I got this off of the NO local website: Homeland Security Chief Terry Ebbert estimates it may take a month to get power back to everyone in New Orleans. Councilman Oliver Thomas said he had received 120 distress calls from people in the Ninth Ward trapped by the storm. He said crews can not get to these people until hurricane force winds cease, the guess for that time frame is about 2 p.m. Karen Swensen reports that Charity Hospital lost its windows on the 4th floor and that patients are being huddled in the hallways. Senator Walter Boasso of St. Bernard Parish says there is 12 feet of water in most of the parish, up to the second floor in many homes. Reports of 3-4 feet of water in Lakeview. Apartment building on Wright Avenue in Terrytown has collapsed with people inside, according to Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee. Rescue crews have not been able to get to the scene as of 9:30 a.m. Karen Swensen says there is 3 feet of water downtown near the Hyatt. She reports several office windows coming out whole from buildings. Two holes ripped in Superdome roof, visible from facility floor, according to Associated Press reports. .. A LEVEE BREACH OCCURRED ALONG THE INDUSTRIAL CANAL AT TENNESSE STREET. 3 TO 8 FEET OF WATER IS EXPECTED DUE TO THE BREACH...LOCATIONS IN THE WARNING INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO ARABI AND 9TH WARD OF NEW ORLEANS. St. Bernard Parish spokesman Larry Ingargiola says the parish's two shelters at Chalmette High and St. Bernard High are suffering major damage. He said Chalmette High shelter is losing its roof, and St. Bernard High has plenty of broken windows and glass. He estimates 300-plus refugees at the two sites. Entergy says 317,000 customers were without power as of 6 a.m. Cleco reported 40,000 without power in St. Tammany Parish. St. Bernard Parish officials say most of the parish has no power.
too bad most of Louisiana's National Guard is in Iraq (along with all their equipment made for high-water emergencies and generators)
Check out this awesome quote from Yahoo! news. Artist Matt Rinard, who owns a business in the French Quarter, holed up on the fifth floor of a Canal Street hotel and watched the storm roll in. He said pieces of sheet metal and plywood, billboards and pieces of palm trees flew down Canal, which borders the Quarter, as huge gusts of wind blew through the city. "It's blustery. You can see the speed of it now, it's unbelievable," he said. "The power went out about an hour and a half ago and so now I'm just watching the occasional dumbass walking down Canal Street."
We're getting some nasty weather on the EAST SI-EEEDE! of Houston right now. I don't think the winds are hitting 160mph though. Kinda glad about that.
I've been unable to contact my sister in Baton Rouge. She has 3 phones and none of them are getting through. Anyone know a good way to contact them?
Wll according to WWLTV in NO, more then 200 people are trapped on roof tops in Bywater Eastover, and Ninth Ward on the city's east side. The report went on to say that there were bodies floating in the water in Bywater.
...anybody have a comparison of damage done by "male" hurricanes vs. "female" hurricanes? I'm willing to bet that the chick hurricanes have been more destructive over the years...
Maybe this will help? There's gotta be a chart somewhere of ALL the hurricanes. http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/factsheets/retiringnmesthurrican.htm and http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/factsheets/WhyHurricanesAreNamed.htm History says that the FEMINISTS won their way when they complained that only FEMALE names were used, and demanded that the NOAA used male names. Also, how do you categorize the "damage"??? WTF says how many "millions" or "billions" of dollars of damages there are? That's just stupid. http://www.hurricaneville.com/historic.html <- good stuff. I will keep searching. There's gotta be someone who already thought about the comparison you requested. From Yahoo Photos: [Former] Super Dome GBNOLA
Thankfully NO isn't totally destroyed like a lot of us were thinking last night but its still really bad. I haven't heard any casualtie reports but there might be up to a million people homeless, it might be days before the waters recede in some places and weeks for power. There's still going to be a big need and a long recovery. I think I'm going to change my sig.
AP: 50 die in Mississippi AP: 50 die in Mississippi Tuesday, August 30, 2005; Posted: 1:14 a.m. EDT (05:14 GMT NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Hurricane Katrina left at least 56 people dead Monday, 50 of them in one Mississippi county, according to The Associated Press, and the toll was expected to climb following one of the most powerful hurricanes to hit the northern Gulf Coast in a half century. More than 12 hours after making landfall on the Louisiana coast east of New Orleans, Katrina was downgraded to a tropical storm with winds of 60 mph Monday evening. The storm's daylong rampage claimed lives and ravaged property in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, where coastal areas remained under several feet of water. (Watch aerial video of New Orleans flooding) The AP quoted Jim Pollard, a spokesman for the emergency operations center in Mississippi's Harrison County, as saying 50 people were killed in the county, most of them at an apartment complex in the casino resort town of Biloxi. Four other people were killed in Mississippi, the state's Emergency Management Agency said, and the AP reported two people lost their lives in storm-related traffic accidents in Alabama. In Louisiana, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said there was no official death tally. But, she told CNN she expected that to change. "We believe we've lost some lives," she said. "We're hearing isolated reports here and there." Many were feared dead in flooded neighborhoods still under as much as 20 feet of water. The storm's survivors face months of displacement. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is preparing to house "at least tens of thousands of victims ... for literally months on end," the agency's director, Michael Brown, said Monday night. Lakes and rivers were still spilling over levees late Monday, and "it's going to get worse before it gets better," Brown said. Veteran FEMA staffers who have surveyed the destruction are reporting some of the worst damage they have ever seen, he said. The American Red Cross said it is launching the largest relief operation in its history. (Read about the relief effort) More than 75,000 people are being housed in nearly 240 shelters across the region, and Red Cross President Marty Evans told CNN, "We expect that to grow" as people who can't return home seek somewhere to stay. More than 1.3 million homes and businesses in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were without electricity, according to utility companies serving the region. In Mississippi, streets and homes were flooded as far as six miles inland, and the eastbound lanes of Interstate 10 between Gulfport and Biloxi were impassable because of storm debris. More than 50 people were rescued from flooded neighborhoods in the New Orleans area, according to a spokesman for Louisiana's Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness agency. (Watch video of a helicopter rescue) "We've got a massive search-and-rescue operation going on," Gov. Blanco said. "I believe that we're going to pull out hundreds of people." Search-and-rescue missions also were under way the the coastal counties of Jackson, Harrison and Hancock Monday evening, emergency management spokeswoman Lea Stokes said. Hotel worker Suzanne Rodgers returned to her beachfront home near Biloxi but, she told CNN, "there is nothing there. There's debris hanging from trees." (Read Rodgers' harrowing account) Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour called Katrina's aftermath "catastrophic." In Louisiana, Blanco said preliminary reports indicate that Hurricane Katrina "devastated" parts of at least six parishes. Both states experienced looting. A crowd of about 50 to 75 people swarmed through a supermarket in New Orleans, taking out shopping carts full of goods before police arrived. Looting was reported by police in Gulfport, Mississippi, where the storm surge left downtown streets under 10 feet of water. As of 11 p.m. ET Monday, Katrina was near Columbus, Mississippi, according to the National Weather Service. (See video of Katrina gouging Mississippi) The storm was headed north Monday night through Mississippi toward Tennessee and the Ohio River Valley. But even as a tropical storm, Katrina was still causing plenty of trouble. Katrina's outer bands spawned tornados in Georgia Monday evening. Three twisters were reported in Georgia, one in central Peach County and two in the northwest counties of Carroll and Paulding. One person in Carroll County was critically injured. Officials warned Louisiana evacuees to stay away for at least a week to avoid "a wilderness" without utilities that will be infested with poisonous snakes and fire ants. "We would really encourage people not to come back [to New Orleans] for at least a week," said Ivor van Heerden, director of the Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes in Baton Rouge. "If your house is gone, it's gone," he said. "If you come back in a day or a week, it's not going to make any difference." (Full story) Blanco said she had ordered state police to block re-entry routes to all but emergency workers. After topping levees in New Orleans, Katrina inundated the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts with a 20-foot storm surge. In Mobile, Alabama, the storm pushed Mobile Bay into downtown, submerging large sections of the city, and officials imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew. An oil drilling platform broke away from its moorings and lodged under a bridge that carries U.S. Highway 98 over the Mobile River. The Alabama National Guard activated 450 troops to secure Mobile. Two other Alabama battalions, or about 800 troops, were activated to assist in Mississippi. The storm came ashore Monday morning just east of New Orleans. Winds topping 140 mph transformed street signs, tree branches and roof debris into projectiles. Rising water strained the system of levees and pumping stations that protect the low-lying city. About 70 percent of the city sits below sea level. (Full story) Water poured over levees in Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, and pats of the city's east side were under 9 feet of standing water. (See video of near whiteout conditions and debris-filled winds) R.I.P http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/29/hurricane.katrina/index.html
man...its just gonna get worse. reporting that the levee between Lake Potchatrain and the city is definitely breeched...two hospitals closeby with hundreds of patients need to be evacuated by air..
