I remember vividly being on the air at KHSL-TV reporting on this hurricane. I showed the actual path and projected path…
…and told people this during my live weather broadcast on Saturday night:
This storm will severely impact the critical oil drilling and refining area in the Gulf of Mexico. Better fill up your gas tank while you can, because gasoline prices will surely go up quickly.
I was derided by some callers to the TV station and editorial letter writers for that remark, saying that I was being “irresponsible”. A couple of days later, the inevitable happened, gas prices went up sharply.
Now, thanks to the Gore movie, An Inconvenient Truth, Katrina is still being used as the poster child for “global warming” even though the actual data does not support that conclusion. For example last September WUWT carried this article:
Global Warming = more hurricanes | Still not happening
So far the hurricane season for the Atlantic has been pretty quiet for 2009. Ryan Maue from Florida State University explains why. In related news, Al Gore has dropped the [hurricane frequency] related slide in his traveling PowerPoint show. – Anthony
Great Depression! Tropical Cyclone Energy at 30-year lows
Global hurricane frequency versus global ocean temperatures – Top image from FSU ACE, bottom image from GISS ocean data plotted by WUWT – click for larger image===============================================
And it’s still not happening this year so far:
Global Tropical Cyclone Activity still at 30 year low
From: Ryan N. Maue’s 2010 Global Tropical Cyclone Activity Update Figure: Global and Northern Hemisphere Accumulated Cyclone Energy: 24 month running sum through July 31, 2010. Note that the year indicated represents the value of ACE through the previous 24-months …
Figure: Global and Northern Hemisphere Accumulated Cyclone Energy: 24 month running sum through July 31, 2010. Note that the year indicated represents the value of ACE through the previous 24-months for the Northern Hemisphere (bottom line/gray boxes) and the entire global (top line/lime green boxes). The area in between represents the Southern Hemisphere total ACE.
==============================
Even the World Meteorological Organization agrees that Gore’s Katrina connections are rubbish:
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) issued a stunning statement in a recent report. Roger Pielke Jr. has the details on his blog. Just to remind folks that we’ve been saying much the same thing for months on WUWT…
==============================
Of course, the statistical sophistry of Michael Mann says otherwise:
Michael Mann: “This tells us these reconstructions are very likely meaningful,”
And, if this paper were a movie pushing non-existent hurricane to global warming connections like AIT, we might hear dialog like this in the vein of Apocalypse Now :
I love the smell of bullshit in the morning.
========================================================
Perhaps though the best way to remember this day is to have a look at the folly of failed environmental and flood management policy, and the photos that document the event.
From Boston.com and the “Big Picture” slideshow; praying is as futile as statistical sophistry.
Blae Bryce, 40, of Memphis, Tennessee, prays the Lotus Sutra on an Interstate 10 overpass as floodwaters rise in New Orleans on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. (AP Photo/The Palm Beach Post, Gary Coronado)
See the complete photo essay here at the “Big Picture” slideshow
Katrina was a long way from Wingham so I only know what I read. I also read that the ACE is way down but Michael Mann says AGW is causing more cyclones. Is anyone taking this guy to task over his blatant false prophesies? Or does his fame protect him from society’s norms? We do have our own Dr. Tim Flannery, well known to Australian bloggers as one who has had the most prophesies fail yet is still the go to guy by the MSM. He and MM will have much in common in their dotage, liars both.
“Phil Nizialek says:
August 29, 2010 at 3:34 pm
…San Francisco…earthquakes?”
Are you talking about the 1906 quake? If you are most damage was caused by a firestorm, which, in some part was started by the fire department.
Just a thought, looking at that Global and NH ACE graph. It seems to me that there could indeed be a link between global warming and ACE. Hold fire a second and let me explain.
There’s a lot of sound physics gone into the modelling of the effects of GW – whether ACE or ice or whatever. In fact, looking at that graph it does, indeed, seem to increase with the warming up to around the start of the millenium. Then it diverges. As have ice predictions, as did the tree rings.
Now, if we have several natural phenomena (out of Man
n‘s control) where the modelled physical behaviour diverges from the (adjusted) temperature readings, which should we suspect?So, perhaps the physical effects are real and the temp adjustments have simply got so large in an attempt to “keep up the warming” that they no longer match reality but no-one’s thought to tell Mother Nature yet?
Talk about cutting a strawman out of whole cloth (to murder the proverb…) but did you see “atlantis” mentioned even once?
Five minutes research can show you that there are many examples of submerged towns and cities around the world. The Black Sea is littered with them. Ancient Mycenaean Greece is surrounded by then. Hell there are even submerged towns around the coast of England. Dogger Bank is probably full o submerged settlements too, but nobody’s really checked so I can’t say for sure.
Your talk about “geopolitical significance” misses the point, I believe. The city isn’t the significant item. The river and the coast and the natural harbour formed there are what matters. Maintaining New Orleans may be important but it will be submerged one day. Man can only do so much against nature before nature inevitably wins, as teh inhabitants of Alexandria can attest only too well.
In fact Alexandria is a pretty good comparison. It thrived as a major port city, serving as a cultural centre to boot and was the single most important city in Egypt for hundreds of years. It had that “geopolitical significance” thing going for it. Then the canal silted up, half the city fell in to the Mediterranean and things sort of went downhill from there.
New Orleans serves a similar role, but its time is limited by two factors: the river will move one day, and the city will be overwhelmed by a natural disaster. It’s inevitable, when you have a city built so precariously, that it will be destroyed one day. And yes the same goes for LA and Phoenix and all those other cities that are built in precarious places.
The problem is that the maintenance of New Orleans increasingly doesn’t make sense. The city is sinking faster and further and the process of attempting to preserve it is only making things worse in the long-run. Pumping water out of the city is what is causing it to sink below sea level in the first place.
All cities sink. London is sinking all the time because of its location on what was once a tidal marsh and because water is constantly pumped out of the ground beneath it. Thing is, the city has been sinking for centuries. Originally it was built on aluvial loam but now, to steal from Pratchett, London is mostly built on London. You dig down and you find old buildings in the foundations.
Chicago is even more extreme. In order to mitigate the problem of floods in a city that was sinking in to the ground they did the only thing that seemed sensible at the time. The built everything a floor higher. They built new roads over the top of the old roads and filled everything in underneath. Ground floors became basements, first floors became ground floors. Houses were extended upwards. Now, a man with a map and a sledgehammer could probably make his way across the entire city without ever seeing daylight.
What makes New Orleans so special that it can’t engage in a little creative thinking to solve the problem? The levee system doesn’t work any more, that much is obvious. All the talk about corruption and “well they didn’t maintain it properly” doesn’t matter. They could be maintained perfectly but the city is still sinking, and it will continue sinking as long as the current thinking prevails. Abandon that. Build a giant platform on stilts, or mound up some hills or something. Anything’s better than letting it all sink and then expecting everyone else to protect it because of its “geopolitical importance”.
Here is a look back on the chronology of meteorological events leading up to the Katrina Landfall.
http://sabolscience.blogspot.com
Not a bad nickname for the lower 9th ward!
Too bad it’s not still Greater Lake Pontchartrain …
Just a quick response to several of my critics before off to work I go. Scott and Ben D., I invite you to visit New Orleans so I can show you the sites, and let you steep a little in the history of this place. I’ll even introduce to my waiter at Galatoire’s. If after that you still believe that what is here can be replaced somewhere upriver, than we’ll have to agree to continue to disagree about this subject.
Ben D, makes a good a point about The Mississippi wanting to change couse for some time now. (Really since the 1927 flood). As you are probably aware, Ben, the Corps has built control structures above Baton Rouge to deal with that eventuality. They are impressive geoengineering works. To date, they have worked during several serious river floods. If they don’t in the future, we’ll have to see what Ol’Man River will do, and deal with it then. I don’t think the possibility justifies us abandoning the city, though.
Peter Plait objects to my mentioning The Netherlands and Venice as places prone to flooding disasters, mostly because those locales are not threatened by hurricanes. True enough. The Dutch, however, are keenly aware of what storms can do to a low lying landscape. Take a look at the history of the 1953 North Sea Storm. More people drowned during that disaster than did during Katrina.
As for Venice, Peter is right that tropical storms do not ply the Adriatic. The engineers who work to preserve Venice, however, will tell you that tiny ripples on the sea have the same effect on Venice as do great storms in other coastal regions. My point was that Venice has been in danger of slipping into the sea for centuries, and has been beset by bad government engineering works as well. Still, no one seriously advocates its abandonment.
Several of you have objected to my mention of San Francisco as the site of a certain, future natural disaster. I must admit to not being an expert on the earthquake threat to the Bay Area. I have read, however, that the City’s location makes it prone to large, dangerous, quakes. I apologize if my analogy is poor, and invite you to educate me about the threat, and what has been done to mitigate it.
Finall, many thanks to Chris (aka Savethesharks) for your tireless support. As many of you have pointed out out, this is an emotional issue for us in New Orleans, and it’s nice to see that some folks around the country understand. If you ever get down here, brother, give me a ring and we’ll let the good times roll. I am, as they say, in the book.
Harry Shearer’s documentary, “The Big Uneasy”
comes out tonight, August 30. He interviews various
people about the levees. Should be interesting.
My pleasure, Phil.
Your arguments here are by far the strongest, and thus easy to stand up for and support.
There are a lot of big egos who like to hear themselves talk on this site [I am not dis-including me LOL]. Big egos tend to get unreasonable when backed into a corner.
As far as the childish….”I’m not going to pay for it” line of arguing…
Well to those, I would say direct those complaints to your congressmen who…to the direct peril of shoring up America’s cities and improving its infrastructure….squander the taxpayer money on pork.
Meanwhile….bridges collapse….
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA [another “sinking” city]
“”” Well Katrina was five years ago; and the water level has gone down to where the roads are dry again.
Maybe it is time for the people huddling inside their homes to venture out and go to work somewhere.
When the town of Valdez Alaska, was devastated by a major earthquake (was it a nine something) back around 1964; the people of the town just moved about three miles or so down the road, and built themselves another town. So far as I know; the president (Johnson) did not visit Valdez five years later to see if everybody got out of their home safely, and can make it to the polls in a couple of months to vote for him.
Katrina, and New Orleans are symbols of what is wrong with America today; everybody just sits on their duff waiting for somebody to come along and move them. How does that old cowboy song go about the “houndog” that is howlin’ cos it is sittin’ on a thorn; and it’s just too darn lazy to move over.
The new deeper swimming pool walls they are erecting around New Orleans; will simply ensure that the next big one will flood the place even deeper, and kill even more people; but it sure as hell is not going to stop any hurricane that wants to go on in there. It took the French to build a town below sea level at the end of a major river delta system. Americans shouldn’t compound the felony, by trying to rebuild the place in the same location.
Ah, Mr. Archonix, welcome to the debate. May I address a couple of your points? First of all, not all of the city is sinking. The oldest areas (The French Quarter, the original American sector in what is now uptown, and the development along the Esplanade Ridge) are neither below sea level, nor sinking. In most cases the pumping system and the earliest levees deal fairly well with flooding in those areas. Severe or unusual storms (like the 15″ of rain in twelve hours that happened in 1978), will still result in some street flooding in those areas, but it’s pretty much dealt with by the pumps in a couple of hours. Other Gulf Coast cities have similar events, and survive. (witness Houston after TS Allison early this century). No way, no how will we bow to pressure to abandon these areas. Don’t know how.
The problems with subsidence and flooding really began after WWII, when the Corps started building levees around below sea level swamps outside the city, and encouraged people to move to newly developed areas like East New Orleans. The wisdom of that decison worsened when 20th century slab on grade housing was used in new developments. Most, but not all unfortunately, of the rebuilding in these areas will have raised living spaces, not unlike those used on barrier islands. This should minimize damge from future floods. Reversing the effect of the channeling of the Mississippi below New Orleans is also a”creative way” to help protect the city from future storms by creating new wetlands that protect the coast from storm surge. Efforts are underway to do that. The levees also can work, if built and maintained properly. Much effort is underway in this regard, as in the area of increasing pump capacity. We are working on new ways to protect the city, contrary to much conventional wisdom.
The thing that puzzles me the most is the meme that outsiders perpetuate that everyone in New Orleans is some how sitting down here begging for government hand outs before we do something to rebuild. The constant media attention on the lower ninth surely has something to do with this. Sure, we’re looking to the Corps to fix what it should have done right in the first place. And we appreciate it when FEMA fulills a promise it has made, as rarely as that happens. But I invite all you critics to come to this city and see what has been done by all of us here who have worked tirelessly to rebuild the city we love, more often than not with our own money and sweat. Look at the pictures from September 2005, and then come see what this place is like now. Pay no, or at least little, attention to the media and its prejudices. There’s more here than the lower ninth ward, and all of it suffered damage in Katrina. Most of it is back to what it was, or better, than pre storm. The rebuilding didn’t happen because we’re a bunch of whiners. Come on down and get to know us. I think you may think differently about us, and our city, if you do.
Mr.George Smith,
Where do you get such ideas? Have you been here lately?
The Katrina Disaster had nothing to do with AGW and everything to do with AGW. That is, it did if the first relates to ‘Warming” and the last to “Wishing”. Katrina was one of the “Natural Disasters” that humans run into every now and then that bring humans back to reality; that make us realize we’re not the Big Cheese we think we are. That make us realize that –
1. Uncle Sam ain’t goin’ ta’ save ya’ from a big bad storm (or anything else)!
2. It does matter where ya’ build cities! (And how far under sealevel they are!)
3. It does matter where ya’ build houses, schools, neighborhoods.
4. Concrete “may” or “may not” keep out storm surge, so don’t bet on it!
5. Who the major is, who the police chief is, who the representative is, who the senator is, who the governor is, etc., does matter.
6. When the weatherman/girl says it’s goin’ ta’ be bad, believe ’em!
7. When ya’ get clobbered once, move before it happens again! (Especially if ya’ live in NOLA.)
“”” Phil Nizialek says:
August 30, 2010 at 10:01 am
Mr.George Smith,
Where do you get such ideas? Have you been here lately? “””
Not sure what “ideas” you are referrring to; I generally don’t “get” ideas. I do see current “NEWS” bulletins; both from the national major TV networks; and other sources such as PBS on either TV or radio.
What I do recall from the actual event, was a news account of a local politician commandeering National Guard relief personnel and equipment, to take him on a special trip to his home so he could retrieve a bunch of cash that he had stashed in his refrigerator. There was no follow up report on how many stranded perons actually drowned while he was attending to his own critical needs.
The local Mayor, and the State of Louisiana Government were also instrumental in helping to deflect help from outside sources; that probably could have made things easier. Seems to me some teenager who figured he could drive a bus, had more common sense than the local government authorities.
And no I have never been there; and it is not on any list of places that I haven’t been to; or would want to go to. But if you like it there, then that is great; the whole idea of having different places, is so not everybody is in the same place.
I’m sure that at the time, there were plenty of people who may have suggested that Pompei, and Herculaneum were not such great places to be living, in the event of an eruption somewhere; but that didn’t stop people from living there (and dying).
If the news stories that we are getting contain strange “ideas”, perhaps you should contact the media, and tell them what is wrong with their reports.
I’m quite sure that I heard all weekend and also this morning, that the President would/did visit the city; and if everything down there is kosher as you seem to imply; then why would he go there; given that he is faced with a national collapsing economy with continual job losses; including all those jobs lost in Louisiana, because of his imperial edict on the cessation of offshore oil drilling.
If somehow I heard it wrong, and none of this happened; then I do apologise; but they are not my “ideas”.
savethesharks says:{August 29, 2010 at 8:26 pm}
“Tom in Florida?? In Florida, Tom??
In Florida?? How many hurricane disasters have “we” paid for there??
Where is your American generosity?? What an ingrate!”
You obviously miss the point. Natural disasters occur. They occur all over our land. We as a Nation pick up the tab to make things right. As we should.
HOWEVER, when you build below sea level and then get flooded and we picked up the tab once, how dare you rebuild below sea level again and expect me to pick up the tab again in the future!!!!! In this instance, as per my previous post about flood insurance, I am being billed 5 years later to replenish the flood insurance fund that was depleted mainly by those who lived in N.O. And now you want to rebuild it there so it can be swamped again in the future. To this I say this, “Build it there if you insist but be warned the rest of us will not pay again for your repeated folly”. It has nothing to do with my generosity, it has to do with stubborn people who refuse to live with the consequences of their foolish decisions.
What Phil Z and Chris said.
For those who really want to take a look at a full assessment of the cacophony of failures, read the report (linked below) headed by Robert Bea. There were failures at all levels of government, from local boards to federal.
One of the earliest dates from the 1960s, when the Corps wanted to build flood gates and pumping stations at the head of the outfall (drainage canals). A similar system was in place in adjacent Jefferson Parish (Metairie and Kenner) which did not flood from the storm surge (though there was some flooding, but that is a different story). This system prevents the storm surge from entering the canals and stressing the floodwalls that failed (17th Street and London canals), flooding the central part of New Orleans. Had these floodwalls held, there would have been little (if any) flooding near the Superdome as well as in the Mid City, Lakeview, and Gentilly neighborhoods (areas between the 17th Street and Industrial canals).
The original Corps plans for the flood gates and pumping stations was opposed by the New Orleans Water and Sewerage Board, responsible for pumping rain water into the outfall canals. They feared that the pumping stations, operated by the Levee Board, would not function during a storm. The boards could never come to an agreement, and under additional pressure from the city (the stations would be ugly) and environmental groups, the Corps dropped the plan and adopted the plan of raising the flood walls on the outfall canals.
The newly raised flood walls were completed in 1999, essentially modern structures. The construction of these structures is a lesson in how not to build anything.
To start with, the walls were designed with a Factor of Safety of 1.3. That is that they were built to be 30 % stronger than necessary. Compounding this, the survey of the underlying strata was insufficient to demarcate the variable underground layers. This was followed by the Corps averaging the values across the length of the survey in their design specifications. Since the walls need only fail at one point, this assumption combined with the low Factor of Safety (the 1.3 value was used historically for levees that protected agricultural land) to almost ensure failure at some point.
These mistakes might have been moot had the Corps used the data from a pilot study that built and tested the wall design on nearly identical foundation soils in the nearby Atchafalya basin. These test walls failed but the results were never incorporated into the built designs. Well when the experiment was repeated during Katrina, the walls failed in the same way (several feet below being overtopped).
As a Russian engineer said after I related the story, “Ah, we know this well, Potemkin Village!”
The final act has not been fully played out in court. Those flooded by the failure of the floodwalls cannot sue the government for negligence. However, the residents of New Orleans East, the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish still have a suit active in federal court (last I looked). They have standing since the damage in these areas was exacerbated by the construction of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO, “Mista Geaux”) which was a commercial project by the Corps and not a flood control project.
Why am I still here? Too may reasons.
Later!
http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cenv_fac/32/
(A very large file)
Look…relocating a major metropolitan area and city…ain’t gonna happen any time soon.
You can fume over where “my tax dollars” are going until the cows come home.
Sure a direct hit by an actual category five hurricane or something even worse might change that in the future.
But few of you seem to understand the terms geopolitical and geostrategic, either.
For those reasons alone, New Orleans is where it is.
But for now, you should direct your concerns to your congressmen to end waste and pork on stupid stuff…so that federal funds should be spent on the only two things government should actually pay for: INFRASTRUCTURE and DEFENSE.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
LiamW says:
August 30, 2010 at 11:30 am
What Phil Z and Chris said.
There were failures at all levels of government, from local boards to federal.
======================================
Exactly! This is our bloated, inefficient, bureaucratic government in action.
It is a horrible, damnable even, shame that the USA with all its reasources, can’t even engineer a flood wall right.
Again…for those of you who oppose “your” tax dollars on fixing these problems….I will say again:
Direct your pressure to congress to end waste and pork spending, and concentrate on the only [ONLY] two things the federal government should ever have its greasy, greedy, bureaucratic hands in the taxpayer’s purse to fund:
INFRASTRUCTURE and DEFENSE.
You want to know why we risk catastrophic failure of our crumbling infrastructure??
Because there are taxpayer-funded Senators sitting on their fat asses in their swank offices with so many taxpayer-funded support staff, you would not believe.
And you know the rest…
Meanwhile….bridges fail, cities “sink”, and rusty electrical grids fry.
God help us all from another Carrington Event. You want to talk about a real disaster. That will make Katrina seem like childs play.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
C’mon, George. What ideas indeed? Ideas like we’ve been huddling in our houses for five years, and sitting on our “duffs” waiting for something to happen? Or that you think the French built the city on ground below sea level? Like many of you out there you think, like the media, if you repeat those falsehoods over and over they will somehow become true and vindicate your position that NOLA should be abandoned. And, Mr. George, since you seem to like to split hairs about the meaning of words, no one here thinks the levees are going “to stop any hurricane that wants to [come here]” Nothing on earth short of wind shear and dry Saharan air stops a hurricane, and those are usually in short supply in the GOM in late August. No, but it would be nice if the levees worked like they were supposed to and didn’t fail because of the Corps’ negligence. Last time I checked, I didn’t think I as a citizen needed an engineering degree so I could personally inspect the Corps’ work before I believed they built the system they told me they built.
And where in my posts did I defend the response of the local and state governments? They failed on many levels, as we here constantly remind them as we try to prepare for the next storm. Of course you and your ilk pick a particularly egregious vignette or two that you read in some rag or maybe saw on TV and use it to tar a whole community and argue that it would be best if we were just gone. Fine. I obviously won’t convince such a deep thinker as you with your PBS news and network TV sources that maybe the people here aren’t even close to what you imagine. But spare me your gross insensitivity until you know what you’re talking about.
Tom in Florida,
Explain to me how rebuilding the resorts of Destin and Pensacola Beach, both of which appear to be in Florida, makes more sense than rebuilding New Orleans. I guess it may have something to do with the cultural significance of the strip centers, tiki torch restaurants and miniature golf courses in those places.
By the way, one of the reasons some people in New Orleans didn’t have flood insurance when Katrina hit was because of the premium increases associated with Lily and Ivan. Who’s goring whose ox, my friend?
George E. Smith says:
August 30, 2010 at 11:06 am
Not sure what “ideas” you are referrring to; I generally don’t “get” ideas. I do see current “NEWS” bulletins; both from the national major TV networks; and other sources such as PBS on either TV or radio.
What I do recall from the actual event, was a news account of a local politician commandeering National Guard relief personnel and equipment, to take him on a special trip to his home so he could retrieve a bunch of cash that he had stashed in his refrigerator
You are correct, but it was actually stashed in his self-contained freezer.
(AP) A former Louisiana congressman who famously stashed cash in his freezer was sentenced Friday to 13 years in prison for taking hundreds of thousands in bribes in exchange for using his influence to broker business deals in Africa.
The sentence handed down in suburban Washington was far less than the nearly 30 years prosecutors had sought for William Jefferson, a Democrat who represented parts of New Orleans for nearly 20 years.
Agents investigating the case found $90,000 wrapped in foil and hidden in boxes of frozen pie crusts in his freezer.
Interesting, Tim, but note that your account does not confirm George’s that Jefferson commandeered National Guard resources during the hurricane to retrieve his loot. That, of course never happened, and is one more example of the misinformation people like George rely on for their opinions. That being said, George’s story is an amalgamation of several seedy New Orleans stories. Some politician (I don’t recall who) did use NG resources to get stuff (I don’t remember what) out of his house during the storm. Jefferson did stash bribe $$$ in his freezer. The feds found it there, and it played a major role in his conviction. Interestingly, though, the money had nothing to do with corruption in New Orleans. In any case, the two stories are wholly unrelated. That’s not to say there hasn’t been a lot of corruption here. This place is far from perfect. I’m just not sure it’s so bad we need to bury it at sea.
“”” Phil Nizialek says:
August 30, 2010 at 12:33 pm
C’mon, George. What ideas indeed? So Phil; ou accuse me of making up stories; how about your made up stories; like the “negligence of the Army Corps od Engineers” The ACE built what they were instructed to build; a levee system designed to withstand a CATEGORY 3 Hurricane besetting the levee system from outside. Katrina was a Category 5 storm, and the levees the ACE built were never intended to withstand a ccat-5 from the outside. They werent’t designed to withstand anything much from the inside, because the pumping system the city had was supposed to keep water from accumulating inside the levees. Teh pumps failed; apparently from lack of attention the the fact they needed energy to run them; even in a storm; so the levess washed out from the inside.
Then the city built a canal through the middle of all of this that compromised the whole system.
And who’s cherry picking words; I said the chap had the cash in his refrigerator; and you say it was in his freezer; I’m sorry for the mistake; last time I checked a freezer was a refrigerator.
I didn’t name the politician; you did that; his name means nothing to me; and yes he did commandeer NG equipment to suit himslef; I believew helicopter was involved at one point.
Perhaps I am just imagining the story in last Friday’s New York Times by Trymaine Lee about post Katrina NO problems; maybe I am just imagining that story is written on the page that is sitting on my desk.
By the way; I have the very same sentiments for those who rebuilt housing on the refill lands of San Francisco after the 1906 quake. Those were temporary landfill for a temporary fair in SF, and never engineered to have housing on them. But again in 1989 they rebuilt them from insuracne company pools ready for the next bunch of unwary buyers who think it is too good a deal to be true. (it is).
Like any normal person, I abhor these personal tragedies when they happen. In the case of NOL the people of that city were led to believe by their elected city leaders that they were safe remaining where they were; when they had plenty of time to evacuate. We don’t have Hurricane parties or even earthquake parties in california when we head hazard warnings. But evidently the gulf coast has its stalwarts who are just waiting for the next one so they can have a party to show how macho they are to sit it out. I actually spent time on the phone during Andrew; with a woman I never met in my life and knew nothing about; trying to calm her fears to the point where she could make rational decisiosn about her safety at the time, and act accordingly. She survived; and then moved out of where she was; figuring that California was safer; for the kinds of hazards she felt she couldn’t deal with.
So what is this 9th ward you keep talking about; is it part of the city of NO or isn’t it; and if so; why isn’t it enjoying a return to normalcy; or is the repair work being rationed out to people who are worth helping.
When the hurricane hit; those of us out here that could contribute to aiding those down there did so, to the extent that we could; including sending our emergency resources down there to help. We didn’t specify that our assistance should only be given to those deserving of it; never entered our heads; well that would be an “idea” wouldn’t it ?
Mr. George,
The freezer was in Virginia.
You have so many of the facts wrong, it is best that you read the report that I linked above. It is large (~650 pages). But, to really talk about decisions that we have to make down here, you need to be better informed. There are very few factually written MSM articles out there. I don’t have time to go over all of your misconceptions. I tried to give a brief summary of the actions of the Corps that led to the flooding. Finally, the pumps did not fail. The water through the floodwall breaches was about to swamp the electrically driven pumps and they were turned off. They would have been of no use anyway, since they pump the water into the outfall canals whose flood walls had breached.
Gotta run….
Phil Nizialek says: {August 30, 2010 at 12:45 pm}
“Tom in Florida,
Explain to me how rebuilding the resorts of Destin and Pensacola Beach, both of which appear to be in Florida, makes more sense than rebuilding New Orleans. I guess it may have something to do with the cultural significance of the strip centers, tiki torch restaurants and miniature golf courses in those places.
Please do not confuse private hazard insurance with federal flood insurance. I have no choice but to pay what the feds determine based on 1993 maps that are out of date. I have no beef with rebuilding anything that uses private insurance money, that’s what it is for. You also have a choice of coverages and fees. My problem is that the government controls the flood insurance including the maps that dictate rates, even when they know they are out of date. They use this control to force others to pay for something they shouldn’t have to. And to compound it, they OK the reconstruction of the same situation that almost bankrupt the fund in the first place knowing full well they can continue to bill others unjustly when the same disaster hits again.
“By the way, one of the reasons some people in New Orleans didn’t have flood insurance when Katrina hit was because of the premium increases associated with Lily and Ivan. Who’s goring whose ox, my friend?”
Yes and my rates went up the next year. I also knew they would go up after Katrina. But they are still going up 5 years later and for what reason? Now if they had said once the fund is replenished the increases would stop AND then decided not to insure New Orleans to keep this from happening again, I wouldn’t care. But no, they are going to put the fund at risk again. They are going to encourage people to move back knowing that flooding is going to happen again, and again and again. It is pure folly. No matter to them though, they’ll just bill everyone else. After all , they are the government and can do anything they want to us.