New Orleans

alafairnadia wrote: [quote=dailyheights]It will be extremely expensive. Is anyone yet saying that this is enough to tip the US economy into recession?

I wonder what the level of devastation has been to the offshore oil rigs.

Probably minimal. Those things are built tough.

Now the governor is calling for the Superdome to be evacuated:

http://www.wdsu.com/news/4916595/detail.html

Also... this came in through an email list I'm on, from a guy who lives in New Orleans. I've deleted names and a paragraph that had a lot of identifying info but the rest here is what he said:

--

Marshall law was declared this morning in New Orleans. The
situation appears to be spinning out of control as levees have broken,
flooding at least 80 percent of the city. The water is rising by the hour
and may be several feet by nightfall. CNN reports that Tulane University
Hospital, filled inside with patients and staff, is surrounded by 6 feet of
water. People are dying inside the Superdome. A tanker has sunk in the
river and is releasing oil into the Mississippi. A major bridge, the twin
span leading into the city along Interstate 10 from the east has been
destroyed. People are reporting that looters are swimming in waist deep
water to steal from stores and houses. Bodies are being seen in trees.
Local news anchors at WDSU pleaded on the air this morning with national
media to stop reporting that New Orleans missed the big one.

This morning during a conference call with T---, my network specialist,
and G---, my business manager, you had 3 men fighting tears at times.
The grief and fear is always just under the surface as we strive to focus
on getting our servers back online. T--- was especially upset since he is
convinced he and his wife have lost everything. I assume my house is
damaged if not destroyed and surely the rising flood waters today may do
it in. We assume our business location may have been heavily damaged.
Our servers are in a high rise we thought would withstand the storm, but
some servers went offline Monday morning around 4 AM, and others at 10 AM.

FEMA is saying it may be weeks before persons are allowed to return to
New Orleans. Until then, I'm sure we'll try and rebuild our lives and our
business elsewhere. D--- is safe in Atlanta. I'm in Miami, safe too.
But we are honestly exhausted and in such emotional pain. Our Big Easy
seems to be slipping away while we watch it on TV.

K.

PS: To see live local news coverage from one station that had to flee
because of property damage but is reporting from a location in another
state: http://www.wdsu.com/

I've been following things on the website for WDSU ever since getting this email. It's pretty fucking awful. Three deaths so far at the Superdome, the most recent of which is assumed by authorities to be a suicide.

That video of the guy whose wife slipped away from him was heartbreaking. Sort of like the tsunami last year--only in a language I can understand, so it puts what happened then in perspective as well. :shock:

Now I'm listening to WDSU live, where they were interviewing someone at Tulane U. Hospital. Apparently they've been moving everything frantically upstairs and evacuating patients via helicopters landing on the roof. Meanwhile, people are looting the staff's cars!!

daveb wrote: Anderson Cooper was just showing footage of a seal they found, washed up in a parking lot.

A little while later he reported that police officers had to shoot it.

I'm glued to CNN right now. It's terribly depressing.

Jack wrote: Very, very sad and post-apocalyptic.

Wait for a couple days when the water subsides and the cameras are everywhere. It's going to be really bad.

daveb wrote: Big prison riot now...hostages.

Orleans Parish Prison no doubt. FWIW, that's the prison the Jim Jarmusch film 'Down By Law'. Trivial I know, but contextual none-the-less.

daveb wrote: Dunno, they were talking about it on Larry King. One of the local TV stations is reporting it, but it can't be confirmed with them because of communication problems, understandably. CNN also say the looting in some areas is so bad the local affiliates are telling their staff to flee because it's too dangerous.

All of this makes me really question having housing near known flood plains and such. Granted, this was an event triggered by a hurricane. But most of the aftermath problems are stemming from the fact that New Orleans and nearby cities are basically below sea level.

People have the right to live wherever they want, but I consider being near the Mississippi the equivalent to living right next door to a volcano.

alafairnadia wrote: The big clue, having spent the majority of my life in cities like Miami Beach and Houston, both of which have hurricanes and flooding, is to LEAVE when they tell you to. get the fuck out. hopefully this tragic event will help people remember this. protecting your property is useless if you're gonna end up drowning or fighting looters.

Agreed, although to be fair, while a lot of the people who stayed behind did so out of ignorance or stubbornness or whatever, many of those who didn't leave the path of this hurricane were simply too old, sick, or poor to evacuate. People who didn't have cars or money for a hotel or someone's home to go to out of town got hit hard.

I'm really glad that most of the people I know of who live in New Orleans did get out over the weekend, and the handful I don't know about yet were probably smart enough and had the means to leave. Does anyone here have any friends or family in the areas that were affected?

bluedove wrote: Yes--I know a lot of my family got out, but there are several folks I don't know about yet...and my 15-year-old cousin has a very close friend who just moved to Gulfport, MS (which was hit VERY hard)...they stayed because her mom is a nurse and felt she'd be needed. The last they heard from them was Monday night, when they got a message saying that their house, which is on stilts, was flooded to the second floor and they were moving up to the attic. Nothing since.

***Scary***

whoa, that's so scary!

alafairnadia wrote: Yeah -- and that shows a lack of emergency planning by those states, which is really unfortunate. it's really pathetic that a lot of the stranded people (and probably a lot of folks who died) were in the 9th ward in new orleans, which is a damn poor area.

I think the emergency planning is as good as it can be given the physical location of all of the damage. But that's why I mentioned that point before. While there are many pluses to living so close to the water, the minuses are just not worth it.

My attitude is that now that the shit has hit the fan, anyone who is alive and who lost property in the flood zone should simply be relocated to higher ground. And the area flooded should be just not inhabitted in any way.

I know that sounds extreme, and I know some people have no choice as to where they live, but I think there should be a real critical look at shoreline development.

Sad all around. Very, very sad.

As I watch Tucker Carlson (even if I don’t agree with his politics) I see ad after HAPPY ad, I become infuriated. After 9/11 there were no ads for about a week (or so). All the ads I see are absolutely inappropriate!

Also...every image I see of looters...I'm just WAITING for someone to throw up the air quotes "LOOTERS" - it's disgusting - and it makes me sad.

queen_of_pies wrote: All of my family on my mother's side lives in New Orleans, and I spent the first part of my life there. We haven't heard from my aunt since just before the storm hit. Some of us are talking about going down but don't even know where to begin looking for her.

While I certainly understand the temptation, it's probably a bad idea to go down there unless you have some specific skills to help with the relief effort (like the ConEd guys they kept showing on NY-1 yesterday). The infrastructure there is stretched to its limits already.

dailyheights wrote: The looting is very real, and has been pretty rampant. There's an article in Editor & Publisher right now that details how New Orleans police actually assisted people in raiding the electronics department of Wal-Mart on Tchoupitoulas St. I saw footage of people carrying away armloads of sports gear from Canal St. stores. A reporter said he witnessed people stopping to try on Nikes to make sure they got the best fit.

A lot of it people taking supplies they need to survive, but there is definitely an element of looting involved.

oh, I'm sure. and the people taking TVs are clearly not-so-bright. I just saw some footage on cnn of people with grocery carts full of canned goods, diapers, etc. technically, obviously, it's theft, but whatever. I'd be doing it too if I were stuck there and needed food and other necessary items.