(no subject)

[shadowkat]

It's annoying you know, I sit all day at work, come up with these long pithy posts and great verbage for my novel - get home? Gone and all I want to do is veg. Watched the news tonight, for a change of pace - usually skip it since depressing, but wanted to know about Katrina.
Then picked up the phone and called my mother who is an information junkie. Also lives just off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina. Katerina apparently was a category 4, possibly 5 hurricane when it rolled over the coast of Missippi and leveled every town in sight. Then blasted New Orleans with a storm surge strong enough to weaken its levees and flood the entire city. It wasn't the storm itself that hurt New Orleans, it was the effect the storm had on the levees, causing the lake to flood into the city, which is below sea level. People who had evacuated this weekend and came back to check their homes on Tuesday, discovering them to be fine and dandy, were in for a shock on Wed, when the levees broke. The deluge did not stop until the lake and the city had the same amount of water. So technically speaking? New Orleans is now a lake.

They are evacuating the entire city of New Orleans. Okay. Let's put this in perspective here - there are at least 1.2 million people in New Orleans, and New Orleans is major US domestic and international port. This would be similar to evacuating San Franscisco or Sydney, Australia or Melborn or Liverpool. Do you have any idea what the economic ramnifications of this disaster are? The international and domestic trade ramnifications? Boggles the mind. Let alone the death toll - they predict over 1,000 in New Orleans alone, this isn't counting the number in Missippi. Plus the number of people without homes or anything to return to. Close to a million people in the US just became homeless. Oh and jobless. That's just New Orleans, we aren't counting Bilouxi and the other small towns that dotted the Gulf where the hurrican hit. Add to that the four oil refineries that have been knocked out - oil refineries piping gas to major urban areas such as Atlanta? How about the international trade routes depending on the grain shipped up from New Orleans via the Missippi River?
What about the cities along that route depending on those barges and traffic? This is the worste natural disaster in US history - because we've had a major urban center destroyed. No wait it was more than that, it was a major US port of trade. One of the big three. Even bigger than Miami. No matter where you live, you will feel the ramnifications of this baby. New Orleans as we knew it, is gone. And as Mom put it, hurricane season ain't even over yet. Not only that but they are predicting even worse hurricanes to come barreling through in the next decade.

I'm donating a portion of my paycheck each week to the Red Cross, that's about all I can do at the moment. Wish I could do more. It's not just a tragedy though, it's a national crisis. A tragedy - you grieve. A crisis - you have to figure out a way to solve. Over a million displaced refugees....ugga bugga. Sort of puts things in perspective, don't it?

Comments

[arethusa2.livejournal.com]

THey're saying they're going to move the Superdome refugees to the (now unused) Astrodome. How? Gas shortages are being reported in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Maryland. No matter how temporary, this probably will cause some panic. When Channelview (a local refinery town) flooded, flammable and toxic water washed over everything. When Andrew hit, insurance companies went out of business. All those mortgages--that means banks, and Fannie Mae and Fannie Mac are already strained, I read. Plus new bankruptcy laws are much harsher than old ones. How will local towns handle the expense of half a million plus new people? Where will the shipping go? LA ports are already working around the clock. Wheat and other grains will be harvested soon--how will they get to ports?

[wisewoman.livejournal.com]

The federal government is providing a convoy of 500 buses to move the refugees to the Houston Astrodome from New Orleans. That's how they're going to get there.

I can't believe you didn't know about all this until you got home tonight, Shadowkat. Wasn't it the major topic of conversation at the office? No one here is talking about anything else, and we're not even American!

[ann1962]

No one talked about it at my work today other than to tsk tsk and shake their head. No one did. No one ever talks about big stuff.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Learned about it by accident while scanning msnbc at work. Most of the people I work with tend to keep to themselves. Been very busy lately, end of the quarter and all that.

I told one guy, but he had no time to chat - just said offhand that the head honcho was watching it on the news in her office. I haven't really spoken to anyone today except about business related topics. My office isn't the chatty one it once was.

Plus it didn't really happen until today.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

According to the news they are using 457 buses to bus them to the Houston Astro-Dome. The only problem is getting the buses to the New Orleans Super Dome. Considering the roads are under water. They are going to try to ferry people to the buses. It's a logistical nightmare - since they are running out time - there's no water, food, utilities in the Super Dome and tempers are rising.

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

I've been watching this on TV, on CNN and our Canadian networks. It just is beyond belief that this is happening. I was thinking that this may be the modern day American equivalent of Pompeii: a city gone in the space of a day. I really don't see how they can hope to rebuild the city in the near future.
I just heard on the news that the Urban Search and Rescue Team from Vancouver is now en route to Louisiana to assist the workers there.

[wisewoman.livejournal.com]

That was poorly phrased; of course I believe you, it's just strange, y'know? When something big like that happens in the US, it's the buzz in our office ALL day. You pass someone in the hall and they're like, "What's the latest?" And everyone knows exactly what they're talking about, without having to say.

There's an office full of guys in a hi-rise in the CBD (Central Business District?) in New Orleans, in an area where there is no flooding whatsoever. They've got a generator going for lights, computers, and a webcam, that they have alternately turned on the street or themselves. I think ann1962 posted the link earlier today. It's incredible! They intend to ride it out, staying put where they are. I don't know how they're going to make it as far as food and water goes, with the whole city shut down.

They are predicting potentially thousands drowned in New Orleans alone. I don't think the full magnitude of this disaster will be known for some time, so it's not hitting people like the Towers, which seemed almost instantaneous, but it will end up being worse, I suspect, in terms of lives lost.

[arethusa2.livejournal.com]

I had my hair cut yesterday and when I said, "Did you see--?" the stylist immediately started talking about the flood.

Thanks for the info. I read this morining that the move is being done quietly; all the same, many people not in the Dome are trying to take the busses here. I really, really hope Houston steps up to the plate and does this right. We already have those minutemen asses sniffing around her to persecute immigrants; I can't imagine what would happen if 20,000 very poor people pour into the city, many of them sick or angry or scared, and the city neglects their needs.

The news is saying it's 50-60 thousand people trying to take these busses out now.

[fresne.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've been addictively reading reports. The magnitude of this is just so immense. And no one is talking about it at work. I think like the levies giving way the size of this crisis will creep into awareness.

I think about the road trip Karen and I took a few years ago and the sense of bustle and moving power when looked at the Misssissippi high up towards it's headwaters. I think about, of all things, our vacation this year, since we were supposed to be in New Orleans in three weeks. I look at the pictures and see that there is no city of New Orleans. No bustling port at the end of that mighty river. I think about oil and grain and all the thousand other things that cannot now flow.

[(Anonymous)]

No one here will speak of it either. I've tried...my boss responds, "yes, watching, think it's pathetic and wish I'd gone to New Orleans when I had the chance, now won't". People seemed to respond with more compassion to the bombings in London or the Tsuamni, maybe because they could wrap their minds around it. It affected them. They don't see this as affecting them, it's just a hurricane they think - like Florida. They don't realize yet that it will affect our country's commerce, trade routes, gas prices, economic growth, etc. They don't realize yet that this disaster is as great if not greater than what happened with the World Trade Center.

But they will. Losing New Orleans will change things - more things than just a place to visit. You are dumping over 50,000 refugees in Houston, Texas - another state - that has got to effect Texas. Plus all the flights that may have gone through New Orleans have to be redirected. All the barges, boats, pipelines, trucks, shipping. The mind boggles when I think on it.

Yet on a more personal level? I regret never seeing it. Never experiencing Mardi Gras or the Jazz Festival or wandering the old streets and ports.
The French Quarter apparently survived - but it is surrounded by water and cut off from the world.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Sigh...that was me.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I was wondering much the same thing...how will Houston handle it? Houston is about the same size as Kansas City and similar in make-up. (Noticed that when I visited a friend there back in 1989/1990.) So it's at least spread-out. But we're talking at least 50,000 people coming in. This doesn't include the other evacuees unaccounted for. Poor people. Who have nothing and have been living in bad conditions for three days.

No one is talking about it here. Which is odd. Because they talked about London and Tsuamni, why not this?