New Orleans

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The entire city of New Orleans evacuated.

Ninety percent of the structures in the city are likely to be destroyed if Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans directly as a Category 5 storm, suggests the former director of the New Orleans Office of Emergency Preparedness.

Area crucial to US oil and refinery operations.

Likely to make landfall monday morning.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

Of course, this might all "blow over," but then again, plenty of very smart people are forecasting a very different New Orleans come Tuesday morning... Best wishes to any SPers with friends/family in the area...

 

I've been watching the news all day -- it will indeed be quite horrific. The city sits 12 feet below sea level surrounded by Lake Ponchartrain and the Mississippi -- never mind the 25 foot storm surge -- if the levies break -- both the river and the lake will all dump into the city.

I was watching an old meterologist talk about Camille back in the 60's. He was covering that event at that time -- and he said he saw small little mounds that people tried to gather on, to escape the advancing waters. The only problem was -- they weren't alone. They were joined by hordes of snakes, also trying to escape the salt water. These people died of snake bites....not water in their lungs. What a bloody nightmare.

 

Although Katrina has been downgraded it has still done a lot of damage. My heart goes out to the people there.

 

Yeah I have been watching news all day as well, since I live in Miami and was hit by Katrina when it was cat 1. Parts have come off the roof of the Louisiana Superdome, and altho experts beleave it will sustain its stability, it is still possible it might worsen. So far one Levee has broken, so I read.

 

Fortunately, the storm veered away from New Orleans (although at least one levee was breached), along with being downgraded to a category 4 storm. Could have been much worse...

 

Oh man, I can believe how things are going on up there, the entire New Orleans city evacuated...
I see that other cities are like that too.
My sympathy to all the people who is suffering all this.

 

The search is growing even more desparate. The number dead was originally reported to be around 100, now the mayor has just announced that with so many missing, the toll is much higher. Certainly at least several hundred, and possibly in the thousands.

Read about it here:

Thousands Dead?

 

Front page of New Zealand newspapers today shows police / soldiers wandering around New Orleans carrying very big looking guns! I thought this was a natural disaster, not a civil war.

 

A state of martial law has been declared. Looting has been excessive and gang fights have started as well -- people are at their breaking point, I fear. The guns are merely a precaution.

 

What a nightmare! As if the weather wasn't bad enough on its own.

 

After several days away from any form of news, the first thing I saw was the devestation caused by Katrina, and the chaos that ensued.

Absolutely unbelievable, all of the looting and riots happening now in the city.

 

The looting seems to me to be pure desperation: what exactly can you do in New Orleans with looted goods? Store them somewhere, as the city slowly fills up with water?

Unbelievable, an entire major city evacuated, perhaps almost destroyed...

And wait to see the economic consequences...

So now's the chance for W to show off some of his vaunted leadership skills...

 

The economic consequences will be quite dire indeed.

To start with, there will have been extensive damage to many of the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico resulting in a significant decrease in the extraction of oil.

Second, New Orleans was ranked somewhere around #5 in the busiest harbours on Earth so the consequences of that harbour capacity vanishing are enormous. For instance, huge quantities of US grains were shipped from New Orleans. That grain will now have to be shipped via alternate routes which will take time not to mention that there just isn't the available capacity for alternate ports to handle all of that grain.

On the more quirky side, a huge percentage of the US supply of those little paper packages of sugar that restaurants give you for your coffee etc. was produced in New Orleans.

If we look for silver linings, repairing damaged property does generally help boost the economy but considering that you are only restoring what was lost that is hardly any consolation.

We here in Canada are feeling slightly guilty about it but our economy will in all likelyhood benefit greatly due to an increased value of our considerable oil/gas and grain exports not to mention that our ports will gain from taking up some of the lost shipping capacity.

 

There was a gas panic here in Georgia today. From about noon to nine at night there were lines of people in cars at gas stations twenty long in all directions, trying to get gas before it went up past $3.29 a gallon. Hard to believe I remember my parents paying $1.59 for premium. A state of emergency was declared.

My uncle's marina's totally gone, as is my other uncle's houseboat (and most of his house, he lived a short way from New Orleans, and was in the eye of the storm.) It's impossible to imagine that a place I went to less than two months ago is just... gone. I keep wondering about my friends who lived in or near the city... I haven't heard from many of them, and the phone lines are down...

 

Finally something that George W has done that I don't like: He officially banned the Tragically Hip song "New Orleans is Sinking". Don't get me wrong, it would be extremely tasteless to play it on the radio at this time, but outright banning it? That's just excessive...

 

Another quirky note, JSBB: Tabasco sauce comes from that area.

This is horrific. Those poor people. Slith, please do tell us more about your friends as you hear. We have an uncle in Gulfport - I know he went to Georgia and escaped the storm, but I haven't yet heard if he's gone back, or what he found.

 

What a disaster. It always leaves me somewhat stunned when I see disasters on such a scale hitting the developed world. Only recently we had floods on a much much smaller scale in the alps regions of Austria, south Germany and Switzerland, but this ... haven't seen anything like that since the Oder floods.

I have seen the pictures of the coffins from a graveyard floating on the flood. On top of all the havoc caused by the storm, New Orleans will face a desease problem, too.

Best wishes and good luck.

 

The Lt. Gov. has stated it would most likely be 6 months before the infrastructure of New Orleans is restored. Not only has the harbor been destroyed, electrical and gas systems, but I-10 has collapsed, which is the only signficant land based trade route out of the city.

The looting has escalated signficantly as well. Aid workers have reported seeing looters armed with assault rifles, threatening anyone who challenges them. One guy shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice.

I think these people have been pushed over the sanity edge -- past the point of human capacity. Pictures have shown small children wandering the flooded streets with no parents....crying, walking in a daze. One aid worker rounded them all up and was leading a group of about 10 -- all holding hands in a line, walking through fetid water. It just makes your heart break.

 

@Gnarff: Really?! Perhaps W *is* displaying some leadership. Now if only he would ban the Tragically Hip alltogether!

I-10 was an amazing drive, stretching for miles high up above the swamps and bayous. I don't imagine that they'll build it again the same way.

Still unbelievable that such a thing could happen. Also unbelievable that the US markets are trying to shrug it off as no big deal; I think yet another example of how unrealistic the market has been over the past 10 years or so.

Actually, the whole New Orleans sugar production industry was one of the US's most blatant beneficiaries of trade protectionism...

Amazing to see just how quickly the veneer of law and order can be stripped away. What a nightmare...

 

Wow. The entire thing is quite sobering. I'll keep my blizzards and occasional tornado. I went through a hurricane (typhoon) on a ship -- it was not fun but at least we were in a structure more sound than the superdome. Taking a 45° roll was scary though.

I can tell I'm getting too acclimated to business -- I work for a company that supplies the construction and the second thought through my mind (after being awestruck at the tragic events) is thinking how good this next quarter is going to be for the company. Bad, bad, bad.