New Orleans flooding after hurricane Katrina

Frederik Magle

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Right now the waters are still rising in New Orleans, Louisiana, after the hurricane Katrina. Even though the hurricane winds themself mostly spared the city, the flood is now threatening to completely destroy this fascinating old town and many of the surrounding areas.

My hopes and thoughts goes to all affected by this disaster, and right now in particular those who are in immediate danger, trapped by the rising waters
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rojo

(Ret)
Yes, it is awful.

Katrina has been downgraded and is currently over Ontario/Quebec Canada- right here where I live it`s very windy and lots of rain is coming down, but nothing compared to what they got pummeled with in the States. The flooding is (according to the news) due to damns breaking over there.

Apparently help is on the way from some of the northern states, so at least that is good news; they can probably use all the help they can get...
 

Jette

Rear Admiral of O Theatre & the 4 - 1 + a few more
Yes it`s very scary, when mother nature shows her strength. It`s hard to imagine how much damage she can cause and it`s a shame with all the historical buildings that are destroyed. But most of all, it`s dreadful to think about all the people, that are affected by this catastrophe

Jette
 

Frederik Magle

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It seems the flood-waters are still rising as they have not been able to repair the breach of the levee yet. It is close to an almost total destruction of the city.
 

Thomas Dressler

New member
I can't tell you how upsetting this is, even though I live far away from New Orleans and Mississippi. I think we who are artists are more sensitive than most people. I find the stories of things happening around the world to be profoundly disturbing at times, and here is another disaster of monstrous dimensions. It's one thing to be upset about the culture and buildings which will be lost forever, but it's entirely another thing, and very upsetting, to see the pain people are experiencing. The disaster and emergency are so huge and overwhelming that things which would normally seem to be awful personal tragedies are set aside so the most urgent need, rescuing people, can be accomplished. It's profoundly disturbing to watch and feel there's very little you can do.
 

irir123

Banned
I for one am amazed and perplexed that in spite of being the most advanced country in the world, the US could not do anything to minimise the damages/losses - moreover, hurricanes are not new to the East Coast of the USA - so I fail to understand how and why certain anticipatory measures were not taken to minimise the huge damage!
 

Frederik Magle

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Here is a link to a video clip from a reporter on location in the Convention Center, New Orleans, yesterday.
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(At least it looks like the food and water is beginning to arrive now. If anyone wishes to donate The Red Cross has set up a disaster relief fund, but please don't discuss whether donating or not in this thread, as I believe that is a strictly private matter. The link is only meant as an information, nothing more.)
 

Thomas Dressler

New member
If you can watch CNN, you'll see that many of us here have some of the same questions, and hopefully when things have stabilized we'll begin to find out why, why, why. But for now, the situation is still a terrible emergency and there are still people stuck in their houses, dying all the time. People need to be rescued, and those who are rescued need to be moved somewhere safe. Most of us here can only watch our TVs in horror, wishing we could do something. Thanks to the average citizens here who will try to do what we can to help. . .people are sending money, and already many people around the country are offering to take people into their homes and give them a decent place to live until they can get their lives together again. (It's already being discussed here in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and people around the country have already advertized their open homes on the internet.)

Thank heavens the guards are finally getting in with the Red Cross and other help. It is difficult to pull away from the TV, because our minds are constantly with our fellow citizens who are suffering, in such terrible pain both physically and emotionally. I'm so glad they have arrived, and hope they can quickly minimize the suffering and hardships.

This will affect all of us here in many ways. We are a wealthy nation with lots and lots of resources, but they have to be used correctly. And while we are very fortunate, our resources are not limitless. We will have to pull together to put these peoples' lives back together.

So many of us felt for others around the world as they suffered with hardships. (And I don't want to go into it, but yes, many of us also feel helpless empathy for those in you-know-where.) I know of people who gave all of their Christmas money last year to the victims of the tsunami. And now, it is helpful just to hear that others are feeling empathy for our suffering citizens.
 

irir123

Banned
On July 26, 2005, a massive cloudburst over West Coast of India, resulted in a torrential downpour of 990mm of rainfall within a span of 10 hours in the city of Mumbai - does anyone here realise what 900 plus rainfall in 10 hours means ?! is is like a mini niagara falling over a city!

1000s of people were caught unawares 70% of Mumbai was (literally) underwater! only now, the city is limping back to normalcy
 

irir123

Banned
According to my friend who lives in Louisiana, these are the probable reasons as to why anticipatory measures cudn't be taken in New Orleans:

...Bureaucracy like elsewhere in the world is the same in the USA, slow to react, more reactive than proactive and a huge labrynth of corridors of power etc...

...Folks were too confident and complacent and each town felt that they would miss the huge storm
 

irir123

Banned
this is a rejoinder to my earlier posting - the East Coast of India is equally prone to hurricane attacks and considering that it is an yearly regular phenomena, even the local people know what to do, what to expect and take precautionary measures
 

Priest

Commodore of Impending Doom II
what I don't really get about this episode is that, the current US government depicted 3 worst case scenarios that could happen. I think that these 3 things were pointed out before they came to power.. worst case scenario was a terrorist attack.. this one can be hard to protect yourself against since you don't know where it strikes.. second worst scenario was an earth quake in San Francisco and 3rd worst was a flooding of New Orleans..

What I fail to see is: if they point this out as being a possible major problem.. how come that there is no direct plan of how to deal with it?

They might not have expected criminal anarchy, but with millions of guns in the hands of a bunch of people bred to be super consumers they shouldn't be that surprised that people feel like looting.. it is not that greed isn't a general factor in human nature..
 

irir123

Banned
The following link from the journal NATURE gives a detailed account of what went wrong with New Orleans

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050829/full/050829-14.html

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040920/full/431388b.html


btw, do you all know that if a volcanic group of islands located south of Canary Islands near Spain were to become active, they could create a Tsunami which would wipe out the entire east coast of the United States ? follow this link for information on the same:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2000/mega_tsunami.shtml

http://www.ing.iac.es/PR/lapalma/inde9606.html

www.es.ucsc.edu/~ward/papers/La_Palma_grl.pdf
 

Thomas Dressler

New member
One good thing coming out in the news today is that it seems so far that the death toll is not going to be as large as they were saying before. One bit of good news in what has been more than a week of upsetting, sad news here. Perhaps it won't be as many people as we were afraid would get the news that their separated family members had died. Now linking them all back up is going to take a little time! We have some displaced people from New Orleans all the way over here in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia has made room for 1,000.)
 

ApeXX

Banned
Hurricane Katrine was unavoidable, however some of the problems we are facing now could have been avoided. The mayor of New Orleans has known for years now that the levi system was falling apart, and that in the event of a large hurricane, it would not be able to hold the massive amounts of water. The reason no action was taken mainly rests on the shoulders of the government, for not sending them state funding to help repair and fortify the levi system.
 
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