The original system of levees was built in response to the 1947 storm. That’s the Cat. 3 levee system. Since worse flooding that occurred in 1965, the height of the levees was raised substantially. Since then, however, the wetlands erosion along the coast has complicated matters.
Until very, very recently, it was not possible to determine exactly what a storm was or what it would do. It’s still not possible, although we have better capabilities now. They’re all different. We only know what we know in hindsight. I expect that when the city is rebuilt, there may be improvements to the levees based on what is learned from this storm.
NO is unique in that it is 1.8 m below sea level. What is happening there isn’t just the initial storm damage from wind and storm surge, and it’s not just that a levee was topped. The initial flooding was bad, but now a section of levee has failed. Something like 200 feet of it washed out. The dike broke. Water from Lake Ponchartrain, which is higher than the city, is pouring through the breach and it can’t exit the city. It’s filling up a bowl. The sides of the bowl are the remaining intact levees. There isn’t any plug you can pull.
Some of the levee is dirt. I wonder how long before someone starts an “investigation” of why the levee’s are so poor? Somewhere soon some finger pointing is bound to occur.
I am appalled at the destruction. Yesterday I got home from work and poured a big glass of water and thought how fortunate I am that I have a home and fresh water while so many thousands are now going without.
I watched helicoptor rescues on MSNBC last night. So many people stuck on their roofs with no water or food. I wonder how many are still sitting there.
THE HURRICANE that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming.
When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause was global warming.
When 124-mile-an-hour winds shut down nuclear plants in Scandinavia and cut power to hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland and the United Kingdom, the driver was global warming.
When a severe drought in the Midwest dropped water levels in the Missouri River to their lowest on record earlier this summer, the reason was global warming.
In July, when the worst drought on record triggered wildfires in Spain and Portugal and left water levels in France at their lowest in 30 years, the explanation was global warming.
When a lethal heat wave in Arizona kept temperatures above 110 degrees and killed more than 20 people in one week, the culprit was global warming.
And when the Indian city of Bombay (Mumbai) received 37 inches of rain in one day – killing 1,000 people and disrupting the lives of 20 million others – the villain was global warming.
As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense downpours, more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms.
Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the relatively blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.
That’s actually a pretty good explanation. But my point was a bit different. I know the situation with New Orleans and the lake and I suppose millions of people do. My point though was this: given what happened in Galveston which I assume is not below sea level and given that that happened before global warming and so on, shouldn’t authorities have been aware of just how much more vulnerable New Orleans is? Just a thought. I suppose people are aware that there will be a major earthquake in LA sometime but just hope it won’t be on their watch.
Help me get my round this. How big is the area of devastation? I know some states are as big as some countries and this seems to have hit three of them. Could anyone give me a comparative area of the UK that would match the size?
The UK covers approximately 217,000 square miles of land.
Louisiana is 51,843 square miles.
Alabama is 52,423 square miles.
Misissippi is 48,434 square miles.
So the hurricane has affected an area approximately equal to 70% of the United Kingdom. This won’t all be “devastated” of course, but it’s no bag of chips either.
I agree totally with you. The logical thing to do would be to build a new New Orleans in a more secure location, rater than try to rebuild in what will be a chemically and bacterialogically dangerous location after the flooding has been dealt with.
Yeah - Flydood - I haven’t heard the totals, but it rained all day yesterday. No flooding, thank goodness (at least so far) but they are checking to see if there might have been a funnel touchdown out near Caesar Creek. No one hurt, but some building damage.
We were over 6" below for rain, so we really needed the water - just not all in one day!
I can’t believe I said something so stupid. It does look like the worst case scenario they were talking about. I can’t imagine where they are going to take all these people who have no homes now. I read somewhere something about trailers being in the emergency plan but where they would put them and how many they have I don’t know.
I was there on a short visit about a year ago and I remember going on that Highway 10 to Slidell to go on a swamp tour. Now the highway is broken up (I believe, or maybe it is water on top of it) and Slidell has had terrible damage too. I think of some of the people we met and wonder how they made out and what they are going to do for a living
We’re getting the last of it today. Apparently Katrina shifted northish, and so Steubenville wasn’t in the direct path as it had been (thankfully…last September was horrible after Ivan. There was tremendous flooding and no one here wants to relive that). I’m not sure if there will be flooding yet or not, but at least it seems to not be as bad as they had predicted. Our rain is supposed to stop sometime this afternoon.
Some folks here say Katrina even seems to have effected the weather here a bit…it’s amazing how far reaching the effects of a storm, even of that size, can be. Monday we had tempertature up into the high ninties, and yesterday it suddenly dropped to about seventy very quickly, and was very cold all night. I had my air conditioner off for the first time all summer.
The news just reported that the people in the Superdome are going to be bussed to Houston to the Astrodome.
It’s about 347 miles between New Orleans and Houston. (For some reason I was thinking it was a lot further.) Don’t know if I would feel all that safe in Houston, as it’s close to Galveston, so it is possible that a hurricane could hit there before the season is over.
Houston wouldn’t be inundated with water I would think.
I don’t think that particular spots on the coast are any more vulnerable than others in that a storm is more likely to hit them. What makes some places more vulnerable like NO is poor protection in case a hurricane hits or comes close. I imagine it would only have taken a slight change of direction for Cajun country to have been wiped out rather than Biloxi. Come to think of it, how are they doing down that way? I haven’t heard any reports. Baton Rouge OK?
I did live in Galveston and we moved to the mainland after hurricane Alicia. Houston is inland from Galveston about fifty miles. In Galveston and Houston the hotels are full of pepole from Louisiana, and when they can not afford to stay any more I don’t know what they will do. Houston is subject to flooding from heavy rain more so than Galveston. Houston has subsided into a bowl from pumping fresh water from the ground. On some overpasses there are water depth gauges to let cars know how deep the water is before driving under. Galveston was built up with dredge of the Gulf of Mexico after the 1900 storm, and a sixteen foot seawall is in front of most of it.
Thanks for clarifying that Tommy. By inundation I had in mind direct swamping from the ocean but obviously Houston would simply not be a safe place to be. If you are drowning it doesn’t much matter where the water is coming from. It seems odd that it takes a place to be destroyed before people build adequate sea walls when the danger is just the same 50 or 100 miles down the coast but maybe it’s human nature.
i hope they can recue all the people still alive.