by Damozel | Deb Cupples posted information on Gustav earlier here and here. Though the National Hurricane Center suggests that his warnings are possibly overstated, C. Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans, is clearly determined not to have a repeat of the Katrina disaster.
The mayor, C. Ray Nagin, said Hurricane Gustav was larger and more dangerous than Hurricane Katrina, and he pleaded with residents to get out or face flooding and life-threatening winds.
“This is the mother of all storms, and I’m not sure we’ve seen anything like it,” Mr. Nagin said at an evening news briefing. “This is the real deal. This is not a test. For everyone thinking they can ride this storm out, I have news for you: that will be one of the biggest mistakes you can make in your life.”
[H]e said storm surges, particularly on the city’s West Bank, could be twice as high as the neighborhood’s 10-foot levees, and said those people choosing to remain in their homes should have an ax to chop through their roofs when the floodwaters rise.(NYT)
President Bush has called governors in the area to assure them of federal assistance. (NYT) Oh, good. Of course, they haven't come close to providing the assistance promised to the unfortunate victims of Katrina, but at least this time we can assume that Bush won't be getting the news from his aides via DVD.
And at least they are getting those people out of there.
Already, hundreds of thousands of residents had begun streaming north from New Orleans and other Gulf Coast areas stretching from the Florida Panhandle to Houston.
Most left by car, which caused miles of backups on some highways, but New Orleans officials also began a far more carefully planned evacuation of the city’s less mobile residents than took place in 2005. Thousands of city residents began boarding buses and trains ferrying them to shelters in the north. (NYT)
As noted, the National Hurricane Center hasn't quite endorsed the mayor's predictions.
Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center, said he had no idea what the mayor meant by a 900-mile footprint, saying that hurricane force winds do not extend nearly that far.
Mr. Feltgen emphasized the uncertainty of forecasted landfalls. “New Orleans will be impacted, but to what degree we don’t know,” Mr. Feltgen said. If the center of the storm passes more than 60 miles from the city, he added, “they may not expect hurricane force winds.”
That New Orleans will most likely be east of the center, on “the dirty side of the storm,” means large amounts of rain. In addition, Mr. Feltgen said, there is “potential for a significant storm surge; we don’t know how much, or where.”
A Louisiana State University scientist who has been tracking the storm said the area at greatest risk, under present forecasts, was not New Orleans but the low-population district between Houma and Lafayette on the state’s south-central coast. “It’s just like Rita; it’s more of a rural storm than an urban storm,” said Robert Twilley, a professor of oceanography and coastal sciences.(NYT)
Still, no one who remembers Katrina can blame Mayor Nagin for wanting to take every possible precaution. If the storm makes an unexpected turn, it has the potential for devastation greater than the devastation wrought by Katrina. It has already done extensive damage in Cuba.
The storm ploughed through Cuba's Isla de la Juventud before hitting the mainland in Pinar del Rio with maximum winds of nearly 240km/h (150mph).
Almost a quarter of a million people have been evacuated in Cuba, where there has been extensive flooding.
Gustav has already claimed the lives of more than 80 people in the Caribbean.
It has swept through Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica over the past week, killing dozens of people and causing widespread damage.
US forecasters warned that the latest storm could yet strengthen further after it passes Cuba, potentially growing to a Category 5 - the highest possible classification - as it moves across the Gulf of Mexico.
After Cuba, Gustav's projected path takes it over the oil-producing Gulf, before making landfall in the US, possibly as early as Monday. (BBC News)
This is bad news. We may end up with a grim and graphic demonstration of one of the drawbacks of offshore drilling.
A category 4 hurricane, by the way, has winds of 131-155 mph with storm surge of 13-18 feet. (BBC News) A category 5 hurricane has winds over 155 mph and storm surge of more than 18ft. (BBC News) We had a category 5 hurricane here in Florida back in 1992, Hurricane Andrew. I was staying at my fiance's house in Central Florida when it made landfall way, way down in Miami. A tree went through the roof of the house next door.
How ready is New Orleans for any hurricane, let alone a Category 4 hurricane? Not all that ready, it appears. At least the statements of those who can be presumed to know are not exactly reassuring.
“The system itself is stronger than it was before Katrina,” said Maj. Timothy J. Kurgan, the chief of the public affairs office for the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans. He acknowledged, however, that the defenses that the corps has been designing and putting into place to withstand what is known as 100-year flooding are under construction and are only 20 percent complete.
While some $2 billion has been spent so far to patch and upgrade the system, the $13 billion construction program that is designed to bring the city full protection against the kind of flooding that has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year is not scheduled to be complete until 2011. (NYT)
I am just going to say, without knowing any specifics, what a pity it is that we couldn't get the job done faster. Katrina was in August of 2005. Now it's three years later. And I wonder how much further along we'd be on restoring the city generally if we had back some of the money Bush spent waging war in Iraq and on lining the coffers of its pet government contractors through its criminally wasteful spending.
And I am going to pray for the people of the Gulf states and those in the Florida Panhandle. But also for anyone at risk, including possibly other Floridians nearer to home. Please let it make landfall where it will do the least damage. I guess that's about all you can say.
Except for this: Michael Moore needs to shut up. He pushed hard for Nader in 2000, claiming that Gore and Bush were identical and that only a third party vote could save us. Some of us aren't going to forget that, no matter how hard he pushes a progressive agenda.
When will people learn not to joke about these things? Nobody has a sense of humor about disasters anymore. We've all been through too much.
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