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New Orleans

Should Canada send down or offer to send the Canadian military to help out?
 
I'll worry about pets later... the human body count will likely go well over a thousand... now THAT is a tragedy. Animals can be bought at a pet shop, lost loved ones can never be replaced.
I hope the survivors are rescued quickly.
RIP to the victims.
 
Mappy said:
I know!   As much as I would like to experience a hurricane one day (I'm a bit of a severe weather nut), being in New Orleans with a large hurricane threatening a direct hit is just insane.   Some are saying they dididn'tave the means to get to higher ground.   If I was living there and I had an extra seat in my car, I would take anyone who diddidn'tve a ride and I bet there are alot of people who would do the same.

That's really great in theory.  One small problem with that though.  Having spent a lot of time down there as well as having family there, there are a couple of problems.  One being that there are two extremes there - wealthy or dirt poor.  With that comes a HUGE class distinction between them.  A great deal of the poor there don't have cars and though some are always willing to help, which rich person is going to help someone haul them and their family away?  (the poor that is)  Another problem is the looting.  Many people didn't want to leave their possessions because they knew what they did have would be stolen.  I know....possessions can be replaced.  Who honestly thought it would get that bad there?  I know I didn't.  Sure, they say it can happen, but has it ever?  Nope.  Not until now.  Would people have gone if they really knew?  Hindsight is 20/20.

All I'm saying is don't be so quick to judge.  Instead think of the people and the dead.  :'(
 
We were down in Gulf Port/Biloxi a couple of years ago working with the local ANG Unit.
They were great people and the old expression of "Southern Hospitality" is true.The base is or was about 7 block's from the beach and like everything else around there not even 3' above sea level.
Old jefferson Davis' house was on the Highway 90 between Gulf Port and Biloxi and seeing the devestation on that beach road imagine it's gone.
Also in Gulf Port the Sea Bee's have a big Base with loads of construction equipment but I'm wondering how much survived.They have or had agreat little Museum there also.

Right now my thoughts are with those we met and made freinds with and just hope they are all O.K. along with everyone else.
 
As I believe the Toronto sun headlined today "This is our Tsunami"


America has the potential for very serious natural distasters (hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes) but for quite a bit of time we haven't had anything major happen.  We all still believe that it "cant happen to us".


 
Just heard on CNN, a national guard soldier has been shot by looters.
 
That's so stupid, they're trying to help, and now they're getting shot! I heard that a helicopter is trying to save people and people are shooting at it, is that true?? If so...oh my gosh thats so not cool.

Slim2
:cdn:
 
Wait for it!

The reaction of the Gov of LA may not be what we would expect.  Probably more alone 'Canadian' lines, and we won't see the National Guard and Police aggressively put a stop to the armed looters.  Although some Americans (with Service) are wondering why a MEU isn't called in to put a stop to it, using sped and violence with comments like this:

USMCR amtracs are available from Gulfport MI and Galveston TX, although some are obviously with the reserve bns in Iraq.

What we need is an MEU or 2 to stomp the low-lifes trying to turn my town into Somalia.

snip

Did not realize the city was so far below the water level of the lake/river. Are earthen dikes really the ticket, backed up by pumps designed by Thomas Edison, when a city of how many million is at stake? I'm thinking of what I see in the Netherlands as more appropriate, in this case, maybe with gas turbine driven machinery fueled by NG/JP from nearby stocks.  FCO and others, what say you?

http://www.nola.com/newsflash/weather/index.ssf?/base/national-50/1125536041100733.xml&storylist=hurricane


http://www.purdue.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=449461
 
Slim2 said:
That's so stupid, they're trying to help, and now they're getting shot! I heard that a helicopter is trying to save people and people are shooting at it, is that true?? If so...oh my gosh thats so not cool.

Slim2
:cdn:

The Military Chinooks were being use to shuttle people to the Superdome, so they could be evacuated via bus to Houston.  That has no stopped due to dumbass motherfukers taking shots at the chopper.
 
In regards to the animals, my bet is that the Veterinary Emergency Reponse teams have been deployed.  What they can do right now is probably very little but as things return more to normal I'm sure they will be accomplishing alot in helping the animals that did survive.  More may survive than you think as long as they don't drown.  These teams were on the scene during 9/11 and did amazing things for the service dogs that were working the areas as well as pets that were trapped in buildings.

Of course we have to concentrate mainly on rescuing the humans but keep in mind that pets are often considered a part of the family and for many, esp. seniors, may be their only family left.

I have been watching the news closely for info about the outlying areas and it seems that they just can't be reached.  I've been to NO many times and I just can't believe what's happening to that city.  It will never be the same again with all the water damage to the old buildings,etc. 
 
They just aren't getting a break, are they?? Got this from the Globe and Mail

New Orleans jolted by blast at depot
By ALLEN G. BREED

Friday, September 2, 2005 Updated at 8:41 AM EDT

Associated Press

New Orleans â ” An explosion at a chemical depot jolted residents awake early Friday, illuminating the pre-dawn sky with red and orange flames over a city awash in corpses and under siege from looters. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Vibrations from the blast along the Mississippi River and a few miles east of the French Quarter were felt all the way downtown. A series of smaller blasts followed and then a cyclone of acrid, black smoke.

To jittery residents of New Orleans, it was yet another fearful sight in a city that has deteriorated rapidly since Katrina slammed ashore Monday morning.

Congress was rushing through a $10.5-billion (U.S.) aid package, the Pentagon promised 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting and President George W. Bush planned to visit the region Friday. But city officials were seething with anger about what they called a slow federal response following Hurricane Katrina.

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"They don't have a clue what's going on down there," Mayor Ray Nagin told WWL-AM Thursday night.

"They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn â ” excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed."

Seeking to deflect rising criticism of the federal response, Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Friday: "In this catastrophic event, everything that we had pre-positioned and ready to go became overwhelmed immediately after the storm."

Thursday saw thousands being evacuated by bus to Houston from the hot and stinking Superdome. Fistfights and fires erupted amid a seething sea of tense, suffering people who waited in a lines that stretched a half-mile to board yellow school buses. The looting continued.

Governor Kathleen Blanco called the looters "hoodlums" and issued a warning to lawbreakers: Hundreds of National Guard troops hardened on the battlefield in Iraq have landed in New Orleans.

"They have M-16s and they're locked and loaded," she said. "These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will."

At the Superdome, group of refugees broke through a line of heavily armed National Guardsmen in a scramble to get on to the buses.

Nearby, about 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at New Orleans Convention Center grew ever more hostile after waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead.

Police Chief Eddie Compass said there was such a crush around a squad of 88 officers that they retreated when they went in to check out reports of assaults.

"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."

By Thursday evening, 11 hours after the military began evacuating the Superdome, the arena held 10,000 more people than it did at dawn. Evacuees from across the city swelled the crowd to about 30,000 because they believed the arena was the best place to get a ride out of town.

Some of those among the mostly poor crowd had been in the dome for four days without air conditioning, working toilets or a place to bathe. One military policeman was shot in the leg as he and a man scuffled for the MP's rifle. The man was arrested.

By late Thursday, the flow of refugees to the Houston Astrodome was temporarily halted with a population of 11,325, less than half the estimated 23,000 people expected.

Texas Governor Rick Perry announced that Dallas would host 25,000 more refugees at Reunion Arena and 25,000 others would relocate to a San Antonio warehouse at KellyUSA, a city-owned complex that once was home to an Air Force base. Houston estimated as many as 55,000 people who fled the hurricane were staying in area hotels.

The blasts early Friday rocked a chemical storage facility along the river, said Lieutenant Michael Francis of the Harbor Police. At least two police boats could be seen at the scene and a hazardous material team was on route. Lt. Francis did not have any other information.

While floodwaters in New Orleans appeared to stabilize, efforts continued to plug three breaches that had opened up in the levee system that was designed to protect this below-sea-level city.

Helicopters dropped sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pounded into the mouth of the canal Thursday to close its connection to Lake Pontchartrain.

At least seven bodies were scattered outside the convention centre, a makeshift staging area for those rescued from rooftops, attics and highways. The sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement.

A military helicopter tried to land at the convention centre several times to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 3 metres off the ground and flew away.

"There's a lot of very sick people â ” elderly ones, infirm ones â ” who can't stand this heat, and there's a lot of children who don't have water and basic necessities to survive on," said Daniel Edwards, 47, outside the center. "We need to eat, or drink water at the very least."

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

"I don't treat my dog like that," Mr. Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people."

Mr. Brown said the agency just learned about the situation at the convention centre Thursday and quickly scrambled to provide food, water and medical care and remove the corpses.

The slow response frustrated Nagin: "I have no idea what they're doing but I will tell you this: God is looking down on all this and if they're not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price because every day that we delay, people are dying and they're dying by the hundreds."

In hopes of defusing the situation at the convention centre, Mr. Nagin gave the evacuees permission to march across a bridge to the city's unflooded west bank for whatever relief they could find.

A day after Mr. Nagin took 1,500 police officers off search-and-rescue duty to try to restore order in the streets, there were continued reports of looting, shootings, gunfire and carjackings.

Tourist Debbie Durso of Washington, Mich., said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, "'Go to hell â ” it's every man for himself."'

FEMA officials said some operations had to be suspended in areas where gunfire has broken out, but they are working overtime to feed people and restore order.

Outside a looted Rite-Aid drugstore, some people were anxious to show they needed what they were taking. A gray-haired man who would not give his name pulled up his T-shirt to show a surgery scar and explained that he needs pads for incontinence.

"I'm a Christian," he said. "I feel bad going in there."

Hospitals struggled to evacuate critically ill patients who were dying for lack of oxygen, insulin or intravenous fluids. But when some hospitals try to airlift patients, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan said, "there are people just taking potshots at police and at helicopters, telling them, 'You better come get my family."'

To make matters worse, the chief of the Louisiana State Police said he heard of numerous instances of New Orleans police officers â ” many of whom from flooded areas â ” turning in their badges.

"They indicated that they had lost everything and didn't feel that it was worth them going back to take fire from looters and losing their lives," Col. Henry Whitehorn said.

Mississippi's confirmed death toll from Katrina rose to 126 on Thursday as more rescue teams spread out into a sea of rubble to search for the living, their efforts complicated at one point by the threat of a thunderstorm.

All along the coast, other emergency workers performed the grisly task of retrieving corpses, some of them lying on streets and amid the ruins of obliterated homes that stretch back blocks from the beach.

Gov. Haley Barbour said he knows people are tired, hungry, dirty and scared â ” particularly in areas hardest hit by Katrina. He said the state faces a long and expensive recovery process.

"I will say, sometimes I'm scared, too," Barbour said during a briefing in Jackson, Miss. "But we are going to hitch up our britches. We're going to get this done."
 
Lots of problems in NO that have to be solved:

http://www.zippyvideos.com/8911023771013466/countdown-looting-in-walmart/
 
Lots of problems in NO that have to be solved:


That Walmart store was literally gutted.  I can understand getting some food and clothing...but one kid had one of those mini electric cars.  The police officers just annoyed me. 
 
Well I see the usual suspects from the granola wheat beer and hairy armpit brigade have begun to crawl out whatever rocks they live under here and in the states and begun to lambaste the US government about their response to Katrina, including equating it to the War in Iraq ("the cost of the war for two weeks equals what it will cost to rebuild New Orleans"). Real easy to Monday morning quarterback a disaster like this from the comfort of your dry home.

This article though has to take the cake:

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/05/front2453615.183333333.html

Kuwaiti: 'The terrorist Katrina' is a 'soldier of Allah'

Thursday, September 1, 2005

Muhammad Yousef Al-Mlaifi, director of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Endowment's research center, published an article titled "The Terrorist Katrina is One of the Soldiers of Allah, But Not an Adherent of Al-Qaeda."(1) the Aug. 31 edition of the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa. Following are excerpts.

"...As I watched the horrible sights of this wondrous storm, I was reminded of the Hadith of the Messenger of Allah [in the compilations] of Al-Bukhari and Abu Daoud. The Hadith says: 'The wind is of the wind of Allah, it comes from mercy or for the sake of torment. When you see it, do not curse it, [but rather] ask Allah for the good that is in it, and ask Allah for shelter from its evil.'

"When the satellite channels reported on the scope of the terrifying destruction in America [caused by] this wind, I was reminded of the words of [Prophet Muhammad]: 'The wind sends torment to one group of people, and sends mercy to others.' I do not think - and only Allah [really] knows - that this wind, which completely wiped out American cities in these days, is a wind of mercy and blessing. It is almost certain that this is a wind of torment and evil that Allah has sent to this American empire.

"But I began to ask myself: Doesn't this country [the U.S.] claim to aspire to establish justice, freedom, and equality amongst the people? Isn't this country claiming that everything it did in Afghanistan and Iraq was for truth and justice? How can it be that these American claims are untrue, when we see how good prevails in the streets of Afghanistan, and how it became an oasis of security with America's entrance there? How can these American claims in the matter of Iraq be untrue, when we see that Iraq has become the most tranquil and secure country in the world?"

"But how strange it is that after all the tremendous American achievements for the sake of humanity, these mighty winds come and evilly rip [America's] cities to shreds? Have the storms joined the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization.

How sad I am for America. Here it is, poor thing, trying with all its might to lower oil prices which have reached heights unprecedented in all history. Along with America's phenomenal efforts to lower the price of oil in order to salvage its declining economy and its currency - that is still falling due to the 'smart' policy America is implementing in the world - comes this storm, the fruit of Allah's planning, so that [the price of] a barrel of oil will increase further still. By Allah, this is not schadenfreude.

Oh honored gentlemen, I began to read about these winds, and I was surprised to discover that the American websites that are translated [into Arabic] are talking about the fact that that the storm Katrina is the fifth equatorial storm to strike Florida this year... and that a large part of the U.S. is subject every year to many storms that extract [a price of] dead, and completely destroy property. I said, Allah be praised, until when will these successive catastrophes strike them?

"But before I went to sleep, I opened the Koran and began to read in Surat Al-R'ad ['The Thunder' chapter], and stopped at these words [of Allah]: 'The disaster will keep striking the unbelievers for what they have done, or it will strike areas close to their territory, until the promise of Allah comes to pass, for, verily, Allah will not fail in His promise.' [Koran 13:31]."
Endnote: (1) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), August 31, 2005.


Please note the author is a Kuwait Government Official. Now I may be having a mess tin moment here but I seem to recall a bunch of Americans and others including Canadians liberating Kuwait a few years back from a certain mustached despot. Nice to see gratitude has a statute of limitations.

 
Now they are reporting that there is oil leaking from the above ground storage tanks along the Mississippi.
At 2+ million barrels per tank, not only will it make the disaster even worse, but is sure to affect gas prices again. ::)

 
I guess old Muhammad Yousef Al-Mlaifi has already forgotten the tsunami that took out the thousands of Muslims not to long ago. I wonder what terrorist organization it worked for, and who's wind and waves that one belonged to.::)
 
recceguy said:
I guess old Muhammad Yousef Al-Mlaifi has already forgotten the tsunami that took out the thousands of Muslims not to long ago. I wonder what terrorist organization it worked for, and who's wind and waves that one belonged to.::)

In his version of reality I'm sure George W and the rest of the inhabitants of the Great Satan were responsible for that act, not God or nature. He's having a hard time explaining all the material and financial aid the US and the rest of us infidels shipped in though. Sounds like he needs the former Iraqi Information Minister as a spin doctor. 8)
 
Just got back from Kelowna. I have two things to say about this situation. Firstly, Katrina is wreaking havoc on our gas prices. In BC, anywhere from 111.4 to 125.5. In Alberta, we got 99.9 to 114.3, all beacuse oil derricks are overturned and afloat in the Gulf of Mexico.

Secondly, my friend who flies for NOAA sent me some info from a flight he did on Katrina: max windspeed was, in her eyewall at her peak, 142 knots true windspeed. In comparison, Hurricane Charley last year had registered windspeeds of 135 knots, Andrew back in 1992 was 134 knots and Grace in 1991 was regestering 140 knots. In contrast, severe tornadoes can register anywhere from 245 to 295 knots. Just letting you know how powerful these things are, and how dangerous they can be.
 
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