Hurricane Heading for Gulf Coast Is Upgraded to Category 5
Man, this is NOT the news you want to wake up to on a Monday morning. A category 5 hurricane about to blow up your skirt. Life really sucks sometimes, doesn’t it?
I’ve been watching Katrina with a growing sense of trepidation. Even though the forecast is for the storm to hit land in Louisiana, my experience in south Florida last summer demonstrated to me just how fickle these storms can be. A storm that was forecast to come right over the top of Miami-Dade County jogged to the west just prior to making landfall, then headed up Florida’s southwest coast and killing 22 people a scant two-hour drive from where I was located. The Miami area got a lot of wind, enough to blow palm fronds off trees and into the streets- and not much else. If it had come over Miami-Dade County the toll could have well be unimaginable.
Until Katrina is “safely” ashore, then, I’m not going to be anything but nervous. A category 5 storm such as Katrina could well and quite easily turn our 50+-year-old home into just so many toothpicks in a heartbeat. Of course, if the storm does hit Louisiana as projected, it just means that, even though we’ll avoid the big hit, someone else will be suffering.
So, what might happen to New Orleans this morning? Check out this nightmare scenario:
It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV “storm teams” warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.
But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however — the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.
The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level — more than eight feet (two meters) below in places — so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.
Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
When did this calamity happen? It hasn’t — yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.
I suppose this is what can happen when you consider that 80% of New Orleans is 8’ BELOW sea level. I’m not about to get into what would possess one to to build a city on the Gulf Coast below sea level, because at this juncture it’s a pointless discussion. All we can do is hope for the best for Louisiana and Mississippi. As I am writing this, Katrina has made landfall at Grand Isle, LA. Let’s hope there will be something left for residents to go back to.
Media hasn't been doing a good job getting out info, but here it is straight from the source, mayor of New Orleans, late night 8/29 interview on WWL.
A grim, grim glimpse of the situation on the ground and the specifics for the first couple of days of what will be months. Be sitting down when you watch, it just goes on and on for 20 minutes:
http://www.wwltv.com/perl/common/video/wmPlayer.pl?title=www.wwltv.com/082905mayor.wmv