Can anyone identify any one of those streets in the pictures KingCheetah and FlamingMoe posted? I'd like to see if I can GOOGLE-EARTH one and compare what it looks like NOW. don't steal my idea, f*ck*rs!
I have dozens more, I got them from a co-worker who got them from a friend at another oil company - the photos are of the Fourchon - Venice - Boothville - Buras areas of Plaquemines, Parish
If you could send them to my email (cunzhep@yahoo.com) or post it somewhere I'd really appreciate. We are working with FEMA on remote sensing, and some of the photos really help our planning.
saw the post above, here's the news. makes a lot of sense. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=2147692 -- HOUSTON -- At least 25,000 of Hurricane Katrina's refugees, a majority of them at the New Orleans Superdome, will travel in a bus convoy to Houston starting Wednesday and will be sheltered at the 40-year-old Astrodome, which hasn't been used for professional sporting events in years. Red Cross The Federal Emergency Management Agency will provide 475 buses for the transfer, and the Astrodome's schedule has been cleared through December for housing evacuees, said Kathy Walt, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Rusty Cornelius, administrative coordinator for the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, told The Associated Press that initial plans were being made early Wednesday. "We are planning on being able to do a full shelter operation for 25,000 people," he said. The New Orleans Saints will practice in San Antonio for the forseeable future, although plans for home games, which are unlikely to be played in the Superdome, have not been made. "All options are under consideration," Saints director of media relations Greg Bensel said about where New Orleans might play its home games. "It's all on the table and there will continue to be discussions. But, for now, nothing is decided." The Saints will fly to San Antonio following Thursday night's preseason finale against the Oakland Raiders, will be reunited there with their families, and begin preparations for the Sept. 11 season opener at Carolina. The Saints have spent this week practicing in San Jose, Calif. New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin said Wednesday that Doug Thornton, a regional vice president for the company that manages the Superdome, told him it will be "very, very difficult" for the Saints to play home games there this season. Army engineers struggled without success to plug New Orleans' breached levees with giant sandbags, and Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Wednesday the situation was worsening and there was no choice but to abandon the flooded city. "The challenge is an engineering nightmare," said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "The National Guard has been dropping sandbags into it, but it's like dropping it into a black hole." Blanco said she wanted the Superdome -- which had become a shelter of last resort for about 20,000 people -- evacuated within two days, along with other gathering points for storm refugees. The situation inside the dank and sweltering Superdome was becoming desperate: The water was rising, the air conditioning was out, toilets were broken, and tempers were rising. Cornelius said the refugees would be bused to Houston, but all would not necessarily be on the road at the same time. He said specifics of the transport and housing for the refugees were still being worked out with Red Cross and state government officials. "We want to accommodate those people as quickly as possible for the simple reason they have been through a horrible ordeal," he said. Perry talked to Blanco early Wednesday and agreed to the plan, Walt said. Texas also is looking at the possibility of using the Ford Center in Beaumont for some long-term housing for other evacuees from Louisiana who may be staying in hotels, motels and campgrounds. "Obviously from Governor Perry's standpoint, Texas is going to lend a helping hand and take care of those who have been devastated," Walt said. As the waters continued to rise in New Orleans, four Navy ships raced toward the Gulf Coast with drinking water and other emergency supplies, and Red Cross workers from across the country converged on the devastated region. The Red Cross reported it had about 40,000 people in 200 shelters across the area in one of the biggest urban disasters the nation has ever seen. The death toll from Hurricane Katrina reached at least 110 in Mississippi alone, while Louisiana put aside the counting of the dead to concentrate on rescuing the living, many of whom were still trapped on rooftops and in attics. A full day after the Big Easy thought it had escaped Katrina's full fury, two levees broke and spilled water into the streets on Tuesday, swamping an estimated 80 percent of the bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city, inundating miles and miles of homes and rendering much of New Orleans uninhabitable for weeks or months. "We are looking at 12 to 16 weeks before people can come in," Nagin said on ABC's "Good Morning America, "and the other issue that's concerning me is have dead bodies in the water. At some point in time the dead bodies are going to start to create a serious disease issue." The sweltering city of 480,000 people -- an estimated 80 percent of whom obeyed orders to evacuate as Katrina closed in over the weekend -- also had no drinkable water, the electricity could be out for weeks, and looters were ransacking stores around town. To repair one of the levees holding back Lake Pontchartrain, officials late Tuesday dropped 3,000-pound sandbags from helicopters and hauled dozens of 15-foot concrete barriers into the breach. Maj. Gen. Don Riley of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said officials also had a more audacious plan: finding a barge to plug the 500-foot hole. Riley said it could take close to a month to get the water out of the city. If the water rises a few feet higher, it could also wipe out the water system for the whole city, said New Orleans' homeland security chief, Terry Ebbert. A helicopter view of the devastation over Louisiana and Mississippi revealed people standing on black rooftops, baking in the sunshine while waiting for rescue boats. "I can only imagine that this is what Hiroshima looked like 60 years ago," said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour after touring the destruction by air Tuesday. All day long, rescuers in boats and helicopters plucked bedraggled flood refugees from rooftops and attics. Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said 3,000 people have been rescued by boat and air, some placed shivering and wet into helicopter baskets. They were brought by the truckload into shelters, some in wheelchairs and some carrying babies, with stories of survival and of those who didn't make it. "Oh my God, it was hell," said Kioka Williams, who had to hack through the ceiling of the beauty shop where she worked as floodwaters rose in New Orleans' low-lying Ninth Ward. "We were screaming, hollering, flashing lights. It was complete chaos." Looting broke out in some New Orleans neighborhoods, prompting authorities to send more than 70 additional officers and an armed personnel carrier into the city. One police officer was shot in the head by a looter but was expected to recover, authorities said. A giant new Wal-Mart in New Orleans was looted, and the entire gun collection was taken, The Times-Picayune newspaper reported. "There are gangs of armed men in the city moving around the city," said Ebbert, the city's homeland security chief. Also, looters tried to break into Children's Hospital, the governor's office said. On New Orleans' Canal Street, dozens of looters ripped open the steel gates on clothing and jewelry stores and grabbed merchandise. Blanco acknowledged that looting was a severe problem but said that officials had to focus on survivors. "We don't like looters one bit, but first and foremost is search and rescue," she said. Officials said it was simply too early to estimate a death toll. One Mississippi county alone said it had suffered at least 100 deaths, and officials are "very, very worried that this is going to go a lot higher," said Joe Spraggins, civil defense director for Harrison County, home to Biloxi and Gulfport. In neighboring Jackson County, officials said at least 10 deaths were blamed on the storm. Several of the dead in Harrison County were from a beachfront apartment building that collapsed under a 25-foot wall of water as Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds Monday. Louisiana officials said many were feared dead there, too, making Katrina one of the most punishing storms to hit the United States in decades. Blanco asked residents to spend Wednesday in prayer. Louisiana Superdome Much of New Orleans is under water, and the Superdome will be evacuated. "That would be the best thing to calm our spirits and thank our Lord that we are survivors," she said. "Slowly, gradually, we will recover; we will survive; we will rebuild." Across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, more than 1 million residents remained without electricity, some without clean drinking water. Officials said it could be weeks, if not months, before most evacuees will be able to return. Emergency medical teams from across the country were sent into the region and President Bush cut short his Texas vacation Tuesday to return to Washington to focus on the storm damage. Also, the Bush administration decided to release crude oil from federal petroleum reserves to help refiners whose supply was disrupted by Katrina. The announcement helped push oil prices lower. Katrina, which was downgraded to a tropical depression, packed winds around 30 mph as it moved through the Ohio Valley early Wednesday, with the potential to dump 8 inches of rain and spin off deadly tornadoes. The remnants of Katrina spawned bands of storms and tornadoes across Georgia that caused at least two deaths, multiple injuries and leveled dozens of buildings. A tornado damaged 13 homes near Marshall, Va. The Astrodome helped put Houston on the map four decades ago. It still stands but is dwarfed by Reliant Stadium, the Houston Texans' newly constructed home. The Astrodome opened in 1965, 10 years before the Superdome in New Orleans.
AFTER: I didn't even notice the same FLICKR user had the AFTER picture right next to the previous one. SAD. Just SAD.
They are doing something. They've already allocated something like 400+ buses/vehicles to transport people out of there.
WOW!!!!!!!! Absolutely frightening. I can't imagine the anxiety and heartache the New Orlean folks are feeling right now.
Is there any way we could organize a Clutchfans aid drive? Like pick a day for everybody on this site to meet up at the dome, or some other shelter, and donate our time and effort to helping these people? Just an idea..
Did anyone see Bret Farve's mom on Channel 11 News yesterday? She was just in the street with other folks whose homes had been destroyed.
http://www.oxfordpress.com/news/content/shared/news/nation/stories/08/31KATRINA_GA_GAS.html Gas pipelines down By STACY SHELTON, MICHAEL E. KANELL Cox News Service Wednesday, August 31, 2005 ATLANTA — Metro Atlanta drivers are facing the possibility of paying considerably more than $3 a gallon for gas by Labor Day — if they can get it at all. The two pipelines that bring gasoline and jet fuel to the region are down — powerless to pump as Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on electrical infrastructure. The metro Atlanta region generally has about a 10-day supply of gasoline in inventory, said BP spokesman Michael Kumpf. The pipelines have been down for two days. Alpharetta, Ga.-based Colonial Pipeline Co., cut off from its suppliers on the Gulf Coast, is now pumping gas from huge storage tanks, many in Powder Springs, Ga. Whether electric power can be restored to the pipeline pumps before supplies run out is "the great uncertainty ... that hangs over all of us," said Daniel Moenter, a spokesman for Marathon Ashland Petroleum, a major supplier of metro Atlanta's fuel. Some suppliers are rationing gasoline to retailers, so some stations may already be near empty. With supplies uncertain, oil companies and larger wholesalers are ratcheting up prices, partly to slow demand. Some local wholesalers already are paying 65 to 80 cents per gallon more than they paid three days ago. That kind of price increase will hit the pumps within a few days. On Monday, the scare talk was about prices hitting $3 a gallon at the pump. By Tuesday, that line had changed for the worse, said Tex Pitfield, president of Saraguay Petroleum Corp., which delivers gas to retailers. "Depending on how much damage has actually taken place and the time involved in getting the infrastructure up and running, is $4 a gallon out of the question? Not necessarily," he said. Peter Beutel, an oil analyst with Cameron Hanover, told The Associated Press: ''This is the big one. This is unmitigated bad news for consumers.'' It's unclear how soon the pipeline outages may affect operations at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Fuel suppliers and airlines have 22 storage tanks at the airport that hold up to 27.6 million gallons of fuel. At full capacity, that's enough for about 10 days of fuel at the airlines' recent daily consumption rate of 2.8 million gallons. No information was immediately available on how much fuel remains in the tanks. Gov. Sonny Perdue's office is aware of the situation and is meeting with Georgia's fuel suppliers. "We know that they're on top of this issue, and they're assessing damage to their production and distribution process in the wake of Hurricane Katrina," said Heather Hedrick, Perdue's press secretary. Hedrick said it's too early to say whether Georgians should be concerned. "In order to answer that question fairly, the governor needs a full briefing from fuel suppliers in Georgia," she said. "We're waiting for that information now." Metro Atlanta motorists already pay a little more for gas than those in surrounding states because of a clean-fuel requirements to reduce air pollution. Perdue issued a statement Tuesday saying those requirements would be lifted temporarily to increase supplies and lower prices, once the pipelines are again operational. Perdue's decision, which awaits approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, would affect 45 counties in and around metro Atlanta. "The governor felt it was important to take some steps to help alleviate gas prices that have been increasing for weeks now," Hedrick said. Lisa Ray, a spokeswoman with the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, said the department is prepared to help deal with any gas shortages. "We have talked to the Georgia Department of Agriculture, and they said supplies are not a problem in Georgia at this time," Ray said. GEMA is a coordinating agency for emergency support functions.
WOW! That's a great idea and I wish I was in Houston to help out with something like that. I posted a list of suggestions for things that could be done to help out including what type of donations would be helpful on page 10 of this thread and with the refugees coming to Houston it would be great if Clutchfans could deliver things like clothing personally. One item I forgot to include on the list of donations previously is: Toys and diapers
The images of destruction seem to never end! I guess they MUST move the refugees west to Houston. They sure as hell aren't going to go East on I-10 Eventually, somebody's gonna have to sort out these boats: Don't expect much production from this oil platform: The casinos won't be opening any time soon. Here's the Palace: ... here's the Hard Rock I like the way this guy thinks: more pictures here
A man who was in the hurricane decided to stay home. At first the water only came up a couple of feet into his home. The sheriff came by in a little boat and offered to take the man to safety. The man replied "God will save me, I don't need your help." Later as the water rose to the second story, the National Guard came by in a larger boat. When asked to get into the boat, the man replied "God will save me, leave me alone!" Later, when the water was over the second story and the man was clinging to the roof of his house, a Coast Guard helicopter flew in and shouted through the megaphone "Grab the rope, we'll save you!" The man replied "God will save me, I don't need your help!!! Go away!!!" About an hour later, the water flooded over his roof and the man died in the flood. When he got to heaven he walked straight up to God and asked him "Why didn't you save me!!! I had lots of faith in you Holy Lord and you never saved me from the flood." God looked at the man and replied... "What the heck are you talking about?? I sent you two boats and a helicopter."
More women coming to Houston, start working out and getting cleaned up. No wingman needed. It a free for all.
Crap, they're estimating thousands may be dead. At this rate Katrina may rival the Galveston Hurricane of the early 1900's.
It may be what.. 4-5 months before they get an official count? That time-frame alone tells you how many might be lost.
