Through years of experience, I know something about the Gulf Coast between Mobile and New Orleans. I’m also no stranger to hurricanes. 125 deaths in Mississippi is a joke, told for what purpose I cannot imagine. My best guess is that when it’s all tallied up, Mississippi will have 1000+ dead.
Then, there has been almost no mention of those parts of Louisiana south of New Orleans.
“The southern-most 40 miles of Plaquemines Parish has been reclaimed by the Mississippi River.” is all I’ve heard from there. What happened to the fishermen, oil workers and farmers that lived there? It’s a pretty good guess that many of the people there were “reclaimed” as well.
Anybody heard anything from Grand Isle? There’s been no mention of the town that caught the first contact with this storm after it entered the Gulf.
I believe that the numbers of deaths have, to date, been grossly under estimated. Hope I’m wrong.
I read that Grand Isle got mostly “reclaimed” as well. There is a small part of the land left but it is so bad that there isn’t much evidence that many buildings even existed at all.
That Plaquemines Parish thing is really, really spooky. I haven’t heard anyone mention it in the last couple of days. It is like it never existed at all.
It’s just a matter of confirmed numbers (currently 185) and reasonable estimates. Nobody wants to pick a big number that turns out to be wrong. So when you hear the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans saying they’re sure thousands of people died, I think they’re quite sure.
In the main Katrina thread in MPSIMS, I predicted that the death toll in New Orleans might surpass 10,000. That was before I saw this thread, so yeah I agree that the death toll might go up dramatically.
We know that there are large numbers of corpses floating in the streets. There are probably thousands more who drowned in their homes, and haven’t washed out into the streets. Plus, we’re getting to the point where people are starting to die from dehydration, sunstroke, and other medical issues. Many experts fear that epidemics might sweep through the refugees if they they don’t get rescued soon, and the gangs of armed looters will probably succumb to some sort of nasty septic disease, if the cops and National Guardsmen don’t shoot them first. Ten thousand might end up being a conservative estimate.
I agree that Mississippi might see a death toll over a thousand. To be honest, I forgot about the rest of Louisiana. I’d expect them to have a death toll comparable to Mississippi. Alabama was on the outer edge of the hurricane, so their death toll will be minimal. Like Florida, they’ll probably escape with only a couple of casualties.
Southern LA and the area surrounding New Orleans is pretty bad. An hour northwest, in East Baton Rouge parish, everything is much much better.
Unfortunately, this also means that the city population has increased, the traffic will get worse, more crime will come to the city, and there are a lot of refugees around looking for housing and work.
Lafayette and other areas north were unaffected. I have a friend in Bunkie, Louisiana (middle of nowhere), and he has family from New Orleans and environs living there for the moment.
I can’t help but wonder if barges or ships could be sunk at the breaks in the levees to help close the gaps. There are plenty of junk hulls in the area right now; some could be floated.
FEMA has been treated like the US cabinet’s ugly cousin since the 1980s. It’s time to pull it out of the Department of Homeland Security and give it the independence and funding that it needs to [del]avoid these clusterfucks in the future[/del] plan for future disasters.
At least some of the people who joined their National Guard to drive the water truck after a hurricane are now in Iraq, and it looks like the Guard’s response has been disorganized and short of materiel. There’s no room for partisanship here. We all let it happen.
I’m thinking that there will be 2,000-3,000 fatalities, tops. A few people will die from sickness, but the worst is over (‘worst’ being a relative thing here.)
After Galveston’s 1900 Storm, anyone found with other people’s ring fingers in their pockets was shot on sight. There may be some of this when the waters have subsided. Ugly people get ugly under pressure.
I’m posting work for the first time ever to correct this comment. That’s how wrong I think I was. Having read what Mayor Nagrin of New Orleans said yesterday and last night, with all due respect to the terrible strain he must be under, I think he’s come unglued. I still think thousands of people are dead, and so far I’d still trust the Governor, but this guy seems to have snapped from the pressure.
Marley23, I’m curious. What exactly did Mayor Nagin say last night that makes you think he’s gone off the rails? I read this transcript at CNN, and to me he sounds completely rational, and completely, justifiably, enraged.
I disagree completely. I think the mayor did exactly what he needed to in this situation. He blasted the people that need to be blasted let the world know that this is extremely serious and things were not getting better. If you listen to reports from Washington, you get the impression that rescue and relief efforts are going swimmingly. He got everybody’s attention when it is most needed.
Risk Management Solutions (RMS), one of the three major companies that does this sort of thing, estimates today that Katrina and the flooding will cost in excess of $25-35 billion. Considering that Andrew had insured losses fewer than $18 Billion, and insured losses are typically ~50% of total losses, and surely less than that in this case, this is a big, big, BIG deal. “Worst natural disaster in US history” is a fact at this point, not hyperbole.
Within two days (to my knowledge–it might have been by 24 hours) of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, there were National Guardsmen on streetcorners through San Francisco.
In those days I wondered why. Now I know. If you don’t want problems and looting, you set up a prevention. That’s why we didn’t have looting in San Francisco: because someone in government was competent.
In those days I wondered why. Now I know. If you don’t want problems and looting, you set up a prevention. That’s why we didn’t have looting in San Francisco: because someone in government was competent.
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Not to excuse the current clusterfuck, but it was really just a few blocks of San Francisco’s Marina district that one could even think about comparing to NOLA today. And it wasn’t underwater. I imagine one SFPD precinct could’ve kept it under control.
Not to dismiss the people and neighborhoods that died from it, but Loma Prieta is a skinned knee compared to this.
So why didn’t they lay on the Guard in New Orleans when it was done in the smaller problem in San Francisco?
Apologies, this whole subject belongs more in one of the other threads, in GD or the Pit, than under this thread on how great the actual damages may be. So I’m going to end hijack here.
It was that Ivor Van Heerden guy, on CNN. I initially thought he was with the Louisiana Homeland Security Department, but he is actually with the LSU Hurricane Center. He also specified at the time that the number came from their initial casualty models. I don’t know if that estimate has been revised downward since then. I hope you 1,000-3,000 people are right, but I honestly can’t see how that low a number is possible at this point. I’m betting at least 7,000-10,000 over the whole Gulf Coast.