Katrina's aftermath

Subtract the water, and rewind to April 29th, 1992...
The place is Los Angeles.

http://images.ibsys.com/2002/0426/1420892.jpg

"Hi, ny name is Reginald De... OW!"

Jesus, you look under the lowest sewer and they're still somewhere beneath, smirking.

They hit the freeway and were stopped by police. There was a wheelchair on top.

I'm sorry, I'd have to let them go. Its not like the USPS is expecting to get those back.

http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/info/1906/images/damage6.jpg

*COUGH*

edit: the governor of the Parish of St. Bernard is begging on WWL for help from anyone for boats, food, and water. Its horrifying.

This, however, is probably the first time most of us have seen an American city undergo attrition due to natural causes in our lifetimes, though.

i am sorry but that just about gave me a heart attack. can you imagine?

I had to go to a doctor's appointment in Atlanta today, and it took me three hours to drive back to my suburban home (it normally takes 20-30 minutes!) thanks to people lining up at gas stations like it's 1973

Makes sense.

The dirty bomb would be nothing like this. No one would stay. They'd just get the fuck out pronto before dying. There's really no terrorist comparison to this, short of a city getting 24 hours warning that it was going to be destroyed in some way, and then the terrorists went ahead and destroyed it.

I just got off the phone with a guy who evacuated with three other families from Jefferson Parish. They planned to be gone for three days. Now, it's three months. He was pretty level-headed, but I could tell that he could see a breaking point somewhere distantly in the horizon.

He knows that he's lucky. He's out of town and he's got a room at a hotel. But the money has to be watched. He described how he and his family went and hung out at the mall for the afternoon, just to get away from the hotel room and television. How surreal it was to be standing around the food court of some mall in North Little Rock while his home was underwater.

And he's got weeks of this, at least, to look forward to. I asked him what else besides food and shelter he and his fellow refugees might need, and his immediate answer was JOBS. Jobs so that the immediate money worry wouldn't be so bad, but also to alleviate boredom. To feel like a human.

I didn't know what to tell him. I felt like I was watching someone about to choke and I don't know CPR. I know about the property damage and the rescue costs and of course all of the lives that have been lost, but there's also going to be some emotionally torn people all over this country for quite some time. I just wonder how we all are going to deal with this.

Merry Christmas.

dear netherlands: send us your best pump-building manpower.

TWO TIMES!

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 5:11 PM. (Alan Conceicao)

first of all, i sort of doubt that. "most" would leave, but "most" people already left new orleans, too.

second, the comparison i mean to make is: 100,000 refugees, uninhabitable city, chaos at the city level, frustration at the state level, ineffectual federal government.

did they evacuate manhattan? seriously, if they did i wasn't aware of it.

It's exactly what they need right now, and no amount is piddly.

Well, people didn't leave the hurricane zone because they assumed they could survive it based on past experience or that the hurricane would miss. Telling people that any sort of nuclear attack has occurred would cause them to completely lose their minds, simply because that's how people have been educated. Weathermen = sometimes wrong, nuclear anything = you fucking die fast. I'm sure a couple people who were less than mentally competent would stay, but nowhere near the amounts that stayed in New Orleans.

Additionally, anywhere they moved, and in fact, still in the city of NY or where ever, there would still be an infrastructure. Right now, there's so much damage in the surrounding areas that there's no phones, no electricity, etc. No way to communicate, and no way to get around, because water covers everything. People would be able to use trains, boats, their cars, and feet to get out. Right now, they're trapped in their attics because there's 12 feet of water.

Refugee wise and the logistics of having to clean up the city, yes, that would be similar. I think the likelihood of violence as we see it wouldn't occur, or if it did, it would do so immediately.

hahaha, the Dutch pump system is small potatoes compared to the one New Orleans has. It would get wiped out by a strong category 1 hurricane. After they had their disaster in the 50s and decided to get serious about flood control, guess which American city they turned to for advice and the latest technology?

a piddly monetary donation can feed a lot of people!

My aunt's house is destroyed. I don't know the condition of family in Algiers, or several friends that live down there. None of the phones work. Cell phones are near useless. All circuits are overloaded.

SWAT teams are being sent into New Orleans. I saw several of them at a convenience store up the street an hour ago, one of them wearing two pistols on his belt, gunfighter style.

There are paranoid rumors about looters spreading to LaPlace and Gonzales, and it's pissing me off.

I have a general understanding of what was going on, but the reality is still sinking in.

Also, a lot of people have been buying maps, and plan on going into New Orleans whether it's permitted or not. Some of these people are going vigilante.

On the bright side, there's a lot of charitable work going on. By the LSU fieldhouse, there are throngs of volunteers gathered, and mountains of goods donated for the evacuees.