Selected comments on Hurricane Katrina (August 2005) from email lists Compiled by Ilan Kelman
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Other ArticlesDrowning Recovery Blog http://drowningrecovery.blog-city.com graphics http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/2005_HURRICANEKATRINA_GRAPHIC/index_02.html Survival of New Orleans http://mgno.com New Orleans http://www.nola.com http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/national/30coast.html?ex=1126065600&en=cb61efc710bc84cf&ei=5070&emc=eta1 After Centuries of 'Controlling' Land, Gulf Learns Who's the Boss Sign In to E-Mail This Printer-Friendly Reprints By CORNELIA DEAN and ANDREW C. REVKIN Published: August 30, 2005 The Gulf Coast has always been vulnerable to coastal storms, but over the years people have made things worse, particularly in Louisiana, where Hurricane Katrina struck yesterday. Since the 18th century, when French colonial administrators required land claimants to establish ownership by building levees along bayous, streams and rivers, people have been trying to dominate the region's landscape and the forces of its nature.
Coastal Defenses Are Disapearing Hurricane Katrina: Photos and Video of the Storm's Impact Forum: Hurricane Katrina As long as people could control floods, they could do business. But, as people learned too late, the landscape of South Louisiana depends on floods: it is made of loose Mississippi River silt, and the ground subsides as this silt consolidates. Only regular floods of muddy water can replenish the sediment and keep the landscape above water. But flood control projects channel the river's nourishing sediment to the end of the birdfoot delta and out into the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico. Although early travelers realized the irrationality of building a port on shifting mud in an area regularly ravaged by storms and disease, the opportunities to make money overrode all objections. When most transport was by water, people would of course settle along the Mississippi River, and of course they would build a port city near its mouth. In the 20th century, when oil and gas fields were developed in the gulf, of course people added petrochemical refineries and factories to the river mix, convenient to both drillers and shippers. To protect it all, they built an elaborate system of levees, dams, spillways and other installations. As one 19th-century traveler put it, according to Ari Kelman, an environmental historian at the University of California, Davis, "New Orleans is surprising evidence of what men will endure, when cheered by the hopes of an ever-flowing tide of dollars and cents." In the last few decades, more and more people have realized what a terrible bargain the region made when it embraced - unwittingly, perhaps - environmental degradation in exchange for economic gains. Abby Sallenger, a scientist with the United States Geological Survey who has studied the Louisiana landscape for years, sees the results of this bargain when he makes his regular flights over the Gulf Coast or goes by boat to one of the string of sandy barrier islands that line the state's coast. The islands are the region's first line of defense against hurricane waves and storm surges. Marshes, which can normally absorb storm water, are its second. But, starved of sediment, the islands have shrunk significantly in recent decades. And though the rate of the marshes' loss has slowed somewhat, they are still disappearing, "almost changing before your eyes," as Dr. Sallenger put it in a telephone interview from his office in St. Petersburg, Fla. "Grassland turns into open water, ponds turn into lakes." Without the fine sediment that nourishes marshes and the coarser sediment that feeds eroding barrier islands, "the entire delta region is sinking," he said. In effect, he said, it is suffering a rise in sea level of about a centimeter - about a third of an inch - a year, 10 times the average rate globally. "Some of the future projections of sea level rise elsewhere in the country due to global warming would approach what we presently see in Louisiana," Dr. Sallenger said. Hurricane Katrina was a strong storm, Category 4, when it came ashore east of New Orleans, near a string of barriers called the Chandeleur Islands. "They were already vulnerable, extremely so," Dr. Sallenger said. He said he and his colleagues were reviewing photos, radar images and other measurements made of the islands after Hurricane Lili, a Category 2 hurricane that passed over them in 2002. "The degree of change in that storm was extreme," he said. "So we had a discussion this morning: O.K., if Lili can do this, who knows what Katrina is going to do?" The scientists expect to fly over the coast on Wednesday and find out. Of course, New Orleans is vulnerable to flooding from the Mississippi River as well as from coastal storms. North of the city, the Army Corps of Engineers has marked out several places where the levees would be deliberately breached in the event of a potentially disastrous river flood threat, sending water instead into uninhabited "spillways." But there is no way to stop a hurricane storm surge from thundering over a degraded landscape - except, perhaps, by restoring the landscape to let the Mississippi flow over it more often. Some small efforts are being made. For example, at the Old River Control Structure, an installation of dams, turbines and other facilities just north of Baton Rouge that keeps the Mississippi on its established path, workers collect sediment that piles along the dams and cart it by truck into the marshes. But truly letting the river run would exact unacceptably heavy costs - costs that would be paid immediately by people in the region and in particular by any politician rash enough to endorse such a plan. Instead, there continue to be efforts to build more capacity into New Orleans flood control efforts, said Craig E. Colten, a geographer at Louisiana State University and the author of a new book, "An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans From Nature" (Louisiana State University Press, 2005). That will mean ever more costs, Mr. Colten said, given that the city, which is below sea level, must run pumps simply to keep from being flooded in an ordinary rainstorm. Roy K. Dokka, a geologist at Louisiana State, said flooding would be even worse for decades to come, not just in New Orleans but in the entire Gulf Coast region. The consequences were clear yesterday, Dr. Dokka said, around Port Fourchon, La., where the single road that is the commuting route for oil workers heading to offshore rigs lay under water. "That road that all the roughnecks and oil workers drive down every day has sunk a foot in 20 years," he said. "It's now under water every time there's a significant south wind blowing." But as Dr. Kelman said: "Once you've invested enough in urban infrastructure, you have to keep on buying in. And that doesn't even count the cultural dimension." The reference was to the region's cuisine, culture and mystique. "With billions of dollars sunk into the soil in southern Louisiana and the Gulf Coast," Dr. Kelman said, "it's kind of too late. We're there, and we're staying there." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/08/26/national/main796505.shtml Katrina Intensifies And Reloads (Page 1 of 2) FORT LAUDERDALE, Aug. 26, 2005 Katrina Packs A Punch False color satellite image of Hurricane Katrina. (NOAA) "Maybe we can get rid of the phrase 'minimal hurricane.' There is no such thing as a minimal hurricane." state meteorologist Ben Nelson Dr. Alberto Hernandez exits his car after checking it for damage from a tree that Hurricane Katrina blew down overnight on Brickell Avenue near downtown Miami. (AP) (CBS/AP) Utility crews scrambled to restore power to more than 1 million customers Friday as Hurricane Katrina, blamed for six deaths and miles of flooded streets in South Florida, threatened the state with an encore visit. Katrina was churning in the Gulf of Mexico and on a path to make landfall anywhere from the Florida Panhandle to Louisiana as early as Monday, possibly as a Category 4 storm. "I'm so sick of this," said Pat Jackson, an interior decorator in Homestead. Her apartment building was flooded with several inches of water during Katrina's first pass across the state. "It seems like every other week or month another one comes," she said. Scenes of Katrina's impact were everywhere Friday — work crews sawing trees crippled by the winds; people canoeing through inundated streets; a 727 cargo plane pushed along a runway fence; sailboats resting askew on a sandy shore. Florida has been hit by six hurricanes since last August, and the Panhandle was slammed by Hurricane Ivan last year, and then again by Hurricane Dennis this year, both Category 3 storms. On Friday, Gov. Jeb Bush urged residents in many of the same Panhandle areas to monitor the storm and make necessary preparations. CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassmann reports that despite the threat from dangling power lines, people waded through flooded streets and drivers navigated roads they couldn't see. If Katrina hit at Category 4 strength, as forecasters say it could, it would mean sustained winds topping 130 mph. Bush said he had asked for federal disaster assistance for Miami-Dade and Broward counties, where some residents said they were caught off guard by the gathering storm. "Maybe we can get rid of the phrase minimal hurricane," state meteorologist Ben Nelson said Friday. "There is no such thing as a minimal hurricane." The death toll grew to six, including three people killed by falling trees and two boaters who tried to ride out the storm in their crafts. Authorities had said the toll was seven, but revised it to six after saying one death was not storm-related. Strassman reports that some are lucky to be alive. Tina and Edward Larson and their three children were lost at sea since yesterday after they took their 24-foot boat to sea from the Florida Keys – right into Katrina. But Friday, the Coast Guard hoisted them to safety, Strassman reports. Risk modeling company AIR Worldwide estimated insured losses from Katrina's first landfall could approach $600 million. Katrina, the second hurricane to hit Florida this year, grew from a disorganized 50-mph tropical storm to one with 92-mph wind gusts in a few hours Thursday. Tuesday, August 30, 2005 Levee breach floods Lakeview, Mid-City, Carrollton, Gentilly, City Park By Doug MacCash and James O’Byrne Staff writers A large section of the vital 17th Street Canal levee, where it connects to the brand new ‘hurricane proof’ Old Hammond Highway bridge, gave way late Monday morning in Bucktown after Katrina’s fiercest winds were well north. The breach sent a churning sea of water coursing across Lakeview and into Mid-City, Carrollton, Gentilly, City Park and neighborhoods farther south and east. As night fell on a devastated region, the water was still rising in the city, and nobody was willing to predict when it would stop. After the destruction already apparent in the wake of Katrina, the American Red Cross was mobilizing for what regional officials were calling the largest recovery operation in the organization’s history. Police, firefighters and private citizens, hampered by a lack of even rudimentary communication capabilities, continued a desperate and impromptu boat-borne rescue operation across Lakeview well after dark. Coast Guard choppers with search lights criss-crossed the skies. Officers working on the scene said virtually every home and business between the 17th Street Canal and the Marconi Canal, and between Robert E. Lee Boulevard and City Park Avenue, had water in it. Nobody had confirmed any fatalities as a result of the levee breach, but they conceded that hundreds of homes had not been checked. As the sun set over a still-churning Lake Pontchartrain, the smoldering ruins of the Southern Yacht Club were still burning, and smoke streamed out over the lake. Nobody knew the cause of the fire because nobody could get anywhere near it to find out what happened. Dozens of residents evacuated to the dry land of the Filmore Street bridge over the Marconi Canal were stranded between the flooded neighborhood on their right, and the flooded City Park on their left, hours after they had been plucked from rooftops or second-story windows. Firefighters who saved them tried to request an RTA bus to come for the refugees, but said there was no working communications to do so. Ed Gruber, who lives in the 6300 block of Canal Boulevard, said he became desperate when the rising water chased he, his wife, Helen, and their neighbor Mildred K. Harrison to the second floor of their home. When Gruber saw a boat pass by, he flagged it down with a light, and the three of them escaped from a second-story window. On the lakefront, pleasure boats were stacked on top of each other like cordwood in the municipal marina and yacht harbor. The Robert E. Lee shopping center was under 7 feet of water. Plantation Coffeehouse on Canal Boulevard was the same. Hines Elementary School had 8 feet of water inside. Indeed, the entire business district along Harrison Avenue had water to the rooflines in many places. Joshua Bruce, 19, was watching the tide rise from his home on Pontalba Street when he heard a woman crying for help. The woman had apparently tried to wade the surging waters on Canal Boulevard when she was swept beneath the railroad trestle just south of Interstate 610. Bruce said he plunged into the water to pull her to safety. He and friends Gregory Sontag and Joey LaFrance found dry clothes for the near-victim and she went on her way in search of a second-story refuge further downtown. The effect of the breach was instantly devastating to residents who had survived the fiercest of Katrina’s winds and storm surge intact, only to be taken by surprise by the sudden deluge. And it added a vast swath of central New Orleans to those already flooded in eastern New Orleans, the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes. Beginning at midday, Lakeview residents watched in horror as the water began to rise, pushed through the levee breach by still-strong residual winds from Katrina. They struggled to elevate furniture and eventually found themselves forced to the refuge of second floors or, just when most in the neighborhood thought they had been spared. “It would have been fine,” said refugee Pat O’Brien. “The eye passed over.” But his relief was short lived, O’Brien said. “It’s like what you see on TV and never thought would happen to us. We lost everything, cars, art, furniture, everything.” Scott Radish, his wife Kyle and neighbor Brandon Gioe stood forlornly on their Mound Street porch, where they had ridden out Katrina, only to face a second more insidious threat. “The hurricane was scary,” Scott said. “All the tree branches fell, but the building stood. I thought I was doing good. Then I noticed my Jeep was under water.” The water had risen knee-deep during the storm, but despite the clearing skies, it had continued to rise one brick every 20 minutes, according to Kyle, continuing its ascent well into the night. “We were good until the Canal busted,” said Sontag. “First there was water on the street, then the sidewalk, then water in the house.” Officials of the Army Corps of Engineers have contingencies for levee breaches such as the one that happened Monday, but it will take time and effort to get the heavy equipment into place to make the repair. Breach repair is part of the Corps’ planning for recovery from catastrophic storms, but nobody Monday was able to say how long it would take to plug the hole, or how much water would get through it before that happened. In Lakeview, the scene was surreal. A woman hollered to reporters from a rooftop, asking them to call her father and tell him she was OK – although fleeing to the roof of a two-story home hardly seemed to qualify. At around 5 p.m., almost as if on cue, the battery power of all the house alarms in the neighborhood seemed to reach a critical level all at once, and they all went off, making it sound as if the area was under an air-raid warning. Two men surviving on generator power in the Lake Terrace neighborhood near the Lake Pontchartrain levee still had a dry house, but they were eyeing the rising water in the yard nervously. They were planning to head back out to the levee to retrieve a vast stash of beer, champagne and hard liquor they found washed onto the levee. As night fell, the sirens of house alarms were finally silent, and the air filled with a different, deafening and unfamiliar sound: the extraordinary din of thousands of croaking frogs. Still wondering if he would spend the night on the Filmore Street bridge over the Marconi Canal, Gruber tried to be philosophical. “I never thought I would see any devastation like this, and I’ve lived here more than 30 years,” Gruber said. “But at least we have our lives. And that’s something.” Staff writer Mark Schleifstein contributed to this report. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4212780.stm Last Updated: Sunday, 4 September 2005, 10:09 GMT 11:09 UK E-mail this to a friend Printable version 'You always prepare for the worst' By Richard Allen Greene BBC News, Hancock County, Mississippi Everyone agrees that the Hancock County Emergency Operations Center should not flood. In fact, Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) maps show it would not flood even in a category five storm, the very strongest of hurricanes. Katrina flooded it. Brian Adam is the director of emergency operations for Hancock County, which lies on Mississippi's Gulf coast between Biloxi and the Louisiana border. He was working at the centre on Monday when the hurricane hit - although, like many people who lived through it, five days later he could not say for sure what day of the week it had been when Katrina blew through. He never considered evacuating the centre, he said, even though he started getting reports 48 hours before the storm hit that it was going to be worse than anything Mississippi had seen before. This is where our centre has been for years," Mr Adam said. "It has never flooded. We didn't get any water here in 1969," he said, recalling Camille, the region's previous worst hurricane. So Mr Adam and his staff - 35 people in all - stayed at their posts as the winds grew stronger and stronger, and as it became clear that the east side of Katrina's eye was going to clip Hancock County. "We started feeling the winds at 0100 on the day the storm hit. They got progressively stronger and stronger," he said. First he banned staff from going outside to check the strength of the winds, and then forbade them even from going to the glass front doors of the building to look outside. And then, late in the morning, Mr Adam saw water starting to rise in the centre. The facility occupies the back half of the Hancock County's Justice Court, but lying slightly lower, so he moved the entire team to the front half of the building. It was then they took an extraordinary precaution. "Well, what we did was took a number, wrote it on our hands, wrote a list [of who had each number] and posted it high where the water couldn't get to it in case something did happen to us. "You always prepare for the worst. That's just the training that I grew up with in the fire service. If you feel something bad is going to happen, you want yourself identified." Mr Adam said he personally did not think anything was going to happen to them, but added: "We had a lot of people in here that were very nervous about the situation." Luckily, Mr Adam was right. The Emergency Operations Center took in about a foot and a half of water, but the court at the front of the building never flooded, and the structure itself withstood the storm. "The only thing we had to worry about was the water." Then, after an hour or two, there was a sudden change. "The pressure started dropping and our ears started popping," he said. "And the next you thing you know the wind starts changing around to the north, and the water went out." http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-miket3105aug31,0,7029120.column?coll=orl-home-headlines Mike Thomas It's crucial that we learn from Katrina Published August 31, 2005 Read more comments or post your own Hurricane Katrina killed at least 55 people . . . That was typical of Tuesday's news reports. But how many people did Katrina actually kill? And how many died from human error, with Katrina only an unwitting pawn in their deaths? Hurricanes rarely kill anyone anymore. Like the old adage about guns: People kill people. This reality should be recognized by classifying hurricane deaths as "avoidable" and "unavoidable." And from there we delve into how we fix the problem before thousands die in some future monster storm. Hurricane Katrina could be an important case study. Most people apparently died in Harrison County, Miss., home to Biloxi. They were sitting ducks -- sitting on a coast with an elevation of 25 feet above sea level, getting hit with a storm surge that was up to 30 feet tall. That, in a nutshell, is what killed most people in Mississippi. They were told to leave throughout the weekend. "If you can get out of Harrison County, get out of Harrison County," the county's emergency-management director, Joe Spraggins, warned early Sunday.
evacuation. This came about because fewer residents had evacuated for Hurricane Dennis in July than had evacuated for Hurricane Ivan last September. Neither storm hit Mississippi, setting up the classic cry-wolf syndrome. The survey contained bad news for officials trying to get people to evacuate before Katrina. " . . . the general public is very tired and weary of evacuations," Robert Latham, director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said Friday. "We are worried many people will not evacuate."
everyone to get out, then that gives the storm time to change track and go elsewhere. If they hold off, then that doesn't give people enough time to go elsewhere. In trying to prevent avoidable deaths from Ivan and Dennis, officials may have increased the number from Katrina. It may be time for disaster officials to get together with the sociologists and find answers.
How strong is the correlation between such knowledge and someone's willingness to evacuate?
communication problem? Should there be hurricane classes in coastal schools to teach parents through their kids? Should a hurricane course be required to get federal flood insurance? How do factors such as income, transportation, age, children or pets factor into decisions to evacuate? Should hurricane shelters be "marketed" so people would be more inclined to use them? Could there be better coordination with hotels? We need answers to reduce future avoidable deaths. Hurricanes run in cycles, and we have entered a stormy phase. More and bigger hurricanes are predicted in upcoming decades. The sea level is rising, and shore lines are receding, making them all the more dangerous.
way. Katrina was not a freak storm. It was a harbinger. Mike Thomas can be reached at 407-420-5525 or mthomas@orlandosentinel.com. Copyright © 2005, Orlando Sentinel http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-talkaboutit-083105,0,2431432.graffitiboard?coll=orl-home-headlines Talk about it Do you agree or disagree with Mike Thomas? Post your thoughts here on our message boards. (Moderated)
hurricanes and the accompanying surges, the people living there are the most vulnerable. I am sorry for the loss of life, but you cannot outwit nature.
Submitted by: wjb 11:33 AM EDT, Aug 31, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Here's what I've learned from Katrina: 1) The gov't won't help the poor move out, 2) New Orleans' dike/levee system was an accident waiting to happen (only had 100mph winds and still collapsed), 3) We live and work in paper box houses (no excuse for the windows in downtown towers to be blown out) Submitted by: Adam 11:25 AM EDT, Aug 31, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. It's not the weathermans' fault. Stop blaming the wrong thing and blame the person who decided to stay Submitted by: carl 10:50 AM EDT, Aug 31, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. I am sorry that people got hurt or killed we have to learn we cannot fight nature, we know hurricanes kill we need to get out of their way...the lesson is already there if you are listening Submitted by: Cheryl 10:48 AM EDT, Aug 31, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. I think he has a point... If you were told to leave and then did not evacuate, you are putting yourself at risk. I understand the cry-wolf syndrome, but better to be safe than sorry. Submitted by: Copycat 10:29 AM EDT, Aug 31, 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4199898.stm Last Updated: Wednesday, 31 August 2005, 11:26 GMT 12:26 UK 'If I evacuate, where do I go?' With the wind and rain gone, new dangers threaten New Orleans.
of Hurricane Katrina are now facing a desperate fight to reach high ground and clean water.
high-rise buildings planning their next move. Others roam the flooded streets without access to the official advice pouring out of still-functioning TV and radio stations. James Smith, a security guard at the Community Wound Hospice in Greenville, New Orleans, has taken refuge alongside staff and patients on the hospital's fifth floor.
undamaged, ready for someone to drive the group to safety. "I'm concerned about what happens if the water arrives here, I really am," Mr Smith told the BBC from inside the hospital. "But I'm more concerned about if I do evacuate, where to go? We don't know if we will run into water. We have three trucks, and we can probably go as far they will take us and then from there we will have to walk."
Smith and his group has kept up with developments by watching TV.
enough information where if we wanted to be rescued, how we go about being rescued, where to go," he said.
we already know, like where there is flooding, or that the canal gate is still not fixed.
So they'll tell us to get out, and we'll take heed, but where will we go? "There are people here walking on the streets, just wondering where to go. People are getting hungry and breaking into stores to feed themselves. It's just chaos here."
throughout the storm and its aftermath. As conditions worsened in New Orleans, police ordered his team to abandon their premises and head outside - towards the interstate. "A couple of roads are still in use, and then you get to the high-rise interstate, and that's how we get across to the west bank of the Mississippi [river], which is actually pretty dry," he told the BBC.
little immediate hope of respite. Water needs to be drained and trees, cars and other debris cleared from the streets before the power can return. "It's very upsetting, but it's understandable because you can't stop nature," Mr Smith said. "I mean, everyone is sorry. But sorry is not enough." KATRINA AND HURRICANE FATIGUE: "THE THINKING WAS, THEY WERE CRYING WOLF" Associated Press, 31 August 2005 http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/nation/12526738.htm Directory: resources resources -> General text for tender (recommendations) for Pilkington Profilit™ Contents Page resources -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose resources -> Practice learning resources -> The Rise of Video Games Section “Word” Matt Spencer resources -> Request for proposal contract form for the transit industry resources -> Request for Proposal [insert date] resources -> The University of York 13th 16th April 2004 resources -> Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program Community Education Initiative resources -> Region III standing regional response team (rrt) meeting williamsburg, Virginia Thursday, January 12, 2012 resources -> Efca eastern District and TouchGlobal, the crisis response ministry of efca Download 0.84 Mb. Share with your friends:
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