overseas when weather people warned that an event like this could spell catastrophy. everyone knew that, but where were the improvements being made to see that a CATASTROPHY OF THE WHOLE CITY FLOODING was prevented? the whole city would have been fucked despite funding? to an extent. but where were the people on stand-by to start repairing breeched levees as soon as the storm passed over? where were the national guard on stand-by to go into NO? where has FEMA been? we wanna fix other countries and cant fix home yet? now they are enforcing martial law and more concerned about looters than actually helping people down there first. yea, lets shoot someone for stealin a piece of bread when they got absolutely nothing now instead of trying to save everyone still in that toxen infested lake (cant even call it a city nomore).
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9156612/ go watch the video and read the article then come back and tell me how "pathetic" i really am for "jumping to politics". im callin the shots how i see em.
another thing that pisses me off. was watchin one of the news stations last night and there was this little girl standin on top of a car in the flooded street with her dad while a news crew in a boat are filming shes sayin "help us. help please please help us". i mean....the news just sittin there exposing people's misfortunes and cant even throw them a rope or somethin to help them? same with filming people on roof tops.
nobody sayin that bush ordered a hurricane or somethin silly like that, we all know that global warming causes this. what i'm sayin is that bush doesnt give a fuck about poor people. no one really gives a fuck about poor people. when i read on the web, watch the news stations, etc.......it seriously brings me to tears this shit.
if you're mad i called your homeboy george w. out then too bad.
You are calling out your own unreasonableness.
You are suggesting that we don't spend money on anything just because something bad might happen.
So therefore let's cancel spending on roads and highways and oil production and border control and water purification. Let just spend all that money on suring up levees and dams and bridges and placing equipment all across the US specifically for emergencies, because you know - something bad might happen, somewhere.
The current levee system was built to withstand a Cat3 storm, because of time and money constraints. A project to update the the 350 miles of levies and dikes and locks would take 20 years or more to complete. So no amount of funding or money would have helped the current situation in NOLA. It will take years just to get the levees back to operational at the Cat3 level. The war in Iraq will have long been over by then, so that connection is just stupid.
I am not sure where you're getting your information, but there is an unprecidented amount of aid on the way there.
Don't give me that shit - it's been nearly 5 fucking days. If this was New York or L.A. you could be sure the response would have been much more swift.
They have been running computer simulations for years, and everyone knew the devastating affect of a level 4 or 5 hurricane on the region.
It's been a very long day. I'm going to crash for a bit and try to get 5 hours or so of sleep. I apologize again that I cannot respond to each IM. I am trying. We've got that IRC channel going and I'll try to get in there for a while later in the day.
I am going to debrief the police officer completely in the morning. He was utterly fatigued, thirsty, and wanted to find out what the hell was really going on.
Security has become a major concern now, because the NOPD is ineffective and the looters terrorists are roaming the streets. Word is now that they're lighting buildings on fire, but I can't confirm that. Anyway, we have to run guard shifts and patrol and it limits our downtime.
It is a zoo out there though, make no mistake. It's the wild kingdom. It's Lord of the Flies. That doesn't mean there's murder on every street corner. But what it does mean is that the rule of law has collapsed, that there is no order, and that property rights cannot and are not being enforced. Anyone who is on the streets is in immediate danger of being robbed and killed. It's that bad.
OMG, what in the FUCK is the government doing? Is it because everyone left is black and poor - is that why they don't care?
Especially after seeing that video from around the convention center it's hard not to start asking those questions. With people dead and dying, there is no excuse. The violence isn't even an excuse at this point.
Don't give me that shit - it's been nearly 5 fucking days. If this was New York or L.A. you could be sure the response would have been much more swift.
They have been running computer simulations for years, and everyone knew the devastating affect of a level 4 or 5 hurricane on the region.
Man you are dense.
The evacuation plan was to take 3 days, not the two that they had!
The scope of the rescue is huge. Just open your eyes. 100,000 people there, fires everywhere, water covering 85% of the city, roaming gangs of gunmen, looters and on and on and on. There only a few roads into the area.
Comments
My best wishes are with them
Agains the power of nature, humans are nothing
Originally posted by Anders
Can someone show how big an area that has been hit? Like link to a google map and explain how large an area of devastation we are talking about? I really don´t have any idea...
These pictures are from the Nasa Earth Observatory website:
Originally posted by reg
If you live in a flood plain the insurance companies make you get flood insurance. Now the amount that you are covered for is dependant on how much extra you pay and how it is written in. Most do not cover replacement cost. Therefore many people will get some money but not near enough to rebuild or replace lost or destoyed property. Many will not have income or even be allowed to return to their residence for weeks or months and normal business will be out even longer ( if they don't relocate ). I foresee many people just leaving the area and the entire area starting from scratch. It is all very sad.
reg
hey folks, thanks for the well-wishes. sorry i couldn't reply last night, but we had to get some sleep.
re: insurance, many who buy houses are required to have some sort of insurance, but just like fly-by-night auto-insurers who prey on the poor who need to own a car, there are many equivalent housing insurers who do the same, which give the home owners some sort of paper to show proof of insurance to buy a house, but when the clims come, the coverage folks have gone bankrupt from payouts or have fled. and this doesn't even cover those people in new orleans public housing (though that housing was its own hell on earth for decades).
and many are under the misconception that insurance = instant check in pocket. people may be waiting months for money. that's months before you can attend to repairs/replacement. where do you live until then? how do you pull in a paycheck? especially when everyone there is to work has been closed due to the hurricane, and there's no way INTO the biggest population center in the area? i think mardi gras glossed over the incredible poverty problem and class-differential that has existed in new orleans for a long time. even fema et al. depend on local contractors to help with the cleanup. well, guess what. a HELL of a lot of them lived in slidell and commuted around the basin to do work. slidell is underwater, and those contractors have either feld and are being told to stay away, or they perished in the flood.
do you see the deadly domino effect here?
re: causes and blames, i just can't bring myself to do it much. i have to say, though, being in the middle of it, it pisses me off to hear paula zahn and anderson cooper try to force someone they are interviewing into a verbal corner and admit they don't know what to do. listen, folks, this is kinda unprecedented. even the army corps of engineers is silently saying "f*ck me" under their collective breaths. they had decades to create this system, and now they're being asked to resurrect it overnight with no help from local labor (see above). and anyone who reads these boards knows i am no w fan, but sh!t-damn, to have boh sept. 11th AND this happen under my watch? this certainly should affect every election for decades to come because it takes one hell of an individual to become the mouthpiece and scapegoat for all of this tragedy, while still trying to coordinate fixing the aftermaths. i do not envy the man and the task at hand, or anyone in elected positions in the region.
everyone here in louisiana, though, wishes there had still been some wetlands left. i believe we were losing them at the rate of 24 miles PER DAY before this happened. to the uninitiated, the wetlands would have acted as an enormous shock absorber to storm surge, and even winds. i remember growing up in florida, and they had this tank of water on our field trips to the science center to show why the everglades are important, and as a kid, i never understood, but now i do. they pushed this board in the water to simulate a storm surge in a bare tank, and, of course, the wave hits the opposite side of the tank at full force. fill that same tank with reeds, like bristles of a brush, and the collective force of those millions of tiny strands eats that surge for breakfast. and i have lived 20 of my 30 years on this palent on the gulf coast, and everyone agrees in casual conversation and on the radio that global warming has got to have something to do with this. the cat 5 hurricanes are coming annually now, when it would've take years in between for when i was growing up. katrina exploded when it hit the gulf and 85-90 degree waters and weak rain fronts and no wetlands that would otherwise shear it down to a cat 4 or 3. we have, over the past decades, maybe 100 years, slowly created the recipe for this disaster. and it has to be fixed soon. hell, we still have a months before THIS season is over. what if another 'cane hits the gulf coast??? i dunno, maybe you pay attention tot his stuff more when it keeps beating the crap out of you year after year.
simply put, the wetlands wouldn't have stopped katrina, but they sure as hell would've helped. now grand isle louisiana is likely gone -- like forever. the barrier island and claw you see coming off the end of the mississippi from satellite has, as some on local radio stations have said, been "reclaimed by the gulf". in other words, so much instant erosion AND 20-30 feet of water on top for the next few weeks, well, you'll probably never see those areas of louisiana from satellite again in your lifetime.
the mosquito problem is about to take on biblical plague proportions as well down there. we already have nasty mosquitoes anyway, but with that much standing water? you can't fumigate that much water for larvae without causing sickness from the fumigation. and i have no idea where to pump all of this water. if you pump it back into the lake or the river or gulf, you'll have the quivalent of an oil spill of enormous magnitude, coupled with a fantastic assortment of garbage and whatnot from the streets of new orleans, a city so dirty that the mayor started a campaign last year to get people to stop desecrating the city with a campaign "new orleans -- imagine it clean."
again, this disaster is beyond comprehension. and while we have to clean up and rebuild, we also have to take a look at the 7000 things that we did wrong that led to this moment and, given the opportunity to rebuild from scratch, make sure they don't happen again.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/0...act/index.html
I can't believe this at all. This is indicative of what this country has become, and is becoming.
Originally posted by Bronxite
leave politics out of this. even if that had been funded the city would have been fucked. it's below sea level surrounded by water and a category 4/5 hurricane hit it. you do the math.
seriously, you have to be really pathetic to immediately jump to politics when a disaster such as this strikes. rather than trying to blame someone for a natural disaster why dont you focus your efforts on something more productive for the situation
im not even.....
of course i damn well realize the city was hit by a category 4 hurricane and being that nawlins is below sea level it would get flooded. but you know what fam? the hurricane itself didnt destroy and kill these people. flood waters did. i posted that link because its fuckin disgusting that aid could be CUT to new orleans and spent on fighting wars overseas when weather people warned that an event like this could spell catastrophy. everyone knew that, but where were the improvements being made to see that a CATASTROPHY OF THE WHOLE CITY FLOODING was prevented? the whole city would have been fucked despite funding? to an extent. but where were the people on stand-by to start repairing breeched levees as soon as the storm passed over? where were the national guard on stand-by to go into NO? where has FEMA been? we wanna fix other countries and cant fix home yet? now they are enforcing martial law and more concerned about looters than actually helping people down there first. yea, lets shoot someone for stealin a piece of bread when they got absolutely nothing now instead of trying to save everyone still in that toxen infested lake (cant even call it a city nomore).
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9156612/ go watch the video and read the article then come back and tell me how "pathetic" i really am for "jumping to politics". im callin the shots how i see em.
another thing that pisses me off. was watchin one of the news stations last night and there was this little girl standin on top of a car in the flooded street with her dad while a news crew in a boat are filming shes sayin "help us. help please please help us". i mean....the news just sittin there exposing people's misfortunes and cant even throw them a rope or somethin to help them? same with filming people on roof tops.
nobody sayin that bush ordered a hurricane or somethin silly like that, we all know that global warming causes this. what i'm sayin is that bush doesnt give a fuck about poor people. no one really gives a fuck about poor people. when i read on the web, watch the news stations, etc.......it seriously brings me to tears this shit.
if you're mad i called your homeboy george w. out then too bad.
before
Originally posted by TigerWoods99
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9156612/ go watch the video
Wow.
Originally posted by TigerWoods99
snip.
I'll respond to your idiotic post later but for now I pose this question...
Would you care as much if all these people were white?
Also, would you be more critical of the people themselves?
Originally posted by TigerWoods99
im not even.....
of course i damn well realize the city was hit by a category 4 hurricane and being that nawlins is below sea level it would get flooded. but you know what fam? the hurricane itself didnt destroy and kill these people. flood waters did. i posted that link because its fuckin disgusting that aid could be CUT to new orleans and spent on fighting wars overseas when weather people warned that an event like this could spell catastrophy. everyone knew that, but where were the improvements being made to see that a CATASTROPHY OF THE WHOLE CITY FLOODING was prevented? the whole city would have been fucked despite funding? to an extent. but where were the people on stand-by to start repairing breeched levees as soon as the storm passed over? where were the national guard on stand-by to go into NO? where has FEMA been? we wanna fix other countries and cant fix home yet? now they are enforcing martial law and more concerned about looters than actually helping people down there first. yea, lets shoot someone for stealin a piece of bread when they got absolutely nothing now instead of trying to save everyone still in that toxen infested lake (cant even call it a city nomore).
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9156612/ go watch the video and read the article then come back and tell me how "pathetic" i really am for "jumping to politics". im callin the shots how i see em.
another thing that pisses me off. was watchin one of the news stations last night and there was this little girl standin on top of a car in the flooded street with her dad while a news crew in a boat are filming shes sayin "help us. help please please help us". i mean....the news just sittin there exposing people's misfortunes and cant even throw them a rope or somethin to help them? same with filming people on roof tops.
nobody sayin that bush ordered a hurricane or somethin silly like that, we all know that global warming causes this. what i'm sayin is that bush doesnt give a fuck about poor people. no one really gives a fuck about poor people. when i read on the web, watch the news stations, etc.......it seriously brings me to tears this shit.
if you're mad i called your homeboy george w. out then too bad.
You are calling out your own unreasonableness.
You are suggesting that we don't spend money on anything just because something bad might happen.
So therefore let's cancel spending on roads and highways and oil production and border control and water purification. Let just spend all that money on suring up levees and dams and bridges and placing equipment all across the US specifically for emergencies, because you know - something bad might happen, somewhere.
The current levee system was built to withstand a Cat3 storm, because of time and money constraints. A project to update the the 350 miles of levies and dikes and locks would take 20 years or more to complete. So no amount of funding or money would have helped the current situation in NOLA. It will take years just to get the levees back to operational at the Cat3 level. The war in Iraq will have long been over by then, so that connection is just stupid.
if you're mad I called you out then too bad.
Originally posted by the cool gut
OMG, what in the FUCK is the government doing? Is it because everyone left is black and poor - is that why they don't care?
That is just racist to the max.
I am not sure where you're getting your information, but there is an unprecidented amount of aid on the way there.
You seriously need to readjust your outlook, friend.
Originally posted by NaplesX
That is just racist to the max.
I am not sure where you're getting your information, but there is an unprecidented amount of aid on the way there.
Don't give me that shit - it's been nearly 5 fucking days. If this was New York or L.A. you could be sure the response would have been much more swift.
They have been running computer simulations for years, and everyone knew the devastating affect of a level 4 or 5 hurricane on the region.
And it's still FRELLING running!
anyway, the guys are having to deal with some pretty hairy conditions.
here's a quote from their blog:
It's been a very long day. I'm going to crash for a bit and try to get 5 hours or so of sleep. I apologize again that I cannot respond to each IM. I am trying. We've got that IRC channel going and I'll try to get in there for a while later in the day.
I am going to debrief the police officer completely in the morning. He was utterly fatigued, thirsty, and wanted to find out what the hell was really going on.
Security has become a major concern now, because the NOPD is ineffective and the looters terrorists are roaming the streets. Word is now that they're lighting buildings on fire, but I can't confirm that. Anyway, we have to run guard shifts and patrol and it limits our downtime.
It is a zoo out there though, make no mistake. It's the wild kingdom. It's Lord of the Flies. That doesn't mean there's murder on every street corner. But what it does mean is that the rule of law has collapsed, that there is no order, and that property rights cannot and are not being enforced. Anyone who is on the streets is in immediate danger of being robbed and killed. It's that bad.
I will be back on around 0700 or so I think.
Originally posted by the cool gut
OMG, what in the FUCK is the government doing? Is it because everyone left is black and poor - is that why they don't care?
Especially after seeing that video from around the convention center it's hard not to start asking those questions. With people dead and dying, there is no excuse. The violence isn't even an excuse at this point.
It's important to note, however, that they have to deal with an absolutely huge number of people. Getting them out of there is not going to be easy.
Originally posted by the cool gut
Don't give me that shit - it's been nearly 5 fucking days. If this was New York or L.A. you could be sure the response would have been much more swift.
They have been running computer simulations for years, and everyone knew the devastating affect of a level 4 or 5 hurricane on the region.
Man you are dense.
The evacuation plan was to take 3 days, not the two that they had!
The scope of the rescue is huge. Just open your eyes. 100,000 people there, fires everywhere, water covering 85% of the city, roaming gangs of gunmen, looters and on and on and on. There only a few roads into the area.
Let's just be real for a little while, please.