Well, Fox News has reported that all pumps will be failing soon and damnned if he doesn’t sound like there’s nothing more they can do about it. Which doesn’t make much sense to me…but I dunno. Everyone is being evactuated. People are looting like crazy in many places. In the next 12 to 15 hours, they predict about 9 feet of water will rush into N.O. from the east bank.
That will be presumably be adding to all the water there already…which is up to 20 feet in some places downtown and one county that’s even gone entirely. “The river has reclaimed it” they say. I did not catch the county’s name, however. And again, I don’t have any links or sites. Sorry. I’m just typing it as I hear it.
Maybe someone can help out and post a link or two.
The real tragedy to me is that most people don’t comprehend the degree of this. The mayor and governor have said it is likely N. O. will be without power for at least two months. 80 % of the city is said to be submerged.
Submerged.
More water pouring in by the hour with nowhere to pump it or drain it…
What city can recover from 2 months or more without basic city services? The city government “relocated” today. Read that “fled”.
God, love that city, grew up on the coast nearby and all I can think is that it is gone.
Actually… Considering for many of these people their houses were destroyed or damaged, their jobs are gone, who knows what they saved… I really would turn a blind eye to anybody looting basic things needed for emergencies.
Now, the looters getting electronics, knives and guns… Yea, they can get those, stealing things that are worthless in this situation.
You’re probably referring to the Plaquemines Parish, which is the point of land that sticks out farthest into the Gulf at the southeastern tip of Louisiana. It’s not entirely gone, but huge chunks of its lower tip are. It’s not all that surprising; with the devastation to the wetlands in the past 30 or 40 years, probably over 50% of the Louisiana coastline has already disappeared. Losing some of lower Plaquemines isn’t surprising. We used to drive down to the end of the road down there just to marvel – it felt like the water on either side was actually higher than the road in places, and that all it would take would be a couple of raindrops to break the surface tension and the road would be underwater. There’s not many people down there, obviously; but several small communities have completely disappeared. Such as Venice.
I don’t know how New Orleans will recover, but it will. I was struck listening to Mayor Nagin’s interview on CNN last night, when after a day of the news channels whipping up hysteria, he was calm and cool and collected and absolutely refused to even hint that a future for the city isn’t possible. I am so grateful that he’s at the helm right now. He’s finally getting the national help needed to maybe put things to rights – get decent levees built on all sides (rather than having the local Corps of Engineers budget slashed out of all recognition), providing support services to rebuild homes and roads and recreate the infrastructure in a newer, stronger way.
As I mentioned in the Katrina thread, my husband spoke to former coworkers at Entergy, the electric company, yesterday and they’ve got the IT and control infrastructure intact and ready to go as soon as lines can go up again. So as soon as the water is gone, we’re going to see a rebuilding effort like you have NEVER seen.
It’s strange; as the floods get deeper, I feel myself believing even more than New Orleans will be back. I just wish I could be there to help in the reconstruction.
Well… I meant worthless as in, they won’t feed the looters not give them first aid. It will make the looters dangerous, but why loot those things, when what you really need are others?