Popular Mechanics does NOT want to mess with Jeff. His nerd obsession (and thus knowledge) with hurricanes and tropical storms is a force more powerful than 15 Katrinas stacked on top of each other with millions of ginzu knives radiating from the eyes.
why must this be political? it seems pretty objective me. only the obsessivly partisan would attempt to devine politics in an article like this, which attempts to take the politics out of what was, after all, a natural disaster.
Thank you for providing a much needed response to this Popular Mechanics article. Clearly, there are plenty of facts to be found in D&D, with your post being a fine example. The greatest devastation and loss of life from the 1900 storm that destroyed Galveston, and took the lives of at least 8,000 people (they don't really know the exact figure, but days were spent loading bodies on huge barges and dumping them out in the Gulf. Sadly, many washed back on to the beach. The photos are just stunning.), came from the huge storm surge. It had very high winds as well, but they would have caused a fraction of the deaths and injuries, had that, with the rain, been the main impact of the storm. Keep D&D Civil.
Of course, we all know the media overhypes and oversensationalizes everything they do. In this case, however, I am kind of glad they did because it put more pressure on government officials than anything else. So with the benefit of hindsight, I am glad the media did what it did...it was well worth it.
I'm surprised that people from Houston would say something like this. Consider how hard the evac from Houston for Rita was and how many people just turned back because they got so frustrated with traffic. Evacuating a major city with even 3 days warning isn't an easy task and while yes people should take their own safety seriously its not completely human idiocy that causes poeple not to evacuate.
In general I thought it was a pretty good article and a good find by Halfbreed. I've heard a lot of what had been mentioned in the article. The only things I would disagree with it are its editorializing about energy (build more refineries, drill in the Arctic, I mean people could just conserve more in the face of a disaster) Also by debunking the myths, which I agree should be, I'm worried that they also create something of a false impression about the situation with recovery by saying things aren't as bad as the media makes it. IMO the scale of the damage isn't fully conveyed by the media and its pretty much impossible to grasp it even having been there. I totally agree that sensationalizing the disaster does a disservice but at the sametime we shouldn't ignore the massive scale of the disaster and the recovery.
http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=108849&highlight=popular+mechanics earlier post on the preliminary report.
I'm saying that none of us or N.O. residents had ever seen any thing like that. the winds weren't the problem, it was the flooding.
jeff i know you follow the storms a lot but you need to re-read the part you quoted. they did specifically mention the 30 mi. radius. i know thats a small point to what you are saying but they did state that as a reason why katrina was so destructive as well as the relatively shallow waters where it went on shore. and also they call them 100 year floods not because they statistically happen once every 100 years. lets not forget that the 100 year flood is something made up by insurance companies and this flood level has been manipulated in areas to increase homebuilding and development. there was an excellent documentary on flood in the central texas area on PBS about 3 months ago that illustrated this perfectly and how central texas has far too many homes in the "100 year" flood plain because the flood plain has been lowered for development. austin used to have almost regular 100 year floods back in the early 1900's...pretty insane seeing the footage of the congress bridge becoming part of the river. and its hard to say that katrina was a once in a lifetime event when there were 2 other storms that became as a strong as it. and i don't think they said katrina was average either...they just said it was not a super storm when it hit land. wouldn't a cat 1 storm be average? anyhow thats all i got
