New footage is just coming in. It looks like thing are actually getting much worse in New Orleans rather than better very quickly. The levee system has failed and the whole city, including the French Quarter is filling with water. No one predicted this delayed effect. The French Quarter is filled with about 3 feet of water whereas it was mostly dry yesterday. This was part of a worst case scenario. The levee system will have to be repaired before people can move back to the city. It will take weeks to months.
More Metairie new:
Old Metairie: made out very well yesterday, with minimal street flooding. However, today’s Industrial Canal levee breach if bringing water into the streets east of the Metairie Country Club. Home flooding in that area seems imminent.
Who will be responsible for repairing these levee breaks? I’m assuming the urgency of the work will necessitate expanding the effort beyond whoever’s maintained them in the past but that’s just a guess. Maybe someone else from the Corps can provide some actual information instead of just quibbling over their name.
Anyone know anything further about the runaway oil rig or tanker that was battering a mojor thoroughfare (I believe I-10)? Is that still a viable route for returnees?
I’m not sure either. A friend of mine lives there, but I’m not sure where.
If the main New Orleans airport is under water, that means that the flooding has extended all the way west through Metairie. I have this horrible feeling that the flooding in the whole Eastbank metro area is going to render it uninhabitable for possibly months to come. Especially since it’s coming from two sides, the east and the north.
And yes, the Corps is in charge of levee work, although it’s done by local contracting companies. Ironically, the levee that broke last night, I understand, was a concrete levee, not the typical earthen levee, which have held thus far (except for that one breach near the 9th Ward).
CNN is showing footage of them using I-10 ramps just north of downtown as boat ramps.
I am just sick about the whole thing this morning.
That bridge has been closed until it can be inspected. So no, at this time it cannot be used.
I’m in Baton Rouge, and like the others, made it OK. Unfortunately, my neck of the woods is the part that no electricity. Highland and Burbank south of LSU Ave. is without electricity (I live close to Highland and Gardere).
With no power, it is now that I’m starting to see what it did to New Orleans…
Christ. Bodies reported in New Orleans
I was afraid of this. They’re gonna find a lot more once they start checking buildings, I’ll bet 
Let’s see, hopefully this link works. Pictures from Baton Rouge.
I’m in BR. My mom’s house, where I’ve been staying, has been without power for 30 hours and counting. We had just gone grocery shopping, and so both our freezers were packed with food. At this point, everything’s been thawed or melted. However, we are VERY lucky as that’s the extent of our monetary damage. We had a lot of fallen branches in our yard but none hit the roof. Our ancient oak tree in the front yard didn’t fall over. My room at my mom’s house, which has flooded a couple of times in the past, is still dry. Most importantly, we’re all safe.
I’m at my dorm room right now, which apparently never lost power. Kind of wish I had thought to come over here last night.
Yea Lisa, I went last night to visit some friends, and they had power… I wish I would have taken my food there instead of keeping it at my place.
KarlGrenze (or anyone else in Baton Rouge without electricity), if you need a place to hang out in the AC or a hot shower, you’re welcome at my apartment. Email me at my username at gmail dot com.
That’s going to suck for the next several weeks, finding people in attics, floating down the streets as they drain, etc. PTSD is going to run rampant among the survivors and rescuers alike.
But I’ve got a real bad feeling about the Superdome. Ten thousand people (others have estimated twice that) trapped on what amounts to an island. They’re not going to have much food on-site (do they keep the commisarries stocked during the off-season?) or sanitary facilities (I can’t imagine the sewers are working any longer). Give it a couple of days and you’re looking at Lord of the Flies with a side order of Cholera…
Other reports: Looting in the dry sectors (greed at its worst), and Southern Decadence being cancelled (not too many people in a celebratory mood). Even rumors of martial law being declared (still trying to confirm).
At least we’re not getting hourly reports from Aruba anymore…
I keep hearing that Bayou LaBatre, Alabama has been hit pretty hard. I wonder when the only shrimpin’ boat to survive is going to pull up to the docks.
The martial law declaration is being reported on the Times Picayune website at www.nola.com as well as, I believe, the WDSU TV website. I’ve seen it from at least two media sources.
I just saw a reporter in the French Quarter in water to his knees, and it’s still rising there. And aerial footage of the city is just making me physically ill.
I understand they’re looking into how to evacuate the Superdome, but getting people out will be a major challenge. Moving 10,000 people out via helicopter will take a long, long time, but by road is also almost impossible – the only way out of town right now is via the Crescent City Connection bridge to the Westbank and on towards Houma.
I was able to get hold of a friend of mine who evacuated to Texas, and got a land line number so we could actually hold a conversation. She’s evacuated with a bunch of other folks, including the wife of a Jefferson Parish sheriff’s deputy, who of course stayed behind. Apparently Harry’s guys on the the Eastbank are working out of East Jeff Hospital, and there’s minimal flooding in that area, no more than 3 feet. So if you know anyone from that area of Metairie/Kenner, you can pass that along as a fairly accurate news report from a hopefully reliable source as of midmorning today.
I’m an hour south of Memphis, we got a lot of rain and some decent wind, but that’s it. Heck, at the worst of it last night, around 10pm, we tried to go out and hit the bars, but they had already rolled up the sidewalks.
We did lose power a few times, and my cable (modem) was out until just now.
I hope our friends to the south are OK.
It seems like everyone warned about New Orleans, but no one seemed to expect Katrina to go east and hit southern Mississippi. The computer generated predictions of Katrina’s path that I saw showed it going north of New Orleans, not east. Is there any sure way of accurately predicting the path of a hurricane? Why did it go east and not north? Is it mostly guess work, or was this an anomaly?
Even the most powerful supercomputers still aren’t all that good at predicting storms including hurricanes. A lot of it is due to chaos theory. Very small changes in temperature or will conditions can have a big impact on the path of a storm.
I thought they did a pretty good job of predicting it as close as they did. For a day or two it kept looking to the uneducated eye that it was going to hit further west, like Houston, but all 7 models they use came to agreement (after some earlier disparate paths) that Katrina would indeed turn when it did and track like it did. For them to process that closely the large number of influential variables… well… color me impressed.