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Atlantic Hurricane Season 2005/2006

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Mon Oncle Ignatius

14:23 / 31.08.05

Yep,looked at pay sites, and will go to them as a last resort. Calling Lilly's brother's house got an "all cariiers are busy, please try later" message.

We'll just keep on trying and hope they can let someone in the family know how things are going soon.

The other big worry is for LN's mother's house in Algiers - I can't work out if the levee on the bank there has broken or not (I know the main breach is right on the other side of the city by Lake Pontchartrain). Looking at this (unlinkable) satellite image here I would guess Algiers is not flooded (it's to the east of the right-hand loop in the river).

I've only been to NO a couple of times, but it's a city I have grown to love almost as much as London or Paris, and I just imagine what it would be like here if it flooded. But the reality of seeing somewhere which has ingrained itself into my life suffering so much devastation is heartbreaking.

So for all of those 'Lithers and everyone else who's been hit by this particularly bad hurricane season, I wish you well.

15:04 / 31.08.05

Post a message or take a look at the WWLTV web site here. They've got a really good forum about various areas near NOLA and their damage and I'm sure someone there will be able to answer your question about Algiers if they haven't already.

15:10 / 31.08.05

CNN has a map of levee breaks about halfway down this page. East NO (including Algiers) is not marked on that map... however, the Homeland Security guy I quoted two days ago mentioned East NO as one of the trouble spots.

Here are some map resources. According to this one (scroll down a bit), much of Algiers is at least above sea level.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

15:14 / 31.08.05

Cherielabombe - thanks, that forum has been very helpful. The rumours and reports on there seem to be indicating that there is wind damage but no (serious?) flooding in Algiers.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

15:17 / 31.08.05

Grant - the's true, on reflection, about Algiers - it's on the other side of the river from NO proper where the levees have been breached. There is a levee there along the banks, but it's possibly more to do with flood defences than for keeping the lake out on a regular basis as the northern ones do.

Lilly Nowhere Late

21:13 / 31.08.05

Cheers everyone for all the kind words and helpful advice. We still haven't heard from anyone but I'm reckoning on the communication issues for that.
To be honest, I'm not that worried about my mom being caught up in hurricane stuff as I know she left so early. More keep thinking perhaps they were in a car crash and now no one can let me know. Ridiculous scenarios go through one's head, y'know. I would have never before dreamed that a little thing like total phone wipe-outs would have kept my mom from ringing me but I suppose anything's possilbe, eh?
The poor big easy.
Hopefully have some cheery news tomorrow...
thanks again...

subcultureofone

01:10 / 01.09.05

i'd like to add my belated but hopeful thoughts for your mother. if it helps any, the cell phone networks in north florida are down still, though they've worked sporadically throughout the day.

i heard there was a gas shortage in florida, then i heard it was just a rumor. most recently, a gas station owner we know said he got a call from his distributor and it will be at least a week until they make the next delivery.

02:57 / 01.09.05

New Orleans is fucked.

03:32 / 01.09.05

Very observant.

03:38 / 01.09.05

I'd say that it sums up things quite nicely.

03:48 / 01.09.05

Things are a long, long way from being summed up, especially for the people, including those in this thread, who can't find people they care about.

03:54 / 01.09.05

-sighs at self- And now I've taken on that crappy, bitchy righteous indignation voice that I've really no right to. I apologize. I used to go to school there, and never liked the place, but now I'm wondering if there are friends I haven't talked to in a while that are in serious trouble. With the news going on and on saying essentially the same thing you did, I just got frustrated and said something that was equally unhelpful to the thread. So again. I apologize.

04:00 / 01.09.05

Hey, no problem. You didn't have to apologize but I appreciate it. For the record, it wasn't an attempt to be humorous. I intended it to be a matter-of-fact statement.

05:42 / 01.09.05

Just watched a stupid little video on CNN about how the levees broke. No idea if it's accurate or not (little computer animation), but god, it makes me wonder how much different things might be now if those walls, or even just one of them, had held. To everyone who lives there, has family there, or ever lived there, god, if you ever visited and loved it, I'm so sorry.

07:07 / 01.09.05

Hey Lily my dad told me that WWL is the only radio station still on the air in New Orleans - he says it's basically turned into an on-air message system for people to get messages that they're OK or to find out how their loved ones are. I know you can't listen to the station yourself, but they have a pretty strong signal (my dad is listening to their AM station from Chicago), maybe you could see if you can get an appeal for you Mom to get in touch somehow over the radio?

08:51 / 01.09.05

You may've tried a lot of these already, Lily, but there's a few sites listed in the disaster recovery section of the Katrina page on Wikipedia.

Also, you can access WDSU TV from New Orleans, Live, at that link. There's also a couple links to WWL online live, but it's not working right now.

09:00 / 01.09.05

Correction, WDSU is actually broadcasting from Jackson, Mississippi. The feed on that website actually seems to be bouncing around to whatever stations are on the air.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

12:00 / 01.09.05

Update on Lilly's mother: we got through to her brother at last, who can't make country to country calls from his phone, which was also down most of the time anyway, so we were pretty lucky to make the connection.

Lilly's mother went to Mississippi to stay with friends, and she and her husband are safe, but have no phone or electricity.
Phew.

Let's hope there's more good news for everyone else affected by the storm.

13:08 / 01.09.05

Outstanding news, TM.

Things I've heard on the news about the city itself are more in line with Slim's assessment.

Dig:

Item -- Looters have now armed themselves with guns & ammo from Wal-mart.

Item -- a Chinook military rescue helicopter came *under fire* while flying over the Superdome. They've stopped evacuating the people inside.

Item -- Police have suspended search & rescue operations to focus on law & order. (People are probably still baking in attics.)

Item -- The first bus reached the Houston Astrodome. It was not an official bus, and was almost turned away. Get this... a 71-year-old bus driver commandeered a school bus and drove around picking up whoever he could find, then headed for Texas. For me, that's New Orleans in a nutshell. He says he had police permission to take the bus, but, y'know, who knows.

13:50 / 01.09.05

That sounds extremely scary. Shooting at rescue helicopters, that's messed up.

13:51 / 01.09.05

NO Police scanner traffic on the net. This sounds like the lead up to the Road Warrior.

http://216.22.26.45:8002/
http://ods.org:8001/scan
http://205.252.89.181:8000/live.m3u

17:32 / 01.09.05

Fats Domino is missing. 77 years old, refused to leave his home in New Orleans.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

18:20 / 01.09.05

Lilly/TM- that's great news (sorry- only just got yr voicemail- been out all day with a dead battery).

The whole thing's looking pretty terrible, isn't it? I don't really know what to say, except... fuuuuuck.

19:06 / 01.09.05

Some news about those 15+ oil in the Gulf of Mexico platforms that have gone missing.

19:07 / 01.09.05

What's that you say, Stoatie?

Off the Times-Picayune bulletin board:

7864. Devastating information
by TUGrad91, 9/1/05 4:15 ET
Reposted from a blog: Outpost Crystal's Police
OfficerMore from the
Police Officer. I'm typing as fast as i can while
he talks to us:He's
only hearing bits and pieces. The people in the
city are shooting at
the police. They're upset that they're not
getting help quickly enough.
The fireman keep calling because they're under
fire. He doesn't
understand why the people are shooting at the
rescuers. Here it is 5
days ago the Mayor said get out of town and
nobody went and now they're
pissed.

The National Guard was at the Hilton, but now the
Hilton is evacuated.
When they said the CBD was gonna get 6 feet of
water, it seems like
everyone evacuated.

He turned the corner onto Canal Street and it
looked like a flea
market. People breaking into every store, going
to the neutral gound
(median) and trading and selling everything.

They broke into Winn Dixie Monday Night. Do they
steal food? No.
Cigarettes and liquor. Store was a mess. All the
meats were going to
waste so the districts went over there to salvage
food for officers.
Many cops have been eating MREs.

The Iberville Housing Projects got pissed off
because the police
started to "shop" after they kicked out looters.
Then they started
shooting at cops. When the cops left, the looters
looted everything.
There's probably not a grocery left in this city.

Over 30 officers have quit over the last 3 days.
Out of 160 officers in
his district maybe 55 or 60 are working. He
hasn't seen several since
Sunday. HQ is closed, evacuated. No phones to
contact them.

"HQ, be advised, we're going 10 7."

"Ok, y'all coming back on???"

"We don't know."

21:17 / 01.09.05

The thing is I remember talk of the fragility of N.O.'s levees about two years ago. Authorities had known about this possibility for a long time, and they still weren't adequately prepared, apparently.

23:49 / 01.09.05

I just posted a long post in the headshop thread, with links to articles giving historical reasons to be skeptical of the tone of reports that paint poor people as insane animals after natural disasters.

That's a NYTimes article by David Brooks so it will require registration and won't be free after a few days--basically he points to a whole series of natural disasters in US history where there were rumors of depraved actions of poor people that had serious consequences for our society. I'm not saying that oppressed people don't sometimes behave in ugly ways--they do, that's part of oppression. I'm not saying that some oppressed people aren't just plain assholes.

But, Jesus, a lot of the stories I'm reading, even on fairly mainstream sites like the AP show a more complex picture of these folks: 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. I feel bad going in there," he said.
Earl Baker carried toothpaste, toothbrushes and deodorant. "Look, I'm only getting necessities," he said. "All of this is personal hygiene. I ain't getting nothing to get drunk or high with."

This is a mess, and this depraved administration in DC bears a huge responsibility for:
--massively cutting taxes to the rich while starting a pointless war
--diverting much of our National Guard to service in Iraq
--blowing up a huge federal debt (sucks up huge amounts of tax dollars to pay interest)
--putting FEMA under homeland security and taking most of its resources away to "fight terror" (with much of that going to corporate graft)
--still denying global warming and refusing to take any real steps to curbing oil use in this country or cutting CO2 emissions.
--encouraging the kind of development that decimates wetlands and makes coastal areas much more vulnerable to these disasters.

01:10 / 02.09.05

You should start an indian nation....now.

06:26 / 02.09.05

Or perhaps, given that it's Anne Rice country, a vampire nation?

I've been amazed at how little coverage there's been here, until the last few days. How's this all being reported in the US itself?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

09:13 / 02.09.05

Moominliger What really pisses me off is that it won't be long before Fred Phelps and his Asshole Brigade will be down there with their little placards reading "God hates New Orleans"

You rang?

11:21 / 02.09.05

These guys are weird. They talk about NO being hit, because of homosexuals, abortionists and naked ladies. And then they quote the bible, saying the rain hits anybody anyway. This doesn´t even make sense for religious zealots.

11:22 / 02.09.05

Phelps should go down there. Immediately.

Re: How this is being covered in the US. It varies a lot. CNN.com is taking the most dramatic tone, MSNBC is taking a more factual approach. While it's on pretty much every channel, they are now taking breaks to talk about other things, just not for very long.

12:32 / 02.09.05

A little bit of good news, anyway: Fats Domino is alive and safe.

12:46 / 02.09.05

Oh, that's something. Thanks, Jack.

I wonder how that rescue went -- he lived in a pretty big house, but in the 9th Ward (worst flooding).

----

Liger sed:
The thing is I remember talk of the fragility of N.O.'s levees about two years ago. Authorities had known about this possibility for a long time, and they still weren't adequately prepared, apparently.

Because funds to reinforce levees had been diverted to the war. And everybody knew it.

14:44 / 02.09.05

Maybe God just hates levees and the people of New Orlens are colateral damage in this holy war against urban gentrification. It would make as much sense as anyting else.
Whenever I see news footage that Led Zepplin song plays in my head: "When the levee breaks, mamma you got to move." Is that inappropriate or just an example of cultural conditioning?

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