No news reports I’ve seen mention Ivan from 2004. Or Betty from 1965.
Also, this and other reports say that parts of the city are as low as 10 feet below sea level. But I am now hearing news reports that parts of the city are under 20 feet of water. How is that possible? Is Lake Ponchartrain 10 feet above sea level now?
Well NO has a large poor population, for them evacuation isn’t spending a week in a hotel in Houston. Its sitting in a line for a day or more, then having your belongings pawed through and maybe patted down like a criminal and then anything they don’t agree with in the shelter, including legal items like beer are confiscated.
You are then a virtual prisoner inside with the crowded conditions and lack of privacy.
Then the toilets overflow and as we see now they are running out of potable water.
No thanks I’ll take my chances with the catagory 5 hurricane.
My understanding is that the western (south-blowing) eye wall dragged a huge amount of water from the lake over the levees into the NO bowl, where it remains trapped by those levees except for the breaks. The lake may be back to its accustomed sea level now, but there’s actually a *higher * water level south of it.
I heard a brief radio interview this AM with the local Army Corps of Engineers commander, in which he said the strategy is not to complete plugging the levees until the water has drained back down to lake level, then to use pumps to finish the job. The rush of water through the breaks is enlarging them in the meanwhile.
Recommended reading: John McPhee’s The Control of Nature. There’s a fascinating, and frightening, essay on the extreme means needed to keep New Orleans dry, and Mississippi River flowing by it, even before considering hurricane damage. The catastrophic event he stated was most likely, though, was the river breaking through the control structure upstream and diverting into the Atchafalaya basin, something it “wants” to do anyway - leaving New Orleans dry. The levee failures will do until another catastrophic event comes along, of course.
Pre-hurricane stories I’d read were that the eastern, north-blowing eye wall was going to hit NO and blow down up to 80% of its buildings even without considering water. Maybe this isn’t that bad, but it’ll do - that much of the city is under water now and will be for quite some time, and few of the buildings will be inhabitable even after draining.
I’m glad I got to visit there just once, and just feel the warmth of the people and the pervasive music and its simple joie de vivre. There will be a city there again, but it won’t be the Big Easy ever again.
I’ve read McPhee’s book (and have a tape of him reading part of it). Excellent stuff, especially for the part on the California earthquake/fire/storm/landlslide cycle. But the Atchafalaya part is more relevant now.
My high school graduation ceremony was in New Orleans (Riverdale High, Class of '86). 20 years ago, Louisiana had the highest unemployment rate in the country and New Orleans was the highest in the state. Unemployment probably hadn’t changed much since then.