OT: Hurricanes, New Orleans

[Kurt Ullman]

Given the amount of unemployment and poverty level in Ward 9 (IIRC that is the one that got hit the worst), I doubt all that many people there worked at the port anyway.

[gfretwell]

New Orleans is far enough from the Gulf to avoid most of the real storm surge. Even when you do have rising water, if you are above sea level a significant height it recedes very fast. You don't have that shit bowl for weeks they had in NOLA

[gfretwell]

Florida is dealing with 2 issues, Draining away storm water but still maintaining enough wetland to recharge the aquifers. The real answer is not to drain the swamps but there is too much money in development to stop it. I suppose they might slow down when we run out of water.

[gfretwell]

There are thousands of people out of work in the Ohio valley and lots of big machines sitting idle. Dirt is cheap compared to what we will be spending in the next month down there.

[RicodJour]

Vietnam has dibs on New Orleans.

R

[Rick Brandt]

Ditto, 46 years in the midwest and have never seen a funnel cloud. Do not personally know anyone who has and have never seen a building damaged by one except on TV. There is zero comparison to be made.

[Steve Barker DLT]

Close enough . Here's what he DID say.

GORE: Well, I will be offering -- I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be.

But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

During a quarter century of public service, including most of it long before I came into my current job, I have worked to try to improve the quality of life in our country and in our world. And what I've seen during that experience is an emerging future that's very exciting, about which I'm very optimistic, and toward which I want to lead.

[Steve Barker DLT]

Very good point. It seems most the the inhabitants of NO wouldn't work if they're life depended on it. I'm sure all the ports employees commute from outside NO anyway.

s

[Steve Barker DLT]

They can have it. Dig around it, take a big chinese scoop shovel and get it the f*ck out of here..

s

[Norminn]

New Orleans is basically on the Gulf and storm surges are more severe where the tidal areas are shallow. Katrina was only a cat. 3. This link is to a graphic that explains well:

The top of my seawall is about three feet above the water at highest normal high tide. During one hurricane that passed far offshore from us, the surge was great enough to put water over the top of our seawall. It wasn't even stormy here, but the water was far higher than normal.

If Gustav goes a little west of NO, then the greater force of counter clockwise wind and storm surge east of the eye will hit them.

[Oren]

Not sugar, but when the "glades" were taken over by the government.

They changed the natural flow on a sea of grass.

Land sold then for farms, now will need to be bought back.

Those billions to fix and pay for the land, fix the glades!!

[Norminn]

I lived in the midwest a long time, as well. Lived within 5 mi of one track, saw one that never touched down. Went to the cellar a few times when warnings were issued and conditions ominous. The Palm Sunday tornado in northern Indiana was a week before I got married. Family lived there, so we toured on our honeymoon. An incredible, ominous thing to see. For many years afterward, you could still see the path in places where trees were mowed down.

[Norminn]

Well, any pol in the neighborhood can say they "took the initiative", along with many others, in building some monster - interstate highway system, hospital, stadium, etc. Only means they were involved in facilitating. I don't believe Gore ever meant to say he created it. Ike took the initiative in building interstate highway sys, but he didn't build it.

[aemeijers]

Build a bedroom community at the other end of the causeway, on the north side of Lake P., and have a bus service. It'd be cheaper than pounding money into the levees. Actual solution would be to undo the Atchafalaya (sp?) diverter, and let the big muddy go where it wants to- the coastal marshes might recover, then.

-- aem sends...

[aemeijers]

Never seen a funnel cloud in person, and hope never to do so. I have seen the aftermath several times. It's ain't pretty (cheap cookie-cutters pulled right off their barely-to-code foundations), but it is almost always very localized, affecting a few hundred people at most. The system can handle that. It can't handle refugees by the thousands.

-- aem sends...

[aemeijers]

An article in the paper in last couple of days claimed that roughly 1/3 of the people in the most heavily hit areas were functionally illiterate. Sign their name, recognize their address, but that was about it. Not a whole lot of jobs for people that can't read and write at least at a basic level. What does the big diamond-shaped sign on that shipping container say? In an industrial environment, illiterate people are a hazard to themselves and others.

-- aem sends...

[Bob]

thank idiots like lindsey graham head of republicans in congress, who has stonewalled nearly everything democrats have tried to do.

thank you Lindsey Graham!!!

[Kurt Ullman]

Thank the Dems for teaching Lindsey Graham everything he knows about stonewalling. At least the GOP take their lumps without (quite) as much whining. BTW: What has been stonewalled?

[KLS]

Excuse me? Are you deaf?

[Kurt Ullman]

See, whining about how the GOP is whining. I rest my case.